Beginner's Pluck - Maura Mulligan

As a teenager, Maura was a servant in a big house.

Then, sailing for America, she worked as a telephone operator, before becoming a nun. Eventually leaving, she had occasional acting parts, and she ran a language school. Then, she taught English in the New York system.

“I started writing in the ’90s. I took a writing course on Achill Island, led by the poet, Macdara Woods. That was where I first heard the echoes of childhood mingle with the winds of emigration.”