Author, columnist and podcaster, Caroline O’Donoghue, paid a visit to Kinsale Community School on Wednesday, the 17th of November 2021, where she spoke with Transition Year Students about her first YA (young adult) novel, ‘All These Hidden Gifts,’ her upcoming sequel, ‘The Gifts that Bind Us,’ as well as her experience growing up in Cork, with the added bonus of some tarot reading.

Caroline O’Donoghue has been awarded winner of the London Book Fair’s Podcaster of the Year, The Sunday Times 30 under 30, she was shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards - Newcomer of the Year and she was shortlisted for the Kate O’Brien Award for New Fiction. She has previously written two adult novels entitled; ‘Scenes of a Graphic Nature’ and ‘Promising Young Women.’ Originally from Cork, O’Donoghue moved to London in 2011 at the age of 21. She has previously worked in areas such as journalism, film, advertising and hospitality. Her most recently novel is a YA book entitled ‘All These Hidden Gifts’ which focuses on areas of tarot, friendship and forgiveness.

On Caroline O’Donoghue’s arrival to the school, she was greeted by some of our Transition Year students, where photographs were taken for the Cork County Council, who the school have collaborated with in relation to the reading initiative ‘One County, One Book 2021’ which encourages young people to become more active readers and be introduced to more localised authors.

O’Donoghue spoke with the Transition Year students of 2021/2022 about why she wanted to write a novel which involved witchcraft and tarot reading, and provided the students a fun and interactive opportunity to receive a tarot reading from O’Donoghue. She explained where this love and inspiration for tarot came from, as she only discovered tarot cards and witchcraft into her mid-twenties with her best friend. O’Donoghue described the inspiration behind the powerful ‘Housekeeper’ card that appears in ‘All Our Hidden Gifts,’ which in fact did not stem from old Irish Celtic mythology, but in actual fact was inspired by her previous band entitled ‘Greyhounds, Greyhounds, Greyhounds.’

She inspired our young readers by describing how inspired she was by her youth growing up in Cork and how the beautiful city impacted many of the places described in her novel. She explained that she only fully appreciated the beauty of Cork when she initially moved to London and could only experience Cork on her occasional visit back home. She was inspired by the beauty of the architecture in the city and county, and loosely pulled inspiration from magic shops like ‘Dervish’ in her writing.

O’Donoghue provided some fantastic writing tips to our Transition Year students, including pulling inspiration into how to create a characters image by finding a picture of an actor/person online that they believe could suit the description of the character they are creating (fun fact; the character Roe O’Callaghan was loosely based on a young Cillian Murphy).

O’Donoghue demonstrated a variety of different covers for the novel that they have read, with different publications being translated and published in different countries around the world. This was a great opportunity for the students to voice their opinions on their favourite and least favourite covers and why.

At the end of O’Donoghue’s presentation, she spoke about the sequel to ‘All Our Hidden Gifts’ which is entitled ‘The Gifts that Bind Us’ which is due to be released in February 2022. This is the second book of a trilogy, and O’Donoghue informed the students that she is currently writing the third and final book in the series at present. She allowed an opportunity for students to pose questions to her about her career, her novels and even questions around her education. Our Transition Year students were eager to ask O’Donoghue as many questions as possible, and she even met with many of the students one on one to sign their editions of the book and given some final tarot readings before heading off.

The students showed fantastic enthusiasm at O’Donoghue’s appearance today and were very eager to speak with her and share their love for her book, many students claiming that they read her book within two days because they just couldn’t put it down, some students having read it twice. The Transition Year students of KCS are very much looking forward to the release of her second book in the series and were very grateful for the opportunity they were given in meeting the author.

The students, staff and management of KCS would like to thank Caroline O’Donoghue for such an insightful and engaging presentation, and we would like to extend our thanks to Cork County Council for the opportunity to collaborate on the ‘One County, One Book’ initiative, and for the opportunity to meet with the author.