An Irish writer will take to the stage at the Princess Grace Irish Library in Monaco on 5th March to talk about a subject that runs deep in Irish culture; the story of women who left home. 

Jeanne Sutton, who has been funded by a bursary from The Ireland Funds Monaco, is spending the period from mid-February to St Patrick’s Day at the Princess Grace Irish Library as its Writer-in-Residence.

Her talk will look at how emigration has been portrayed through fiction, focusing on the female characters at the heart of these stories. She will pick out specific novels and draw on academic work to talk about why these books have resonated with readers, and will invite the audiences to share their own thoughts on what these stories say about where Ireland has been and where is it now.

Alongside lectures, local amateur dramatists will read aloud from some of the books Sutton discusses, and she will also share a passage from her own novel in progress, ‘Monster Island’. Set in the 1850s, the book follows an Irish woman who makes the long journey to New Zealand, a migration route that was very real at the time but is less well known than the more familiar stories of Irish emigration to America.

A writer on the rise

Sutton has had a busy couple of years. She picked up the John McGahern Award in 2025, a prize for writers early in their careers given at the Iron Mountain Literature Festival, and her short fiction has been published in journals on both sides of the Atlantic.

A story of hers called ‘The Dimmed Tide’ made it onto the shortlist of the Bournemouth Writing Prize, and the early chapters of ‘Monster Land’ caught attention at the Stockholm Writer’s Festival in 2024.

Tickets for the talk on 5th March can be bought through the library’s website at pgil.mc

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Main photo credit: Enda Rowan