Author Áine Greaney Tells Her Once Upon a Time...

Today Áine Greaney is joining us as part of her WOW-Women on Writing blog tour with a guest post to tell the story of how she became a writer. Her latest is a collection of short stories, Trespassers and Other Stories. You can read an author interview and learn more HERE.

More About Trespassers and Other Stories

From coastal Massachusetts to rural Ireland, the characters in Trespassers struggle to reconcile past and present, place and displacement, loss and hope.

A woman travels from her Massachusetts home to her native Irish village to care for her estranged and sick father. Back in her childhood home, she comes face-to-face with previously unspoken losses.

A wealthy couple travels to Cape Cod to spend their 52nd summer on the wife's ancestral estate. On their private beach above Nantucket Sound, the husband must confront the realities of their long marriage and its social-class tensions.

An Irish immigrant takes her American-born teen to a raucous Boston house party. At that party, the teenager discovers that her mother had lied about her child's birth father—a lie that will permanently divide the mother and daughter.

More About Áine Greaney

An Irish native, Áine Greaney now lives and writes in the Boston area. In addition to her five published books, her short works have appeared in Creative Nonfiction, Salon, Another Chicago Magazine, The Boston Globe Magazine, The New York Times, Books Ireland, NPR/WBUR and other publications.  

As well as being an author, Greaney is a trained teacher who has designed and led fiction and non-fiction workshops, presentations and keynotes for regional, national and international organizations. 

Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, cited in Best American Essays and named a ‘Great Group Read’ by the Women’s National Book Association. 

You can find her online at:

Website: https://www.ainegreaney.com

Instagram: ainegreaney

Bluesky: ainegreaney.bsky

Facebook: Aine Greaney, Writer

Threads: ainegreaney

Getting Started as a Writer - Guest Post by Áine Greaney

As a child growing up in rural Ireland, I was an avid reader. By age 12 or 13, I was

reading novels that I shouldn’t have been. At age 14, when I was supposed to be

doing homework, I began to write in a journal. As I sat inside my bedroom

window scribbling, I noticed how my school day felt a bit more manageable and

how, in those pages, I could finally be myself.

However, except for one, unfinished short story, I never, ever dreamed that I, too,

might write my own stories.

This self-doubt—and what I now see as limited thinking—followed me across the

Atlantic to America. I mean, as a​ new immigrant here, who was I to start writing?

Yet, one of the first things I sought out in my adopted town was the public library

and book store.

In the early years, I worked the usual hodgepodge of low-wage jobs.

Then, one summer morning, I was on my way to work when I stopped by a

downtown Woolworth’s department store. There, I bought big, fat notebook.

Afterward, at least a few times per week, I wrote in my new, American notebook​.

In those pages, there was no script to follow. In those pages, I didn’t have to be

Irish or American. Just like in my long-ago teenage diary, I didn’t need to be

anybody except myself.

I started a gradate program where, once I started, think I was the only student

sitting in that nighttime classroom who had just eaten a quick sandwich in the car

as I drove from work to that college campus.

I’d love to say that finishing my master’s degree in English helped me to get the

confidence or craft skills to write and submit my work to publications.

It didn’t. But it did bolster my résumé—enough to upgrade my day jobs and give

me a steady income source.

What did help was sitting at a kitchen or café table with a notebook. It also helped

when a different university accepted me to a nighttime fellowship program in

fiction writing. That instructor encouraged me to keep on writing.

When an American literary magazine accepted a short story of mine, I honestly

thought they had mailed the acceptance letter to the wrong person and address.

As I write this, that acceptance letter sits in a drawer in my office.

The rest, as we say, is history. On that long-ago day that I boarded a plane for

America, if you had told me that one of my essays would have been cited in “Best

American Essays,” I would have told you to lay off the (back then) free airline

booze and bar (smile).

Now, I am proud to have published five books, one chapbook and many shorter

pieces in various journals such as Creative Nonfiction, Salon, The New York Times,

Another Chicago Magazine, Books Ireland and many more.

In 30-plus years, I’ve written my way through busy day jobs, family bereavements,

spousal caregiving and, oh, yes! Let’s not forget our New England winters! In

addition to my public-facing work, I still keep a personal writing journal, and I

encourage all of my wellness and creative-writing students to do the same.

About eight years ago, when I participated in a multi-media (writing and visual)

art project and exhibit series, I wrote that “writing has been a rescue mission to

find and save myself.”

It really has, and I’m grateful to every writing student and every person who has

trusted me with their own story. And to every reader and editor who has read

one of mine.

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