Her writing has been widely published in literary journals and she has given readings at festivals, libraries and pubs, as well as chairing various literary events. Celeste’s poetry has been shortlisted for a Hennessy Award and her short story 'The Good Boat' won the Cúirt New Writing Prize for fiction.
For two years she (along with Aoife Casby) curated and moderated Scrutable, a series of live conversations in Galway with writers from around Ireland.
She lives in Connemara, in the West of Ireland.
Read some of my writing online
fiction:
Mammary World - in Southword Journal
Ghostgirl - in Penduline Magazine
Molly Fawn - in PANK Magazine
poetry:
Poetry Ireland Newsletter - ARE YOU IRISH? (an essay)
Salmon Poetry - 'I Dream in Solid Pine'
Poethead - Selection of poems
And Furthermore...
I spent my early years in the backwoods of Northern Ontario, Canada. My mother is Irish and my father is French-Canadian, but English was the only language ever spoken at home when I was growing up. Words became my obsession; I would read anything, even the toothpaste tube. When I was twelve my family moved to Ireland. Not too long afterwards, I started secondary school with the Jesuits in Galway. Learnt a new lexicon.
I developed an intense relationship with poetry once I had left school (and the flat expectation that every line of a poem could be analysed ‘correctly’ for an exam). Literary journals started accepting poems of mine when I was in my twenties, which always took me by surprise. Fiction had kept me sane during my childhood, and poetry helped me make sense of my twenties. After the birth of my son, in the early crazy years, poetry was about the only thing that made sense to my sleep deprived mind. So I indulged, sank into other people’s words, and re-discovered my own. And in 2006, I published a chapbook of poetry from my formative poetry years, called Tornadoes for the Weathergirl.
Over the years I have worked in various jobs – babysitter, waitress, shop assistant, library assistant, girl friday, English literature tutor, community Writer-in-Residence, literacy tutor and creative writing teacher – and now I work as a clerical officer. When I was in my twenties, I dropped out of art college; in my thirties I completed an MA in Writing.
Many of the poems drafted while on the MA in Writing ended up in my first full collection of poetry, The Essential Guide to Flight, published by Salmon Poetry in 2009. Many of the poems have been read to enthusiastic audiences at poetry readings around Ireland (including the Cúirt International Festival of Literature, various libraries, & as part of Poetry Ireland's ‘Introductions’). Two of them even got me shortlisted for a Hennessy Literary Award the same year the collection was published.
In 2010 I received an Arts Council Literature Bursary to complete my next collection of poetry, Skip Diving (Salmon Poetry, 2014).
Fiction took over between the poetry collections, and in particular the short form. Doire Press published my book of short stories Fireproof and Other Stories (2012) which grew out of various influences, from Margaret Atwood to Amelie Nothomb to Evelyn Conlon to Alice Munro. I learnt to name my world in prose.
I live in Connemara (in the west of Ireland), a stone’s throw from where my mother was born and reared.