Joanna Walsh uses minimalist language to tackle complicated ideas

For someone who came late to writing, the fiction of Joanna Walsh has an accomplished tone and has all the signs of a maturity forged from life’s experiences, writes Sue Leonard.

JOANNA WALSH rushes into the hotel for our interview, telling me she’s just come from the Irish Writer’s Centre. As well as publicising Vertigo, her latest collection of short stories, she’s in Dublin interviewing people for the upcoming Irish issue of Granta.

“I wanted to talk to, not just Irish writers, but the people who create the structure behind that success,” she says, naming The Stinging Fly and Gorse literary journals, the grant system, Aosdána, and her publishers, the innovative Tramp Press.