Where did you grow up, and how did this influence your writing?
I grew up in Dublin, Ireland, where I read books in both English and Irish Gaelic. Growing up, I read a lot more in Irish than I did in English, and this heavily influenced my poetry, taking inspiration from poets like Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, but I also loved William Butler Yeats. As I got older, I enjoyed a mixture of fantasy, sci-fi, and LGBT literature from both America and the UK, yet I haven't yet written anything in those first two genres!
When did you first start writing?
I was always writing stories as a child, but my first time as a published writer took place when I was a teenager. A newspaper published my short story, a gay romance, in two parts over two weeks, and I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw it in print. For some reason, I liked the idea of using a pen name at that time (even though I had come out as a teenager), so that is now bittersweet, as the story doesn't have my real name printed beside it. Still, I know it's mine.
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