Nineteen-year-old MaryJane Thomson seemed to have it all. Intelligent, creative, and beautiful, she was destined for a bright future. But a nightmare of delusions and hallucinations was unfolding. She dropped out of university, turned to drugs, and spent years in and out of psych wards, police cells, drug hangouts, and on the streets. In this heartbreaking but ultimately hopeful memoir, she shares her struggles with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, and vividly describes what it is like ...

What does motherhood mean today? Drawing on interviews with new mothers and intergenerational chains of women in the same family, this exciting and timely book documents the transition to motherhood over generations and time. Exploring, amongst other things, the trend to later motherhood and the experience of teenage pregnancy, a compelling picture emerges. Becoming a mother is not only a profound moment of identity change but also a site of socio-economic difference that shapes women's li...

Throughout the long centuries of human history is the want, and the need, to share information, to exchange ideas and for that knowledge and experience, for curiosity and learning, to be the basis of a civil society.In literature the ambition is much narrower. In order to be known, to be popular, you had to be published. And for that people had to know you existed and your ideas worth reading. Obviously for most of humanity’s time people couldn’t read and texts couldn’t be publishe...

The history of Ireland is mired in centuries of oppressive rule, struggles and poverty. Against this its landscape and people are a bright beacon of nature and humanity showing the very best of themselves.Ireland’s long rich history of literature is readily lauded all over the world. In its ranks of its women authors are the gloried and the famed but also many who shone but for a moment and others who found no attention from others but had the self-knowledge that their talents were...