'I loved doing it, it was a huge pleasure,' said the author. 'I was going down to Cork every week for two nights at one point, and I became very fond of UCC and the city.'
Connolly’s PhD supervisor was Dr Eibhear Walshe, the esteemed writer and director of the creative writing department at UCC, who died suddenly in the summer of 2024.
'I was his last PhD student and he had just signed off on it. I was very upset, I was hugely fond of him, he was an exceptional person, a sweet, brilliant man. He wore his brilliance very lightly and those people are quite rare. Part of my thesis was to do a memoir semester with him, which opened up all kinds of ways of writing to me. I will always be grateful to him and UCC.'
