Weave is a stunning work of literary art; a collaboration between writers Oein DeBhairduin and Deirdre Sullivan, and artist Yingge Xu. Containing eight stories inspired by the eight festivals in the wheel of the year, the flip reverse format – one side of the book starts with Sullivan’s stories and to read DeBhairduin’s you flip the book and start from the other side – reflects these stories which often contain liminal and transitional spaces and times; also perfectly capturing the balance between Sullivan’s more contemporary stories inspired by folklore and tradition, and DeBhairduin’s stories directly harking back to more ancient ways of storytelling. 

Each story in the book opens with a small intro from the writer explaining their approach to the seasonal festival they are responding to, which is a beautiful way of understanding writers as storytellers who put something of themselves into what they write. Sullivan is already a go-to writer for me, I have loved everything I have read by her, and these stories only served to reaffirm this. Here, her stories capture strange, unsettling moments, resounding with voids and lingering presences, superstition and ritual, fierce love and longing, balancing on the line between one world and another; key words often recur in her collections, and in this one the word hungry appears on several occasions; not a hunger for food but a hunger in her characters for something much deeper. The young women who have a strange experience on a night walk home; the child whose mother bakes bread and yearns for the sea; the mother who wants nothing more than to protect her second child; and the woman who cannot allow herself the love that another woman before her lost. 

This is my first time reading anything by DeBhairduin, whose passion lies in preserving the beauty of Traveller tales, sayings, retellings and historic exchanges; these stories in particular are retellings of old tales, celebrating the labours and sacrifices of women, and are in fact dedicated to the women who have influenced his own life. Involving wars and warriors, witches and old magic, the deep connection between people and nature, and the fragile line between this world and another, these are stories both enchanting and transportive.

Beautifully complemented by Xu’s painted scenes that brim with both stillness and movement, uncertainty and possibility, this collection invites us to step beyond a threshold into a world familiar yet strange, current yet old as time itself. 

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Weave was published by Skein Press in 2022 and is the second of the Solstice Stories, an innovative series designed to celebrate the small, the brilliant, and the beautiful.

The backdrop in the lead image of this piece is a painting by Xu featured in Weave.

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Oein DeBhairduin is a writer, activist and educator with a passion for preserving the beauty of Traveller tales, sayings, retellings and historic exchanges. Oein is the author of the award-winning Why the moon travels and Weave. He is the Traveller Culture Collections Development Officer with the National Museum of Ireland and seeks to pair community activism with cultural celebration, recalling old tales with fresh modern connections and, most of all, he wishes to rekindle the hearth fires of a shared kinship.

Deirdre Sullivan is an award-winning writer and teacher from Galway. She has written eight books for young adults, including Savage Her Reply (Little Island 2020), and a collection of short fiction, I Want To Know That I Will Be Okay (Banshee Press 2021). 

Yingge Xu, an ink brush artist, meditator and peace, positive relationship promotor. Yingge grew up in a traditional Chinese family where she was surrounded with all the cultural elements and atmosphere. Since her early childhood, she was following her father when he was practicing Tai Qi, meditation and calligraphy. Later she trained at the Chinese Flower and Bird Painting Institute and continued her learning with ink brush artists from both China and Japan.

Moving to Ireland in 2015, and seeing how meditation is taught and applied in the West, inspired a new perspective of her own art and cultural background. She participated in the Chinese New Year Festival at CHQ Dublin in 2018, collaborated with I.C.C.S (the Irish-Chinese Culture Society) and CIMA (China Ireland Media Association) for an ink painting exhibition and live demonstration at dlr LexIcon Library in 2019, and in March 2021 her work will be showcased by Solas Nua in Washington DC as part of an online multimedia event exhibiting the best of contemporary Irish art and culture

Yinnge Xu hosts ink painting and calligraphy workshops in Ireland and online in which she shares her passion for both meditation and ink-brush art, not as separate activities but as a ‘wholesome experience’.