ABSTRACT
The period following the Good Friday Agreement has seen a marked increase in fiction, particularly collections of short stories, by women. This writing extends and develops the tradition of Northern Irish women’s writing which, since the inception of the state, has offered rich and varied engagement with literary form and subject matter. Since partition, Northern Irish women have written crime fiction, romance, science fiction, magical realism and in a host of other genres. Northern Ireland plays a diverse role in the narratives: some represent continuing social constraints that are a legacy of the past and others deal with the fraught question of home. Intimacy in literature lives at the intersection between private and social worlds, and it does not just represent a sanctuary from the external world. The concept of intimacy has a broad application, and intimate life can be constructed, experienced and represented in a variety of ways.
