‘Into our memories and into our dreams’: Memory, Memoir and Fiction Making

This essay argues that, when considered together, Ní Dhuibhne’s 2018 memoir, Twelve Thousand Days and her 2020 story collection Little Red and Other Stories offer a fascinating variation on the differing expectations around genre. They also demonstrate her unique and rewarding ability to work against such expectations to good effect. Memoir is often considered confessional and therefore there is an (unspoken) convention that the writer is somehow bound to adhere to guiding principles of truthfulness and veracity. A memoir can never stray into the realms of the imagined, or so it is assumed – but in reality, it often does. Fiction, on the other hand, holds no such limitations for the writer.