Julia Kelly: A two-week stay at Annaghmakerrig led to becoming a writer and mother
Author Julia Kelly at her home in Dun Laoghaire, Dublin. Picture: Gareth Chaney.
Going to the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Annaghmakerrig, in my 30s was completely transformative for me.
I’d been living in London for eight years having mistakenly decided on a career as a desk editor. I was singularly untalented at that — I left several publishing jobs before I could get fired. I wanted to write about my own observations of life — since the age of 14 I knew I wanted to be a writer.
I moved back to Dublin. This boyfriend I’d met in one of the publishing jobs came with me. We rented a mews house in my parents’ back garden. I was coming back, having failed really in my jobs in London, I was at a low ebb.
I hadn’t really written anything at that stage — a monthly column for magazine, a small bit of travel writing. I was very lost, all over the place… I got a job in the Civil Service.
I was also feeling my boyfriend wasn’t quite right for me; we weren’t getting on well. I was having significant doubts. Maybe he thought he was losing me… I wanted out, he went the other way — one evening he proposed, this mortifying proposal in a local restaurant.
He had asked the restaurant to put two bottles of champagne in the fridge. He produced a ring. I didn’t say no, I couldn’t say yes. I said ‘listen, I need to think about it, I’m not sure’. It was absolutely horrendous because I was fond of him.
At that time, in the mews house, we had an infestation of mice we couldn’t get rid of — you’d hear them skittering behind the walls at night. In my mind it felt like a metaphor for the things that weren’t right. The following couple of weeks were horrible.
Sometime around then, my older brother — a film-maker who became very paternal towards me after my dad died when I was 21 — said ‘why don’t you apply for Annaghmakerrig?’ I said ‘I’ve written almost nothing’. He said to just apply, that my boyfriend and I needed a break from each other and I needed to write.
So I applied… and miraculously I was told that while I didn’t quite meet the criteria they’d take a leap of faith. They offered me a two-week residency. I was incredibly excited but petrified — I felt like a salesman with an empty suitcase. I knew I could write… but I was also very scatty, disorganised.
I accepted, told my boyfriend at the last minute I needed some space, needed to get away… he was very upset. And then I left, set off on the bus for Carrickmacross, feeling sick to my stomach the entire way, a complete fear of the unknown and that I was an impostor.
From Carrickmacross, I shared a taxi with an American poet wearing a trilby. We got out of the taxi, it was early evening, completely dark. In front of us, this imposing gothic dark house, set far back in the grounds, kind of up a hill. At the bottom of the hill a huge lake, inky still. It was eerie, quiet.
I walked into this lamp-lit hall, completely quiet, old paintings of ancestors, Persian rugs, creaky floorboards, bookcases — a beautiful period house. I was met by the director of the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, led upstairs. Immediately I was treated as a writer… when someone places belief in you it’s incredibly motivating.
A large room overlooking the lake, four-poster bed, a desk in the bay window. Dinner would be at 7pm — my brother had said it was a house rule that everyone met for dinner every evening, which then I found really intimidating. I remember standing in front of the mirror, bracing myself to go down.
Walking into the room, a table full of very quirky people... an American writer, European translator, dancer, poet, several Irish writers. An odd, chatty, quirky group of creative people, some were silent. For the first time in my life, I felt I fitted in. I’ve always got on well with people but they’ve seen me as a bit unusual. With this group I could be totally myself, it felt like coming home.
Next morning having slept beautifully — no ominous scratches of mice — I sat at the desk, began working on my first book, .
I kept hearing people talk about Charlie and Skippy — that they were in the studio, would come to dinner later in the week. I was too shy to ask who Charlie was. Towards the end of the week, they appeared. It’s frozen in my mind — Charlie, tall, very thin, an austere bald man, dressed in baggy all-black clothes... under his arm, a six-foot long iguana called Skippy.
His surname was Whisker; he was an artist from the North of Ireland — I’d never met anyone more interesting in my life. We very quickly got along…
When I got back from Annaghmakerrig, I told my boyfriend it was over…
Charlie became my partner of 12 years, father to my daughter, Ruby Mae.
Annaghmakerrig led to my becoming a writer, led to my becoming a mother — the two most important things. I found my identity, found my way. It changed everything.
- Julia Kelly’s published by New Island Books, is shortlisted in the Dubray Biography of the Year category of the An Post Irish Book Awards 2025. Winners will be announced in Dublin on Thursday, November 27
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