[1] Her fiction has won the RTÉ Francis MacManus Award (1995) and the inaugural Fish Short Story Prize (1996).

[3] Later, after her father was made head coach of the Portland Trail Blazers in 1972, the family moved to Oregon.

Her memoir, Circles Around the Sun, was published in 2011 to favorable reviews, including one by Man Booker Prize-winning novelist, Anne Enright, who wrote in The Guardian: "Every once in a while, a writer's voice hits such a clear note, the resulting book has the kind of sweetness that makes you hold it in your hands a moment before finding a place for it on your shelves.

A memoir of a schizophrenic brother, written with great care and simplicity, it is one of those stories that waited until its writer was ready to tell it.

"[6] In 2017, she published the novel Straying (titled When Light is Like Water in the UK) to favorable reviews;[7][8] The Guardian called it "ferociously well written.