I was born Susan Monahan in 1957 in Dublin, where I lived for the first 23 years of my life. I am the eldest in a family of three girls and a boy and my siblings maintain that I was always the bossy eldest sister but of course I disagree. I went to school in St. Dominic’s College, Cabra, more often referred to as Cabra Convent and then to Trinity College, Dublin, where I studied Science and it was in Trinity in our final year that I met my husband, Padraig. We married in 1982 and had our only child, David, a year later. David is now married to Nessa and they have two lovely boys, Diarmuid.
Teaching was my career of choice and I worked as a teacher for 35 years, in Dublin, Achill and Dundalk. Initially I worked as a Science teacher but later in the area of Further Education where I was Director of Further Education in O’Fiaich Institute of Further Education for many years. Working with young people was very enjoyable for me and the knowledge gleaned from working with them has helped me in my writing.
My hobbies and interests include travel, complementary medicine, walking, reading and playing the drums. Writing also brings me great pleasure and I often bring the dog for a walk to work out a plot-line. I get a great buzz out of writing and I am sorry I did not start it earlier in life, while accepting that I probably would not have had time for it due to a busy home and work life.
We currently have three pets which we both love – two cats, Trig and Ebi and the most recent addition, Mags, the dog. Ebi and Mags were strays that came for a night and stayed and Trig was a present from our son, David and daughter-in-law, Nessa, when a previous cat, Smig, another stray, had to be put asleep due to cancer. All four of these animals and also Roisin, David and Nessa’s cat, feature in the children’s book I am working on, called “The She Team”. My two grandsons, Diarmuid and Eoghan, also have big roles in the book.
