Beginner’s pluck: Journalist Laura Kennedy

'Some of Our Parts' is clever, humourous, and profoundly thought provoking. It makes you question your core values, and reevaluate your story

Laura Kennedy: 'We live in a culture of profound numbing certainty. But not everything has a clear and obvious answer.'

Laura’s mum was fiercely ambitious and supportive, always encouraging her daughter to achieve well.

“As a teenager I read Jane Austen and Tolstoy. I always wrote, but didn’t believe it was something I could aim for.”

Laura had a year off, at home, in the middle of her primary degree, and also took two years away halfway through her PhD, when her mother became sick.

“I always had jobs, running concurrently. I worked in a bookshop in Limerick, in a dry cleaner, and in stationery shops.”

During her PhD she was also writing beauty-based journalism.

“It was a hobby that turned into a fairly lucrative career. I also had a column in The Irish Times, trying a new experience each week.”

And, when my mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, I wrote about the experience of being with her in her last year.

By the time she graduated Laura was living in London and writing about beauty for The Sunday Times.

In 2023, wanting time to write her book, Louise and her husband moved to Australia.

“Life is simpler here, though I did take a financial hit.”

Who is Laura Kennedy?

Date/ place of birth: 1988/ Limerick.

Education: Salesian Secondary School, Limerick. “And a grind school for my final year.”; Trinity College Dublin, Philosophy and
English. PhD The Philosophy of Psychology.

Home: Canberra, Australia.

Family: Husband, J. “And Mabel the cat, who came with us from London.”

The day job: Writer. “I still write features and columns for The Irish Times.”

In another life: “I almost went back to do another PhD — in Clinical Psychology.”

Favourite writers: Hilary Mantel; Barbara Kingsolver; Marian Keyes; Amor Towles; Seamus Heaney; Agatha Christie.

Second book: “It’s underway.”

Website: https://lkennedy. substack.com

Instagram: @laura_m_kennedy.

The debut

Some of Our Parts

Eriu, €18.02/ Kindle, €9.75

Part memoir, part research based, Laura is examining the nature of identity, through sections including Irishness, feminism, race, and neurodiversity — and she does so through a philosophical lens, showing how such labels have the power to trap us.

“We live in a culture of profound numbing certainty. But not everything has a clear and obvious answer.”

The verdict: Clever, humourous, and profoundly thought provoking. It makes you question your core values, and reevaluate your story.