Motherhood and Madness
To mark the occasion of the publication of Milk, On Motherhood and Madness, by Alice Kinsella, join us in conversation with Kinsella and Sophie White. A powerful and yet delicate mix of the personal and political, Milk is an unflinching and unique memoir that looks at the experience of motherhood against the backdrop of a seemingly changed Ireland. A map of motherhood, Milk is at once a gentle and meditative story of one woman’s experience of new motherhood as well as a confronting and often painful examination of the experience of having children in contemporary Ireland. Alice Kinsella is a young mother, giving birth to her son in her mid-twenties, adrift in a new town and navigating her newly accompanied life. Sophie White is a novelist, essayist and podcaster from Dublin. Her first four books, Recipes for a Nervous Breakdown (Gill 2016), Filter This (Hachette, 2019), Unfiltered (Hachette, 2020) and The Snag List (Hachette, 2022) have been bestsellers and award nominees. Her fifth book, the bestselling memoir Corpsing (Tramp Press, 2021), was shortlisted for an Irish Book Award and the Michel Déon Prize for non-fiction. Her sixth book, Where I End (Tramp Press, 2022) has just launched to critical acclaim. Sophie writes a weekly column ‘Nobody Tells You’ for the Sunday Independent LIFE magazine and has been nominated for numerous media awards. TV adaptations of her first two novels are in development and she co-hosts the chart-topping comedy podcasts, Mother of Pod and The Creep Dive.