Get to know our first ever contributors!
Eleanor Rushe
Eleanor Rushe is an 18 year old Dubliner, a leaving cert 2019 warrior. Her interests include sustainable fashion, music, Spanish, traveling, theatre and last year she took up photography. She likes taking photos of people and structural details interacting with the environment they inhabit, lights and shadows. She’s hoping to work in the media and communications space in the future. This photo [cover image] captures four ladies on a late December evening, bravely launching themselves into the chilly Atlantic waters of Salthill, Galway. United by their pink hats and fortitude, they individually make their way.
Mary O’Donnell
Mary O’Donnell’s seven poetry collections include Unlegendary Heroes and Thos April Fevers (Ark Publications). Four novels include Where They Lie (2014) and the best-selling debut novel The Light Makers, reissued last year after by 451 Editions. A volume of essays on her work, Giving Shape to the Moment: the Art of Mary O’Donnell, Poet, Novelist, Short-story Writer, appeared from Peter Lang in 2018, when Arlen House also published her third collection of stories, Empire. Her new poetry collection Massacre of the Birds will be published in 2020. She is a member of Aosdana, and was recently awarded a PhD at University College Cork.
Caroline Bracken
Caroline Bracken was selected for the Poetry Ireland Introductions Series 2018. Her poems have been widely published including in the Irish Times Hennessy New Irish Writing, the Fish Anthology 2018, Skylight 47, Hello I Am Alive (Poetry Ireland) and Nous Sommes Paris (Eyewear UK). She won the iYeats Poetry Competition 2015, was runner-up in the Fish International Poetry Contest 2018 and was placed 3rd in the Over the Edge New Writer of the Year 2018. One of her poems was selected for the Poetry Jukebox at the EPIC Museum Dublin. She has been sponsored twice by Culture Ireland to read her poetry at Litquake, San Francisco and the Irish Arts and Writers Festival, Los Gatos, California.
Steve May
Steve May, an Edinburgh Fringe First winner with Wigan Young People’s Theatre, regularly performs poems and stories around the NE of England and further afield. He has had work published or placed in a numerous magazines, anthologies and competitions, including winning the 2019 Shelter Poems for Home Competition.
Jenny Darmody
Jenny Darmody is a content editor with a recruitment company based in Dublin, having previously worked as a journalist with sci-tech news site, Silicon Republic. She spends most lunch breaks writing short stories or editing her novel. She has previously been published in The Galway Review, The Incubator Journal, Brave Voices Magazine and Honey & Lime. Jenny was also one of four Young Writer Delegates at the 2018 Dublin Book Festival.
Avril Whelehan
Avril is from Mullingar and worked as an English teacher for ten years. In 2018, she moved to Galway to study for a Masters in Literature and Publishing at NUI Galway. She mainly writes songs and has an E.P on SoundCloud, and she is currently working on an idea for a novel. This is her first time being published and she is grateful to Sonder Magazine for this wonderful opportunity!
Catherine Airey
Catherine writes short stories, often in the voices of young or teenage characters. She is currently working on a longer project about growing up, informed by 20 years of keeping a diary. She studied English Literature at university at lives in London.
Sandra Kolankiewicz
Sandra Kolankiewicz’s poems have appeared widely, most recently in One, Otis Nebulae, Trampset, Concho River Review, London Magazine, New World Writingand Appalachian Heritage. Turning Inside Out was published by Black Lawrence. Finishing Line has released The Way You Will Go and Lost in Transition.
Molly Dowling
Molly Dowling is a London-born, Galway-grown, 21 year old artist. An adolescence performing with Galway Community Circus, led to 4 years studying dance after the Leaving Cert. She has always written, but is fairly new to sharing work.She also loves music, art, and theatre.You can find her @moldowling.
Simon Hauwaerts
Simon Hauwaerts is a nerd who hopes to get a degree in English Literature. His hobbies include writing, petting cats and purposefully mismatching socks.
Emma Devlin
Emma is a graduate of Queen’s University Belfast with an MA in Creative Writing. Her work has previously appeared in Blackbird: New Writing from the Seamus Heaney Centre, The Bangor Literary Journal, and Honest Ulsterman. She also has a short story forthcoming in The Cabinet of Heed. She can be found on Twitter @theactualemma.
Emily Prince
Emily Prince is a school librarian living in Edinburgh, Scotland, but is originally from Melbourne, Australia. Her published work includes short fiction in Voiceworks and Gutter and she came runner-up in the Emerging Writer Award facilitated by Moniack Mhor and The Bridge Awards in 2017. She has performed readings of her work at the Edinburgh International Book Festival and the Wheeler Centre for Books, Writing and Ideas.
Dermot Hurley
Dermot Hurley is a native of Co. Sligo, Ireland. He has been writing for many years, both in English and Irish languages. His interest in poetry was particularly inspired while he lived in Galway, studying Irish and History at NUIG (where his first poem was published). A keen musician, he plays bodhrán, bouzouki and guitar, and has travelled widely. He currently works as an English teacher in Valencia, Spain where he lives with his partner and son. He has read at events organized by The Valencian Irish Cultural Association, Sembrant Poesía (Alboraya), Fil-Per-Randa (Valencia) and published in North West Words and Tales from the Forest. He is presently working on his first collection.
Carol McGill
Carol McGill lives and studies in Dublin. Her work has been published in Crannóg, Number Eleven Magazine, Silver Apples Magazine, and the anthology Words To Tie To Bricks as well as the online magazines Brilliant Flash Fiction, Rookie and Germ. In 2015 she won the Puffin/RTÉ Guide teen writing competition. She is the current chair of Trinity Literary Society.
Aoife Riach
Aoife Riach is a queer feminist witch with an MA in Gender & Women’s studies from TCD and a post-grad certificate in Sexuality & Sexual Health Education from DCU. She has worked as a writer for BUST magazine in NYC and her poetry appears in College Green Journal, Nothing Substantial and other magazines. She was a finalist in the 2019 Inter-varsity Poetry Slam and was a 2019 Irish Writers Centre Young Writer Delegate. Her poem “Vancouver” was chosen for Hungering, the latest curation of the Poetry Jukebox currently installed at EPIC, The Irish Emigration Museum in Dublin.
Brendan Fahy
Brendan Fahy is a native of County Galway and lives in Dublin. This is his first published short story.
Maeve McKenna
Maeve is originally from Dublin and now lives in Sligo. She has written all her life but has only recently begun to submit work. Her poems were shortlisted for the Red Line Poetry Competition and highly commended in the iYeats International Poetry Competition, both in 2018. A prose piece ‘Aftertaste’ was published in The Cormorant and her poems have been published in Poetry24 and I Am Not A Silent Poet, Bonnies Crew and MadSwirl. She is currently working towards her first collection of poetry.You can find some snippets of her writing on Instagram @maevemckenna37
Laoise Slatery
Creative Writing graduate currently residing in New York, if she hasn’t mentioned that already. Working slowly but surely towards the completion of her first novel, but also prone to the occasional short story or unenlightening film review (she asked if she could link her blog in this bio, if she hasn’t already mentioned that either).She is absolutely delighted to be able to say that Sonder is her first official (and unofficial) publication.
Sadbh Kellett
Sadbh Kellett is an Irish writer who has had her work published in journals such as the Attic and Nemesis. She is currently studying her masters in Modern and Contemporary Literature and Culture at St. Andrew’s in Scotland. Kellett is working on her fourth novel as well as a short story collection. When not writing, she is a big fan of travelling, music, gardening, and saving the planet.
David Deady
David is a copywriter who is originally from Cork but now resides in Dublin city. He has an MA in American literature and film and has had work published in the Huffington Post and various other online media. He is obsessed with pop culture and spends his time writing thinkpieces about Hilary Duff
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