Welcome to Women’s History Month 2015, which has the theme “Weaving the stories of women’s lives”, which fits perfectly with our Cranky Ladies of History anthology project! After 18 months of work, including our successful crowd-funding campaign in March last year, we are proudly releasing the anthology on March 8. To celebrate, our wonderful authors have supplied blog posts related to their Cranky Lady, and we are delighted to share them here during the month of March. 

To get your own copy of Cranky Ladies of History, you can buy from our website, order your favourite real world bookshop, or purchase at all the major online booksellers (in print and ebook). 

The Pirate Queen of the Connacht by Dirk Flinthart

Grace O’Malley: a woman so swashbuckling and amazing that she really ought to be fictitious, because her actual-factual self makes most of us look like timorous, lazy slugs.

Look – I like pirates, okay? I’ve liked pirates ever since I was old enough to read Treasure Island for myself. (My mum read it to me first, but she was going too slowly for me. I kidnapped the book and read it in a day.) I know that in reality, most pirates were (and are) amoral, bloodthirsty, violent thugs… but every now and again somebody like Grace O’Malley crops up.

POTENTIAL SPOILERS FOR “Granuaile” AFTER THE CUT – check out the story in Cranky Ladies of History before you read! Continue reading “CRANKY LADIES OF HISTORY: The Pirate Queen of the Connacht” →