ABSTRACT
The period following the Good Friday Agreement (1998) has seen a marked increase in fiction, particularly collections of short stories, by women. This writing extends and develops the tradition of Northern Irish women’s writing which, since the inception of the state, has offered rich and varied engagement with literary form and subject matter. Women have offered a diverse array of perspectives on politics inside and outside the home. They have written from a variety of political stances: feminist and socialist as well across traditional ethno-sectarian divides. They have dealt with the subject matter of the Troubles directly, but also engaged with themes of reproductive rights, sexuality, mental health and the welfare of children and the elderly. Since partition, Northern Irish women have written crime fiction, romance, science fiction, magical realism and in a host of other genres. There does appear to be, however, in the twenty-first century, an unprecedented energy, vigour and sense of community among these writers, particularly encouraged by both the organisation Women Aloud NI and the writer and broadcaster Sinéad Gleeson. In 2015, Gleeson edited The Long Gaze Back, an award-winning anthology of Irish women’s short stories which featured several stories by Northern women. Following its publication and attendant public events, there was an appetite for more stories from women from the North, and Gleeson published The Glass Shore: Short Stories by Women Writers from the North of Ireland in 2016. This was the first significant collection since The Female Line: An Anthology of Northern Irish Women Writers (1985), which was reissued with a new preface as an e-book in 2016.
