Excerpt from Saoirse by Charleen Hurtubise, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"You coming?" he calls to Leah out on the wall. "Remember?"

"Oh yes," Leah shouts, abandoning her castle, suddenly remembering something important she must do. "Dotty took a phone call, Mammy—"

She is jumping off the rocks, running toward Saoirse.

Eloise is waking, lifting her cheek from Daithí's shoulder. She sees her big sister and startles into full excitement, kicking at Daithí, rocking with glee. Dotty, Leah calls him. My girls he says and treats them as though they are both his own, even though Leah must be driven to Dublin every other weekend, to keep her bargain with Paul.

She watches the three of them walk toward the house, Leah has climbed onto his shoes and wraps her arms around his waist, he hoists his legs stiffly, giving her a lift, balancing the baby in his arms. They move as though they are one entity.

Saoirse places the bags down on the gravel and steps beyond the shelter of the house, the wind off the sea catches on her inhale. She can't put this off any longer. She has to tell him and tell him soon.

"Let's have chocolate biscuits!" Leah calls up to Daithí.

"No way," Daithí tells her. "Biccies are for ordinary mammies. Clever mammies must have cake."

Saoirse smiles.

Leah pokes her head out around his legs, her eyes wild with excitement. She beckons to her mother.

"Come on, Mammy, something good is happening."

IRISH ARTIST WINS £50,000 ART AWARD

Irish Times, 14 October 1999

Donegal-based artist Saoirse Byrne has become the first Irish woman to win the prestigious Margaret Dowling Art Prize which recognises emerging artists around the world. The aim of the prize is to discover and financially support promising artists, allowing time and space to focus on their work. Byrne's first solo exhibition opened in 1996 at the David Davis Gallery, and since then the artist has gone from strength to strength, holding several solo exhibitions across the country, including in Cork, Limerick and Donegal. Her work is featured from next month at the Raymond Frank Gallery in Dublin and runs through into the millennium in an exhibition entitled Lost Was Found.

The Margaret Dowling Art Prize was established in 1984 and there is no submission process. Artists are unaware their work is being considered for the life-changing prize.

The judges were impressed by Byrne's current exhibition featuring a collection of eight pieces, an array of oil paintings and other mediums capturing everyday objects. Appearing as mundane, simple objects at first: a vial of lavender, lines on a road. They exhibit sculptural qualities, an intensity of colour, while the use of light adds both a weight and a lightness, dependent on the directional aspect. The judges describe the work as having 'a complex directional gaze,' remarking on 'the tension this creates, an uncertainty, as though the object isn't the subject at all, that it is perhaps only a clue to something imminent and unsettling awaiting just outside the frame'.

Her paintings first came to the attention of critics at the Annual Exhibition of the Irish Academy of Arts where she won the Eugenia Lawrence Scholarship. From here she went on to continue her studies and earned a BA in Fine Art.

Ms. Byrne has established a reputation for maintaining a deliberate silence about her work and is generally unavailable for interview or comment.

Excerpted from Saoirse by Charleen Hurtubise. Copyright © 2026 by Charleen Hurtubise. Excerpted by permission of Celadon. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.