Oona: Questions with Alice Lyons

The DBF team are excited to sit down with Alice Lyons this week and ask her some questions from followers about her new book published by Lilliput Press, Oona, a coming-of-age story about an American teenage girl who travels to Ireland after the death of her mother.

Áine Dillon: Why did you decide to write Oona without using the letter ‘o’?

AL: Thanks for the question, Áine. I wrote about this in the Irish Times earlier this year. Here’s the article:
https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/the-essential-o-by-alice-lyons-1.4198816.

Kelly O’Grady: What can you tell us about the process of writing a novel compared with your experience of writing poetry and creating films?

AL: A novel is generally a more sustained project than writing a poem. Otherwise, I brought very similar processes to the writing. Filmmaking is much more collaborative from the get-go, though I found the process of bringing out OONA with Lilliput Press a terrific experience of collaboration with passionate and experienced publishers.

Alice Lyons can be found on Twitter @alicelyons22 and on Instagram @exactly1swan.

#AskanAuthor is an initiative at the Dublin Book Festival that encourages our audience to pose questions to the authors at DBF 2020. We may be going digital but we want to make sure that our audience don’t miss out on direct engagement with the authors. 

You are invited to submit questions to each week’s chosen author via Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or Email. Create a tweet or post containing your question and include the hashtag #AskAnAuthor. Alternatively, you can send us an email at info@dublinbookfestival.com with #AskAnAuthor in the subject line.