About the author

Anne Walsh Donnelly: Author and Poet

Anne Walsh Donnelly is a multi-award winning writer of fiction, poetry and non-fiction. She is a single mother of two teenagers. Originally from Carlow in the south-east of Ireland, she moved to Mayo in the west of Ireland, twenty-four years ago, where she now lives.

Anne works as a student services officer in a third-level college and writes in her spare time. She says of her writing that, “it is my playground. I experiment, take risks, run wild on the page, always hoping that my work will resonate with the reader. I write my emotional truth and bring my whole-self to my writing.”

She has been described by the Irish poet, Kevin Higgins as “a poet of exceptional bravery, a pretty sensational original voice. I hope the poetry world doesn’t tame her, though no doubt it will try.”

Anne’s poetry chapbook The Woman With The Owl Tattoo (Fly On The Wall) was published in June 2019

What readers have said.

“Demise of the Undertaker’s Wife is an impressive debut from Anne Walsh Donnelly. With her close observation of the human psyche, her razor-sharp pen delineates the world of murder, cruelty, control, with an eye that is sharp, unsettling and clearly demonstrates her lyrical talent. She shines a spotlight on the brokenness of life, the fear of silence and the desperate need for the characters to find someone to communicate with, whether it is with Iscariot or the Angel Gabriel. The voices are always true and convincing. I still cannot get the demise of the poor undertaker’s wife out of my head. That’s exactly what a good short story should do.” 
Geraldine Mills, author and poet, co-author of The Other Side of Longing and author of Lick of the Lizard. 
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“Anne has the gift of bringing her characters to life on the page. Every story contains people I found myself thinking and caring about long after I’d finished reading. I am certain there is something for everyone in this high-quality collection.”
Lorraine Mace, author and columnist for Writing Magazine and Writer’s Forum.
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“Anne Walsh Donnelly is by far the most daring poet to emerge in Ireland of late. The starkly honest and overt sexuality which pervades Anne’s poetry make the work of pretty much all her contemporaries appear repressed and backward-looking in comparison. This publication would certainly have been banned in the Ireland of the past. Indeed, she is one of the few poets around whose work has the glorious ability to get moralistic, supposedly liberal eyebrows twitching. Anne’s poems are pretty perfectly formed hand grenades which she tosses about the place with abandon while maintaining a deadpan face. I think this publication is the beginning of something great.”
Kevin Higgins, Author of Song of Songs 2.0: New & Selected Poems (Salmon  Poetry, 2017).

Recent Articles

(Extract from a recent interview with Mike Griffith)

Asked about what readers can expect from Demise of the Undertaker’s Wife, Anne says 

the collection features a wide range of characters who struggle with loss 
in some form or another and sometimes resort to desperate measures to 
assuage their grief. I explore themes such as anger, betrayal, death and 
loneliness. Redemption features in some of the stories as well as the 
healing power of connection when some of the characters reach out to 
others for support and succeed in conquering their demons.

Anne’s inspiration for her stories comes first from a character’s formation. She puts it this way:

Most of the stores in the collection started when characters spoke to me.
They are the little voices in my head that won’t shut up until I write their
words down. I often feel I am the conduit through which these characters
get their story onto the page. It’s a mysterious process. Once their story is
out, it’s my job to craft what they have to say into finished and polished pieces.

Known primarily for her very personal poetry, Anne explains the difference she finds in writing prose. 

Writing prose for me feels like writing with my clothes on. Writing poetry
feels like writing in the nude. In my stories, I explore themes that are important
to me through my characters and I can distance myself from what’s going on
in their minds. Poetry feels more immediate and I think readers often presume
that what is said in poetry is factually true, though for me that’s not always the 
case. I sometimes use story in my poems to convey my emotional truth. Both 
short stories and poetry are similar in that there is no room for fluff.