Noelle McCarthy in conversation with Marcus Lush

"I’ll be grand, girl, I’ve great faith." – Mammy, just before she died.

From Catholic Ireland in the seventies, eighties and nineties to sparkling Auckland in the first years of the new millennium, Noelle McCarthy's astonishingly assured début memoir Grand is a story of the invisible ties that bind, of bitter legacies handed down through generations, and of the leap of faith it takes to change them.

Noelle McCarthy is an award-winning writer and broadcaster. Buck Rabbit, her first foray into non-fiction, won the Short Memoir section of the Fish Publishing International Writing competition in 2020. She has written columns, reviews, first-person essays and features for a wide range of media in New Zealand and she’s provided commentary for Irish radio and written for the Irish Times, the Independent and the Irish Examiner.

After nearly 20 years’ experience in radio, Noelle is a go-to host at writers festivals and has interviewed some of the world’s most famous and well-respected storytellers, from Eleanor Catton to Margaret Atwood. She will talk at Queenstown Writers Festival with television and radio host Marcus Lush.