Beginner’s Pluck: Having a baby was catalyst for her writing

Maggie Armstrong's 'Old Romantics' is a is a medley of her experience and hearsay

Maggie Armstrong started writing fiction when a late aunt, writer Grace French, suggested she should write a story about a woman who wanted something.

A dreamy, lazy child, Maggie never read a book.

“I was hopeless at school,” she says, “but I was good at drawing, and I liked making up stories in my head.”

After university, Maggie worked in publishing, at the Royal Irish Academy.

“I trained in copyediting, and also began to write for newspapers.”

She wrote profiles and features for The Irish Times, the Irish Independent and The Dubliner magazine, and at various times had a restaurant column and then a theatre column.

She started writing fiction when a late aunt, writer Grace French, suggested she should write a story about a woman who wanted something.

“Grace was enormously encouraging. I joined a writer’s group with friends — they were harsh critics, but it was enjoyable.

We began reading aloud upstairs in Dublin pubs.

“But the catalyst was having my first baby in 2016. With the confusion of emotions that go with having a baby my mind was running with stories.”

Four years later, The Dublin Review published a story — followed by five more.

“I was also published by The Stinging Fly and Banshee.”

Tramp Press asked her for a collection.

“Working with them was pure magic,” she says.

Who is Maggie Armstrong?

Date/place of birth: 1984/ Dublin.

Education: Muckross Park College; Trinity College Dublin, English. (Dropped out in first year and lived in Paris, then started again.) College in London; MA in European Thought.

Home: Ranelagh, Dublin.

Family: A single mother to Francesco, 7, and Beatrice, two-and-a-half. “And a hamster, Isabel.”

The day job: Editing with the Royal Irish Academy.

In another life: “I would be baking bread commercially.”

Favourite writers: Muriel Spark; Anita Brookner; F Scott Fitzgerald; Kevin Barry; Nicole Flattery; Sally Rooney.

Second book: “A novel. It’s on my desktop, and a litter of paper.”

Top tip: Believe in yourself; you do have something to say.”

X: @maggiestrongarm

The debut

Old Romantics; Tramp Press, €16

The narrator, awkwardly negotiating her life, pursues a man who cut ahead of her in a café queue. With low expectation, she stumbles into relationships, as unreliable men enter and leave her life.

“ Old Romantics is a medley of my experience and hearsay.”

The verdict: I adored these immersive, thought provoking stories; the narrator is almost painfully honest.