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Life
| 1952- ; b. Rockcorry, Co. Monaghan; ed. Foyle College, Derry; published first short story at 18 in David Marcus’s “New Irish Writing” in The Irish Press; entered UCD and left after a year, finding herself lost in Dublin; married and moved to Australia, working in jobs incl. geographic encyclopaedia; travelled in Asia and Russia; recommenced B. A. at St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth (NUI), 1976; opened creche in Maynooth to cater for her own child and others; separated from husband after birth of second child, 1977; grad. H.Dip; taught English for two years until job terminated; |
| founder member of Rape Crisis Centre; lives in Dublin, with residences in Kilkenny, Cavan, and Limerick; author of My Head is Opening (1987); received Arts Council Bursary, 1988; Stars in the Daytime (1989); Dublin City Library Writer in Residence, 1990; Taking Scarlet as a Real Colour (1993); A Glassful of Letters (1998), semi-epistolary novel of changing mores in Ireland dealing with friendship, courage, and isolation; Telling: New and Selected Stories (2000); issues Skin of Dreams (2003), a novel set in Ireland and Tennessee, dealing with capital punishment. ATT DIL |
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Works| Short fiction |
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| Novels |
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| Anthologised |
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| See also contrib. to Caitriona Moloney & Helen Thompson, eds., Irish Women Writers Speak Out: Voices from the Field, with a foreword by Ann Owen Weekes (Syracuse UP 2003), q.pp. |
| Miscellaneous |
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Criticism
Interview with Shirley Kelly, in Books Ireland (March 1997), pp.41-42; Rosemary Dawson, review of A Glassful of Letters, in Books Ireland (Dec. 1998), pp.342-43; Interview, ‘The trauma of a death is dragged out
over years’, in Books Ireland (May 2003) [infra].
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Commentary
Shirley Kelly, ‘The trauma of a death is dragged out over years’ [interviw], in Books Ireland (May 2003), examines the death penalty in Skin of Dreams, starting with the case in the 1940s in which Harry Gleeson was executed for the murder of a single mother in Clonmel; Conlon read Marcus Bourke’s treatment of the case in Murder at Marhill (1993) as a primer to her novel; recalls that she heard the death sentence read three times in a special criminal court in Dublin in the 1980s: ‘It took a long time and I’ll never forget the extraordinary silence in the court throughout that time.’ Shows concern about Death Row, and especialy the case of partents with untreated psychotic son of elderly who finally commits a murders. Calls the book ‘traumatic and emotionally exhaust[ing] I write.’ (p.113.)
Kate Bateman, review of Evelyn Conlon, Skin of Dreams (Brandon), in The Irish Times (23 May 2003), Weekend, p.10:
‘An electric chair, or rather, a “medium-sized model small enough to have been transported in a large suitcase”, is found on the lawn of the White House by a groundsman. In her latest novel, Evelyn Conlon tilts at the image-making industry by playing their game. The heroine of the piece, Maud Mannering, has a double agenda: to create a global media moment for the present-day inhabitants of Death Row and to foreground a miscarriage of justice perpetrated on her great-uncle, Harry Tavey, aka Harry Gleeson, who was hanged in the 1940s for a crime he didn't commit. By the end of the novel, after the protagonist has made three trips to the US , we are on terms with the entire Death Row community - condemned inhabitants, family members, constantly-on-the-move protesters and jail personnel.
‘Skin of Dreams opens with Maud, seat-belted on an Aer Lingus plane in a prior-to-landing pattern, musing (in the paranoiac fashion that afflicts passengers) will she get by customs and might the Special Branch nab her? The blending of fact and fiction starts with the name Maud - yes, of course, of Maud Gonne fame. The gentle parodic motif continues as she and her twin brother, Malachy, move to the city and, conventionally, set about getting a flat, academic training and jobs. Maud becomes a civil servant, her brother a teacher. She has a few desultory affairs, while Malachy acquires a sister-in-law for Maud to be spiky about. Then enter the well-known trope of a sealed package found among the effects of dead parents. The contents and the ensuing mission are kept from Malachy until the end of the story, by which time Maud also has found love with the house-partner.
‘Skin of Dreams is a blend of anti-capital punishment discourse and occasional humorous vignettes, such as the dissection of the nosy “B & B woman” in her guest house and the rote-response hotel receptionist. Conlon satirises ad agency notions “of conceptualising whatever there is to conceptualise” and mocks installation art, television arts programmes and the PR industry. However, she is entirely earnest about the business of public protest. This is not a warm novel; the characters further the plot and adhere to the, author's agenda. But though the tone is as jagged as Maud's jet-lag, descriptions of camp life with the Death Row community - The journeyers remain with the reader. (See this review in a separate window.)
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Notes
Écrire l’Europe/Writing Europe (2003), the Franco-Irish Literary festival, Dublin Castle (chaired by Michael Cronin); invited Irish authors incl. Evelyn Conlon, Moya Cannon, Colm Tóibín, Keith Ridgeway, Peter Fallon.
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