Leeanne O’Donnell: 'There’s the question, how do you keep all the plates spinning?'
Leeanne O’Donnell writer-in-residence at Cork County Council for 2025 Picture: Kate Bean Photography.
Living in an old farmhouse in Ballydehob on the foothills of Mount Gabriel with her wife, two teenage daughters, cats, dogs and chickens, writer Leeanne O’Donnell paints an idyllic picture of life in West Cork.
Dublin-born O’Donnell, who is the new writer-in-residence for 2025 at Cork County Council, says that if she had a trust fund, life really would be idyllic. As things are, O’Donnell says: “There’s the eternal question, how do you keep all the plates spinning? How do you earn a living while you have this kind of idyllic life?”
O’Donnell is a qualified psychotherapist and her wife is a clinical psychologist, working in private practice. While O’Donnell hasn’t practised psychotherapy for a while, she intends to work part-time at creative coaching, combining psychotherapy with what she knows about writing.
Her debut novel, Sparks of Bright Matter, was published in April 2024 and was well-received. Set in eighteenth century London and Ireland, it was inspired by the “magic of the mountain” where she lives and the notion of alchemy, influenced by the ancient copper mines in the area. The book is about a cast of characters who are all searching for something, leading to complications and a resolution of sorts.
O’Donnell is working on her second novel which she describes as speculative fiction. Virginia Woolf famously wrote about the need for creative women to have a room of their own. ‘A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction,’ wrote the British author. O’Donnell agrees. It took her ten years, on and off, to write her novel, edit it and get it published. She talks about the importance of a desk of one’s own, never mind a room, although she wrote part of her novel in a second hand caravan she bought, anchoring it in the garden.
“Any bit of space that you can hive off is necessary to write. I remember having a desk of my own and discovering that the children (when they were very young) had scribbled all over the pages with crayons.”
Firmly rooted in West Cork, having moved there 18 years ago from London, O’Donnell doesn’t miss big city life, describing it as a rat race. “We came to West Cork for a weekend in the aftermath of the death of a friend and we just completely fell in love with it. I think it has something to do with the landscape at one level. It’s also to do with the people. It felt like West Cork was a place we could live in and be creative and connected.”
Surely London has a lot more going for it culturally, compared to Ballydehob and its environs? “I don’t know if that is. There is more in terms of the sheer volume of things happening in London but I find the cultural life here amazing. It’s not out in bright lights all the time but there’s amazing music here, amazing people and lovely bookshops. I find living here really stimulating.”
For O’Donnell, the only disadvantage about Ballydehob is that it’s “so far away” from anywhere else she wants to go. But she has no regrets about relocating and says there is a lot of “resourcefulness and inventiveness” about how people manage in her community and “make it all add up.” O’Donnell has made award-winning documentaries for RTÉ’s Doc on One series including one on dancer and artist, Lucia Joyce, daughter of James Joyce. She also spent a year as a researcher for BBC Radio 4.
As writer-in-residence for Cork County Council, O’Donnell will be working in libraries in Castletownbere, Charleville, Fermoy, Macroom and Schull.
“I’m interested in bringing in groups that maybe haven’t found it that easy to access things like writing groups. Previously with the HSE, I did work with people recovering from mental health challenges. I found that really inspiring. It was bringing in people who were extremely creative and maybe hadn’t the confidence to be part of creative activities. Part of what I’d like to do is expand the outreach of the role and bring more people into writing groups, supporting them creatively, across the board.”
O’Donnell knows all about the challenges of having a creative life. “It takes a certain amount of resilience. You’re on your own a lot and you have to believe in yourself. You have to keep pushing forward for something that might turn into nothing. That’s the key issue with it. At each step, you’re wondering, ‘why am I doing this? Would I not just get a proper job?’"
But O’Donnell is hooked on writing and seems to have found her metier.
