Some of my work:

Nonfiction/Essays/Reporting:

Three new books expose the shameful history of Ireland’s Magdalene laundries (America)

Dream Paczki (Dunes Review, print only, apparently)

Is 50 Too Old to Become a Living Organ Donor? (Next Avenue)

The Tragic Testimony of the Daughters of Magdalene (Sojourners)

‘Derry Girls’ teen characters reach for peace, community and laughs (National Catholic Reporter)

What good is hell in the afterlife? Living through a global plague is hellish enough (National Catholic Reporter)

Bread Pudding for Dimitra Xidous (Poetry Potluck)

Island in the City (Substack) A (bi)monthly newsletter about outsider art, Chicago, creativity, oddballs, islands, and other interesting stuff

Bakery Girl (Medium)

Community cooks (U.S. Catholic)

How Chicago’s Graceland Cemetery Built a Prairie and Lost My Ancestors (Medium)

Meet St. Gertrude, cat lady of the Catholic Church (U.S. Catholic)

A pilgrim’s pace (U.S. Catholic)

Mixed Messages (Memoir Mixtapes)

Song recommendations (short memoir pieces) at Memoir Mixtapes:
White Mystery’s “Birthday”
Van Morrison’s “Purple Heather”
Kermit the Frog’s “Rainbow Connection”
Al Green’s “Belle”
The Gap Band’s “Party Train”

Maintaining Self-Esteem and Motivation in a Year of Rejection (Brevity)

The Unbeautiful Ones (Tiny Donkey) Editor’s Note

Ancestral Hunger Pangs (Tiny Donkey) Editor’s Note

Modern-Day Mike Finks (Tiny Donkey) Editor’s Note

Writing Anxiety and the Wisdom of Improvisation (The Masters Review)

Lady Folk (Tiny Donkey: Brief Essays from Fairyland) 2nd-place winner in “Once Upon a  Cartographer” contest

Dad’s Honor Flight: A Father’s Second Homecoming from the Korean War (Medium)

All Apocalypses, Bitter and Sweet (Literary Orphans) LO’s non-fiction Tavern Lantern site is no more, so I’ve included the essay on my site here

New Mexico: Freedom on the Ground (We Said Go Travel)

Walking with the World on the Camino de Santiago (Encyclopaedia Britannica) Republished at Camino Ways

Women of Ireland (Encyclopaedia Britannica) More of my Britannica blog articles are available at this link.

Walking to the Well (AranIsland.info)

Island Luck (AranIsland.info)

Writing and Wayfaring (personal blog)

Fiction:

The Widow’s Quilt (Medium)

Year of Conor McGregor (Hobart)

Bad Babysitter (Cease, Cows) Nominated for The Best Small Fictions 2018

The Guide to Good Apple Self-Care (Drunk Monkeys)

Chicago Rides For Michael Jackson (here, with author’s note)

Poetry:

Putting on Eyeliner with PTSD (Awakened Voices) Republished at Memoir Magazine

The Buffalo Return to Illinois (Rose Red Review)

Periphery (Thank You For Swallowing) Based on Edward Hopper’s 1939 painting New York Movie

The Subject and the Stranger (Ekphrastic: writing and art on art and writing)

Bioluminescent Bay, Aisling, and Coconut  (The Writing Disorder)

Transference (Middle West) (Eunoia Review)

Golden Day (Literary Orphans)

The Fading of the Heart and Australia (Wilderness House Literary Review)

Interviews:

Interview with Jamie Kralovec, urban planner (U.S. Catholic)

Interview with Samantha Power, activist, author, and former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. (U.S. Catholic)

Interview with Louise Erdrich, novelist (U.S. Catholic)

Interview with Timothy Egan, journalist (U.S. Catholic)

Interview with Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, poet (Tiny Donkey)

Interview with Kelly Vivanco, artist (Tiny Donkey)

Interview with Ram Devineni, filmmaker and comic book creator (Priya’s Shakti) (Tiny Donkey)

Reviews:

Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland (National Catholic Reporter)

Derry Girls (National Catholic Reporter)

Ireland and the Magdalene Laundries by Justice for Magdalenes Research (National Catholic Reporter)

To Hell with It by Dinty Moore (National Catholic Reporter)

The Best Catholics in the World by Derek Scally (America magazine)

In the Event of Contact by Ethel Rohan (U.S. Catholic mag)

10 books young readers will love this Christmas (Christmas, Advent, and new children’s books roundup for winter 2020; U.S. Catholic mag)

Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz (U.S. Catholic mag)

Lost, Found, Remembered by Lyra McKee (U.S. Catholic mag)

In The Field Between Us by Molly McCully Brown and Susannah Nevison (U.S. Catholic mag)

Book of the Little Axe by Lauren Francis-Sharma (U.S. Catholic mag)

Places I’ve Taken My Body by Molly McCully Brown (U.S. Catholic mag)

Other:

Encyclopaedia Britannica articles: Contributor of articles in Britannica’s core database on the topics of witching hour, Irish Travellers, Claddagh ring, urban legend,  neo-noir, femme fatale, Midsummer, Mar-a-Lago, wendigo, nepotism, Oseberg ship, and more.

The Dangerous Divide (Library Philosophy and Practice): This is an academic paper I published about how libraries are closing the gap in the digital divide for older adults, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic when lack of access to the internet has had deadly consequences for this population. This was a final project for an MLIS course taught by Bill Crowley at Dominican University.

Tales of Old: A digital resource and annotated bibliography of representations of older women in folk and fairy tales. This was created for an MLIS course taught by Janice Del Negro at Dominican University.

Played the role of Marcy, the art school prof, in TV pilot The Artists

Photo: Coumeenole Beach, Ireland (Rockwell’s Camera Phone)

Photo: Untitled (Rockwell’s Camera Phone)