BOWMAN'S NEW COLLECTION FOCUSES ON TUAM MOTHER AND BABY HOME

A new fiction collection by the barrister Conor Bowman SC has been published by Colmcille Press (October 2025).

'The Half-Life of Edith Hopkin and Other Stories' begins with a novella (the title story), which tells of a rape victim whose infant baby is removed from her at the Tuam Mother & Baby Home in the 1960s and how her life unfolds in the traumatic aftermath.

It is a highly-nuanced, compassionate and lyrical tale, made all the more significant as the author himself was born in the Castlepollard Manor Mother & Baby Home in 1965 and was then adopted a year later.

Conor Bowman is a well-established writer with nine titles under his belt already (including one in Irish), but this collection takes his writing to a new and deeply personal level.

The book is to be launched on October 30, in the Law Library, Distillery Building, 145-151 Church Street, Dublin 7 (two minutes from the Four Courts), and we hope to host a Derry launch in December.