Learning to be Irish in the writing shed

by Maria McCarthy | 5 Jun, 2025 | Uncategorized

The books have finally arrived, and I have been busy posting out orders and review copies. Also, I’ve been updating my Amazon author profile, which was so old the photo was from when I launched my first book, strange fruits, back in 2011. I’ve now linked Learning to be Irish to my author profile, so it no longer comes up paired with a book by another writer called Maria McCarthy as a purchase suggestion. Of course, I would prefer purchasers to buy direct from me, as authors and publishers are better compensated by direct sales.

There is much admin when a new book comes out, including stuffing books into jiffy bags, adding it to my Public Lending Rights and Authors’ Licensing and Collection Society (ALCS) accounts. ALCS sends me a couple of hundred quid once a year, which mostly comes from audio-visual fees, from a column I wrote and broadcast for Radio 4’s Home Truths in 2006. It must have be repeated somewhere in the world, several times a year. It’s well worth registering with ALCS to benefit from the different ways your work is reproduced and used as a writer.

My publisher asked for a few photos of me with the book, so I took some copies to the writing shed, where it was written.

I’m so happy to already have some feedback on the book, some from other second-generation Irish people, for whom it’s struck a chord. You can order your copy for £11.99 plus £2 postage (UK orders only) here: Learning to be Irish

Waiting for the books

by Maria McCarthy | 20 May, 2025 | Uncategorized

Thanks to everyone who has ordered a copy of Learning to be Irish. Unfortunately, the first box of books to arrive was, in fact, a single book, which was partially stuck to the packaging. Heigh-ho, these things happen. So, I have orders ready to go out, and eco-friendly jiffy bags to pack them in, and eagerly await the unboxing of a full box of books in the coming days. Orders will be dispatched as soon as the books arrive.

Meanwhile, here is a picture of the back cover, on which some lovely people say lovely things about my book. Thank you, John O’Donoghue and S.M. Jenkin. Thanks also to Mark Holihan for the cover design, and to Michi Masumi for the author photo.

You can read an excerpt of the book, and find out more about how I came to write it, on Substack.

Learning to be Irish now published

by Maria McCarthy | 30 Apr, 2025 | Uncategorized

I am pleased to announce that my new book, Learning to be Irish, is published. Many thanks to Siglum Publishing for taking this book into their fold, and to all those that have made it look so wonderful.  Maggie Drury designed the cover image; Mark Holihan designed the cover and Bob Carling did the typesetting and internal design. Thanks are also due to fellow/sister second-generation Irish writers John O’Donoghue and S.M.Jenkin for their endorsements.

This book has been a long time coming, and much of the content is deeply personal. Learning to be Irish explores my Irish heritage in memoir, poetry and short fiction. Like an artist drawing several sketches, I have worked the material in different forms over the years, staying curious, looking for meanings.

Learning to be Irish showcases the best new and collected writings of a child of Irish migrants. Raised in Surrey in the 1960s and ’70s, ‘the filling in the sandwich’ of a family of five children, Maria C. McCarthy dances to Irish showbands, learns rebel songs at an uncle’s knee, hears home truths, half-truths and white lies from the women that gather in her mother’s kitchen, and learns to be English after the IRA bombs two pubs in Guildford. Learning to be Irish is a search for identity, a chronicle of a lost generation, and a yearning for truths that may never be known.

Maria C. McCarthy’s Learning To Be Irish, comprising poems, stories, and memoir, is a welcome addition to a wave of second-generation Irish writers born in England. McCarthy is a particularly fine poet, and I recommend her sequence ‘Mitchelstown’ to all who are interested in the delicate relations between native and exile. Learning To Be Irish can take its place alongside the work of such writers as Ian Duhig, Shane MacGowan, and Martina Evans. A terrific book.

John O’Donoghue, author of Sectioned: A Life Interrupted, The King From Over The Water and The Servants and Other Strange Stories

Quietly devastating. A mature and truthful exploration of complex emotions, conflicting loyalties, identity, belonging. Through her mastery of different forms of writing: poetry, story, memoir, McCarthy shows us the beating heart of the second-generation Irish in England.

S.M. Jenkin, author of Fire in the Head and Unspeakable, and co-editor of Inspired by Six Women who Shook the World

I shall be launching Learning to be Irish on Saturday 19 July 2025, 1.00 – 2.30 p.m. at Sun Pier House in Chatham. There will be readings, music and books! I hope to have several events in the coming months, and am open to invitations as a guest writer.

The book is available from the usual online retailers, but can I ask that UK readers order copies from me? Small presses like Siglum Publishing, and their authors, make a small profit from direct sales, and only a tiny amount from Amazon.

I shall be sending out orders from mid-May. Details of how to order are here: Learning to be Irish

15 minutes of fame with Local Authority

by Maria McCarthy | 6 Feb, 2025 | Uncategorized

Bob and Maria at the Natural History Museum. Photo by Caitlin, our granddaughter

Many of you will know that my husband Bob Carling and I ran an indie press, Cultured Llama Publishing. Steven Keevil of the excellent, award-winning Local Authority Substack newsletter, interviewed Bob and I about publishing, writing, music, and finding each other via Internet dating. You can read it here.

Steven approached us just at the time we were about to close Cultured Llama, but kindly thought we would be interesting interviewees. When he arrived for the interview, I said ‘I don’t know what you want to talk to us about.’ Two hours later… Sorry for rambling, Steven, and thanks for a great job editing the conversation.

Please subscribe to Local Authority, and if you can, take out a paid subscription. Local news is rarely as good as this.

My recent Substack post DO NOT ALIGHT, on Rochester in the ’90s, has proved surprisingly popular. You can read it here.

This week’s Substack is about my love of medical dramas: CBC, Chem 5 and Tacky Cardies

Learning to be Irish

by Maria McCarthy | 20 Dec, 2024 | Uncategorized

For my last post of 2024, I am pleased to announce that my new book Learning to be Irish is forthcoming from Siglum Publishing in 2025. Here is some advance information:

Learning to be Irish showcases the best new and collected writings of a child of Irish migrants. Raised in Surrey in the 1960s and ’70s, ‘the filling in the sandwich’ of a family of five children, Maria C. McCarthy dances to Irish showbands, learns rebel songs at an uncle’s knee, hears home truths, half-truths and white lies from the women that gather in her mother’s kitchen, and learns to be English after the IRA bombs two pubs in Guildford. Learning to be Irish is a search for identity, a chronicle of a lost generation, and a yearning for truths that may never be known.

Maria C. McCarthy’s Learning To Be Irish, comprising poems, stories, and memoir, is a welcome addition to a wave of second-generation Irish writers born in England. McCarthy is a particularly fine poet, and I recommend her sequence ‘Mitchelstown’ to all who are interested in the delicate relations between native and exile. Learning To Be Irish can take its place alongside the work of such writers as Ian Duhig, Shane MacGowan, and Martina Evans. A terrific book.

John O’Donoghue, author of Sectioned: A Life Interrupted, The King From Over The Water and The Servants and Other Strange Stories

There will be further information on the Siglum website early in 2025. Also, I shall have a new author photo for the back cover courtesy of Michi Masumi. Exciting times.