The Write Stuff

One cool motherfecker

ure, aren’t we a haven for artists, being full of extraordinary people living in extraordinary beauty…?

Also, we’re a little bit country, a little bit mental, and a whole lotta looney.

So, is it any wonder we’ve been home to quite a few of Ireland’s most celebrated writers. As well as some untalented unknowns who will forever wallow in obscurity.

But, hey, I digress. Young Gary Acheson – formerly of this parish, and a dab hand at exploring Greystones’ colourful past – has put together a list of notable writers who have had to endure, at least once in their life, standing in the pissing rain for a much-delayed locomotive at our beloved, bubbly Greystones train station.

Sure, wasn’t Waiting For Godot inspired by the 9.25 from Rosslare?

Take it away, Gary…

Some writers associated with the area…

Mairin Cregan with husband, Dr James Ryan TD

Mairin Cregan (Rathina, Old John) Lived at Kindlestown House
Bram Stoker (Dracula) took his first tentative steps at writing here in 1871
Robert Elegant (Dynasty) lived in the Burnaby
J.P. Donleavy (The Ginger Man) lived on the seafront and Kilcoole
J.M. Synge (Playboy of the Western World) spent summers in Rathdown House
Richard Condon (The Manchurian Candidate) lived in the Burnaby
Samuel Beckett (Waiting for Godot) spent summers at the harbour (where one stormy night sparked Krapp’s Last Tape), whilst his parents are buried at Redford Cemetery on The Grove
Anne McCaffery (Dragonflight) lived near Kilquade
Sinéad de Valera (Irish Fairy Stories) lived in the Burnaby
Paul Howard (biographer of Ross O’Carroll-Kelly) lived in Greystones
Charles Egan (The Killing Snows) lives in Greystones
W.B. Yeats (you know) stayed with his brother, Jack, at Cartref in Redford
Norah Hoult (There Were No Windows, Holy Ireland) spent her latter years in Blacklion

And let’s not forget that the great Kathy Kelly once passed through Greystones on her way to get a spray tan in Shankill. Or so legend has it. And sure, didn’t Simon Harris write a play, On The Run, aged just 13, following in the footsteps of another local playwright legend, Bernard Farrell, still of this parish.

And if the likes of Cathy Sweeney, Lucy Sweeney Byrne, Amy Lynch, K.A. Finn, JJ Toner and Ruth Fitzmaurice have some ways to go yet to reach the heights of a Beckett, or a Howard, or even a Derek Paine, sure, isn’t it great that Greystones keeps on inspiring new generations of writers…

Good and bad.

Now, where the hell did we put that stupid manuscript….?

You can check out a memorable day in a Greystones cell for Brendan Behan – a self-confessed drinker with a writer’s problem – here, the town’s latest batch of writers here, and how we’ve become the self-publishing capital of Ireland here.