Irish authors invite us into the spaces where they work: ‘Women can write anywhere – we fit into little pockets of time’

From parked cars to plush sanctuaries or a table tucked away in a night time cafe, five female authors talk about where they love to write and the books, artworks and piles of notebooks that make their space perfect for them

Edel Coffey with her treasured red typewriter at home in Galway. Photo: Julia Dunin

Kathy Donaghy

It was when she was speaking at Girton College in Cambridge in 1928 that Virginia Woolf argued the case for women having “a room of one’s own to write”.

Her point, later solidified in an essay of the same name, argued that, for women to be free to write and create at the level of their male peers, they needed financial independence and private space.