At an event celebrating the Rooney Writer Fellowship, the inaugural and current Rooney Writer Fellows, Caitríona Lally and Colin Murphy, came together on 10 June 2026 to discuss Lally's celebrated new memoir, Home Economics, and reflect on their experiences of the fellowship.
The Rooney Writer Fellowship, launched by Dr Peter Rooney in October 2021, enables a creative writer to become part of the Trinity Long Room Hub's research community, engaging with its projects, programmes and events. For Lally, one of the most tangible benefits of the fellowship was simply – in Virginia Woolf’s words - a room of her own.
“It’s the first time I’ve had ‘a room of one’s own’, a desk where you can leave pages down, and they won’t be destroyed or written on or crumpled up”.
The discussion of Home Economics brought Lally to reflect on her career in Trinity’s housekeeping department, and to note that having her own space for the fellowship put her in a unique position.
“I was now in an office that was cleaned by one of my co-workers and I felt quite uncomfortable with that. I was conscious of never eating pastries because cleaners hate pastries!”
Referencing his highlights from the book, Murphy asked Lally about her housekeeping experience and noted the physical demands of her cleaning duties. Replying, Lally described how much she enjoyed the work, “A lot of people talk about loving jobs that have different things every day and excitement and something new, but I think I’m the opposite. I like the absolute routine of it, knowing where I’ll be.”
The conversation also touched on the challenges of writing alongside the demands of everyday family life. Murphy described how running gives him space to find avenues that might not have been clear before: “It’s fresh in my head, but I’m not trying to work. I’m thinking about not tripping up over the tree roots in Phoenix Park. And something just comes”. Lally agreed, adding, “you have to be receptive enough to the world, where suddenly everything starts becoming a sign”.
Thanking the two writers, Trinity Long Room Hub Director Professor Patrick Geoghegan concluded the event by praising Caitriona Lally’s writing in Home Economics: “It’s not a perfect story, it’s a human story, and that’s what I loved.”
Caitríona Lally is the author of the novels Eggshells and Wunderland. She received the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature (2018), a Lannan Fellowship for Fiction (2019), and was the inaugural Rooney Writer Fellow at the Trinity Long Room Hub (2021).
Colin Murphy is a playwright, screenwriter, journalist, and documentary maker. His recent publication, Colin Murphy’s Political Plays: 100 Years of Irish History, was published by Bloomsbury Methuen.
Listen back to the full discussion here: