Sinéad Gleeson

And in 2005, the Irish Independent, a newspaper here, did a series of 20 Irish novels, one a week on a Saturday for like five quid.

And they did this in a horrifying design, I might add, but they did the springs of affection.

So I was able to buy it for Fiverr.

So that was when I, so 2005 is when I first read the stories.

And again, the first thing I thought, and I've had this many times with compiling anthologies where you go digging around and doing literary archaeology to find people.

I felt a wave of delight, but also anger, as in why is nobody talking about her?

Why has she been forgotten?

Where has this work gone?

I can't believe she's as good as anybody that everybody talks about in terms of the Irish canon.

And I was kind of furious because the stories were exceptional.

Can I quote you?

Anne Enright wrote the introduction to The Springs of Affection for The Stinging Fly.

And she says in it, Mae Brennan didn't have to be a woman for her work to be forgotten, though it surely helped.

And I think that sums it up quite a lot.

And yet that doesn't apply to people like Mary Lavan, Elizabeth Bowen, Frank O'Connor and the huge wealth of Irish writers who published substantially with the New Yorker.

I could never quite figure that out.

I mean, over 40 stories Brennan published.

That's a huge body of work.

And the fact that she had she started, I think, in 1949, she got a staff job at only 32.

In 1949, the year Ireland became a republic as well.