20-year-old multi-published Dubliner!
Born on February 24th, 1986, Claire grew up in Knocklyon with her parents and younger brother. When Claire was 12, instead of "going outside like a normal kid... or watching TV", she took her addiction to books and passion for daydreaming and began writing what would become her first published novel, Dear Diary. When she finished, Claire submitted the 80,000 word manuscript to Poolbeg Press. After cutting the contributing diaries down to five of the friends, thus making the manuscript 50,000 words, Dear Diary was ready for February 2000 publication!
Claire's third novel, Memories, was published in February 2002, when she was 15. It revisits Danielle and her sister Rachel, and Danielle's friend Nicole. The stories are interlinked, and the reader gets to see that Rachel thinks Danielle is perfect, Danielle is busy thinking her ex-boyfriend is interested in Nicole, and Nicole is terrified that people wil llearn her amazing self-esteem is a smoke screen for the inner sense of worthlessness she feels. Memories deals with "Junior Cert results, bulimia, boys, underage drinking, boys, seduction, and all of the baggage that comes into the life of your average 14/15-year-old" and hailed as "well-written with funny, hard-hitting dialogue" by The Sunday Tribune.
In October 2003, Poolbeg published Claire's fourth novel, Stereotype. For the first time, the story is told only from one perspective, that of Abi. At 16, Abi is a shopaholic in the truest sense of the word, because if she doesn't buy things she doesn't need she'll cut herself. Abi isn't a teenage emo self-inflicter: she is being driven crazy by her group of stereotypical friends! Stereotype asks the reader to decide if everything is "just melodramatic teen angst" or if Abi is "seriously screwed up, and no one is listening".
In Claire's sixth and latest novel, Afterwards, the reader gets to see what it's like to be a middle child in Hennessy's world, and goes back to the younger teens. Claudia is 14, and her mother just left the family. And that family ("neglectful workaholic father, unhelpful older brother, and difficult younger sister") isn't making things any easier on Claudia. Afterwards was published with Poolbeg in September 2005, along with a 3-in-1 compilation called Girls On the Verge, which contains Dear Diary, Being Her Sister, and Memories.
Currently, Claire is living in Dublin where she is studying English and History at Trinity College. She is working on her seventh novel.
In Claire's first novel, Dear Diary, the 5 friends are the author's age at the time she wrote it!
Being Her Sister survived a computer crash, which ate the original ending to the novel. Claire says though that the way it ends in the published book is "fairly similar in terms of the outcome" but that she learned to always back up her work.
Did you know? Claire likes tea so much that her livejournal name is "iliketea"! She says she is dependant not addicted.
click here!
(click title go to Amazon.com!)
4/29/06 interview with Claire!
<<----Previous ---- Next---->>
Are you a young author? Want to see a page of your own here?
Contact B. at youngadultwriters@yahoo.com