At Home and Abroad

Catherine Dunne became a fulltime writer in 1995. As a child, she learned that there was a difference between reading and writing. As an avid reader she wished to become a writer. But that was an almost impossible ambition in the Ireland where she grew up. She was a teacher for seventeen years and loved teaching and still very much enjoys the Creative Writing workshops that she often facilitates. Her first novel, In the Beginning was published in 1997 and was very well-received, both critically and popularly. It was translated into several languages and went on to be shortlisted for the ‘Bancarella’ – the Italian booksellers’ prize. A Name for Himself followed a year later, and was short listed for the Kerry Fiction Prize. Between 2000 and 2014, she published seven further novels: The Walled Garden, Another Kind of Life, Something Like Love, At a Time Like This, Set in Stone, Missing Julia and The Things We Know Now. Her non-fiction book, An Unconsidered People was published in 2003. She has also written short stories and non-fiction pieces for various publications, among them Moments, Travelling Light, and Irish Girls about Town. Her latest novel A Good Enough Mother, is winner of the inaugural European Rapallo Prize for fiction 2023, is already a bestseller in Italy. On release in Ireland it quickly became a bestseller in 2024.