Leaving Galway
James Linnane is a poet and storyteller from Crushoa in County Galway whose writing pens the extraordinary and sometimes harsh realities of circumstance and place. Part of a Diaspora who settled in Meath, he treads the uneven and oft times hostile environments of urban and rural divides and always with a humour and ear for dialogue and cultural shift.
Whether it is Dublin nightlife or the suburbs of Boston or New York he tells it as it was and is, a world of hard men. Navvies, barkeeps, builders, an always heartfelt, and often, irreverent account of a life on the hard side!
Though there is beauty here too when writing of childhood, of breathtaking vistas, and in the end, of what will be will be! In "Leaving Galway", his first collection of short stories he draws on all of the above, from boyhood escapades through personal trauma to the hardship of building sites, the struggle for Irish independence to later troubles and leaves you with an interesting and entertaining mix that will keep you turning the page. An activist and volunteer worker now he lives in Ballivor County Meath with his wife Karen and daughters Amber and Stephanie.
Frank Murphy.
