Esther Kearney

Laura’s short story reflects on the struggles faced as a young woman starting university. From an early age, I was taught never go anywhere on your own. To take my sister everywhere with me. Especially to public toilets. You hear stories, don’t you? Just last week, as well. All...

Any First Years wishing to subscribe to the C-card scheme – which allows you to collect free condoms from the Cripp’s Health Clinic – please wait behind after dinner and speak to the nurse at seven. A look goes up and down the long table in the middle of...

You might think with the amount of media choice out there these days that the past-time of reading is dying, and the publishing industry is slumped to its knees, drowning in a puddle of ink-stained tears and begging for mercy. Well – think again. In the US alone, publishing...

She teeters. It will take 118 years until the global pay gap  between men and women finally closes.   She waits. One foot wedged on a crescent moon of a cradle, she rocks half the world to sleep. A basket of the deep Pacific sways atop her head, brimming,...

This month we focused on the theme of elements. The word ‘element’ can be defined in multiple ways, be it relating to the substances; earth, water, fire, and air or as something more figurative such as the element of surprise. Our poets scope the natural, the behavioural and the...

‘Please, call me Kate, not Catherine’ suggested that I start writing this. It might help, she offered with another of her well-meaning smiles. She also suggested that I take Ella and Theo away for a bit. How long’s ‘a bit’? Kate doesn’t deal in absolutes. Her sentences start with...

He was on a plane, in the sky, above the clouds. A girl was next to him, someone he barely knew, who had only ever been on the very edges of his vision. A closer friend was sat behind him. The interior of the plane was cool and quiet,...