by Maria McCarthy | 8 Oct, 2025 | Uncategorized
I have recently returned from a trip to Mitchelstown, Co, Cork, and took Learning to be Irish with me.
I took my book for a trip to The Vee mountain pass, to Mt Melleray, where the abbey has recently been vacated by a diminishing number of ageing monks, and on to Cobh, where we visited the Heritage Museum, which has an exhibition about migration from Ireland. It was a wonderful trip, on which I reconnected with my roots. I was listening to Jackie Kay on This Cultural Life recently, and she talked of finding an ‘affinity with the landscape’ when she visited Nigeria, after she found her birth father. I can identify with this.
You can read more about my trip, alongside 150 Canadians commemorating 200 years since the Peter Robinson settlers migrated from small towns in Ireland like Mitchelstown to Ontario. on Substack.
‘a fascinating exploration of culture and identity’
The Frogmore Papers reviews Learning to be Irish in Issue 106, Autumn 2025:
Maria McCarthy’s account of ‘learning to be Irish’ as a child of Irish migrants, born in England, takes many forms in this entertaining and consistently engaging collection, which comprises fiction, memoir and poetry. Learning to be Irish is a fascinating exploration of culture and identity and the connexions between them, and McCarthy writes with unfailing honesty and admirable candour. Her ‘Mitchelstown’ sequence of poems concludes: I’m Irish with an English voice,/English with an Irish heart,/floating forever between Holyhead an Dun Laoghaire…
Jeremy Page
Medway River Lit events
The fabulous River Lit Festival will be returning this November, and I am taking part in two events to promote my new book, Learning to be Irish.
The first is an author talk, alongside Medway artist Simon Mills, on 8 November 2025, 1.00 – 3.30 at Rochester Library, Eastgate, Rochester.
Events are on a pay what you can basis. You can reserve a place here.
The second event is an Author Fair on 29 November 2025, 11.30 – 2.30, at Nucleus Arts, Chatham. More details here.
Like this:
Like Loading...
by Maria McCarthy | 19 Aug, 2025 | Uncategorized
Learning to be Irish was launched at Sun Pier House, Chatham on 19 July 2025. It was a truly joyful occasion with readings, music, a choir and Keogh’s Irish crisps! I have just received some photos from the event, by Michi Masumi. I am also sharing some comments on the launch and the book.
Maria with husband Bob Carling
‘A lovely mix. Really inspiring. The choir took my breath away, amazing, such enthusiasm and joyfulness was great to see. A great experience!’
‘You were amazing. Your readings just perfect and it was lovely to see you sparkle. You just looked so happy. Such a perfect day. Well done.’
‘Maria, it was a brilliant afternoon. I have started reading your book and I’m really enjoying it.’
Learning to be Irish has received a couple of 5 star reviews on Amazon, including this one:
An evocative read
Maria writes with great honesty and humour about her upbringing in Ireland in the 60s and 70s. Her stories will resonate with generations of Irish people, evoking vivid memories of an era shaped by emigration, religious conservatism, and shifting family expectations – a time when many faced tough choices between tradition and change, both at home and abroad. Sharon Murphy
I have also had some comments from readers:
Oast House Community Choir at the book launch
‘Your observations, recollections and subsequent revelations bring out the importance, which I believe too, that secrets cause far more trouble than the truth.’
Maggie F
A vivid, forensic analysis of her experience of Irish identity, growing up as part of an Irish community in England. Full of painful human experience but dealt with bravely after years of working it out. A great achievement and testament to ontological survival in a complicated world, I’d say […] I love the detailed descriptions of life in the McCarthy household in the sixties and seventies and her opening poem. Lots of echoes of my own experience of Irish identity.
Patrick
You can order Learning to be Irish directly from this website. Please do leave a review where you can, and help to spread the word.
Like this:
Like Loading...
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
Like this:
Like Loading...
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.
Like this:
Like Loading...
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
Like this:
Like Loading...
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
Like this:
Like Loading...
The first is an author talk, alongside Medway artist Simon Mills, on 8 November 2025, 1.00 – 3.30 at Rochester Library, Eastgate, Rochester.
