In her collection of personal essays, This Interim Time, Oona Frawley details the ways in which we try to make sense of the world as our loved ones pass on. Her mother’s descent into dementia and the death of her beloved friend after a battle with cancer cause her to meditate on the loss of her father decades earlier in New York, where she grew up. Now a lecturer in Maynooth University, Dr Frawley’s research interests span late-19th and 20th century Irish Studies, Memory and Trauma Studies, ecocriticism, and writing from New Zealand and Australia, and she teaches on the Creative Writing programme alongside Paul Lynch (Prophet Song) and Belinda McKeon (Tender). Her novel, Flight, was published in 2014 and was nominated for an Irish Book Award. In this first episode of the podcast for 2026, Oona talks about her connection with America and with Ireland, the impact of having actor parents and what it’s like to be vulnerable in your writing when you are also a lecturer standing in front of 400 students.