Background

Marita Conlon-McKenna was born on November 5, 1956, in Dublin, Irelan. She is a daughter of Patrick J. Conlon, a businessman, and Mary Conlon, maiden name Murphy. She grew up in Dublin, with much of her childhood spent in a house overlooking the sea in Greystones, Co Wicklow. She began to write books and stories when at about eight or nine.

Education

Marita Conlon-McKenna went to school at the Convent of the Sacred Heart, Mount Anville. She was good at English, Art, and History but was bad at Algebra and Gymnastics. She didn't go to college, because her father had a stroke and she was looking after him. She attended courses at University College Dublin, such as Women in Literature, Anglo Irish Literature, Children's Literature.

Career

Marita Conlon-McKenna wrote articles and stories for newspapers and magazines after she left school. Then she began writing stories and making books for her children. Marita Conlon-McKenna worked in the family business, the bank, and a travel agency. When she heard a radio report of an unmarked children's grave from the Famine period being found under a hawthorn tree, she decided to write a book, called Under the Hawthorn Tree. She started to write a story at University College Dublin and showed it to Pat Donlon, a director of the course on Children's Literature, and she told Marita Conlon-McKenna to take it to O'Brien Press. Her editors at O'Brien Press, meanwhile, helped Conlon-McKenna deal with the practicalities of being a professional writer. She said: "Under the Hawthorn Tree was written in long-hand, but when it was published O'Brien Press bought me a computer, and they came over to my house, and set it up, and showed me how to turn it on. Even if I was still writing at the kitchen table half the time, I began to feel like a real writer."

Under the Hawthorn Tree became the first book of the Children of Famine trilogy of young adult novels about the Irish Potato Famine and its effects on three young children. In this first book, Under the Hawthorn Tree, the O'Driscoll family faces starvation when their potato crop fails. After burying her dead baby, the mother sets out to find the father, who has left the farm to seek work as a roadbuilder. When Mother fails to return, twelve-year-old Eily is forced to take on the responsibility of her younger brother, Michael, and their younger sister, Peggy. In the sequel, Wildflower Girl, the children have survived the famine, but poverty still haunts them, and when the passage to the United States is offered, the youngest sister, Peggy, takes advantage of it. In the concluding volume of the trilogy, Fields of Home, the original children have grown up, and Eily has children of her own. Still, life is not settled. In addition to this historical trilogy, Marita Conlon- McKenna has written a number of other children's books, including Little Star, about a star that gets trapped in a little boy's room and starts to dim until the boy figures out what he must do to save it. Returning to historical fiction, Conlon-McKenna published Safe Harbor, the story of two children caught in the London Blitz of World War II, who must flee to their paternal grandfather in Ireland.

Achievements

• Marita Conlon-McKenna's first novel for children, Under the Hawthorne Tree, sold over 250,000 copies in the Irish market alone. Published in May 1990, the book was an immediate success and become a classic. It has been translated into over a dozen languages, including Arabic, Bahasa, French, Dutch, German, Swedish, Italian, Japanese, and Irish. The book has been read on RTÉ Radio and is very popular in schools, both with teachers and pupils. It has been made a supplementary curriculum reader in many schools and is also used by schools in Northern Ireland for Education through Mutual Understanding projects. It was also filmed by Young Irish Film Makers, in association with RTÉ and Channel 4. Her debut adult novel, The Magdalen, was a number one bestseller. During her career as a writer, McKenna has received a number of awards due to her contribution to literature. On Bloomsday 16th June 16, 2012, she was one of the writers that helped break The Guinness World Record for The Most Authors Reading Consecutively From Their Own Work.

Works

More photos

• book

  • In Deep Dark Wood

    (The mysterious arrival of Bella Blackwell, "The Bird Woma...)

    1999
  • The Magdalen

    (The wide-open spaces of Connemara, filled with nothing bu...)

    2002
  • No Goodbye

    (It's hard to pretend that everything is normal when your ...)

    1998
  • The Rose Garden

    (Molly's perfect life comes crashing down following the un...)

    2013
  • Safe Harbour

    (Sophie and Hugh are left homeless when their house is bom...)

    1997
  • A Girl Called Blue

    (Larch Hill is the only home Blue knows. She arrived there...)

    2003
  • Wildflower Girl

    (The second book in the famine trilogy. At seven, Peggy ma...)

    1992
  • Under the Hawthorn Tree

    (The first book in the famine trilogy. Ireland in the 1840...)

    1990
  • Fields of Home

    (The final book in the famine trilogy. For Eily, Michael a...)

    1996
  • Love, Lucie 2012

Views

Marita Conlon-McKenna addressed the question of censorship in children’s literature. She once was asked in a radio interview if children should be reading about people dying and responded with her belief that children should be told the truth. While she does like to include a sense of hope in her children's book, Conlon McKenna does not see this as creating a clichéd happy ending. Rather, her books aim to empower children. They show that "the worst things in the world can happen to them, but they can survive it." Conlon-McKenna also acknowledged that the publishing world has changed immensely, stating her belief that it has become much more professional and it is harder to get a break. Editors expect a manuscript to be completed before they will hold talks and an agent is now essential. "The glory days of publishing are gone," - she said, concurring that writing was certainly not a career that guarantees money or fame. Marita Conlon-McKenna firmly believes that luck is a huge part of finding success as an artist.

Membership

• 

  Marita Conlon-McKenna is a former chairperson of Irish Pen, the organization for writers. She has been involved actively for many years promoting arts and literature and the position of Irish writers.

  Irish Pen , Ireland

Personality

Marita Conlon-McKenna loves to meet readers and enjoys talking at book festivals, libraries, and schools where she encourages everyone to read and to write. As a writer Marita is always curious: she enjoys exploring Ireland's history and writes about issues that interest her.

Interests

• Famine period in Irish history

• Writers

  Laura Ingalls Wilder, Eve Garnett, Enid Blyton, Hans Christian Anderson

Connections

Marita Conlon married James David McKenna on August, 26, 1977. They have four children: Amanda, Laura, Fiona, James.

Father:

Patrick J. Conlon

Mother:

Mary Conlon

Daughter:

Fiona McKenna

husband:

James David McKenna

Daughter:

Amanda McKenna

Daughter:

Laura McKenna

Son:

James McKenna

References

• Marita Conlon-McKenna