Warning! This episode will haunt you. Naoise Murphy (Cambridge University) tells me all about novels inhabited by spectral spinsters and Sapphic spirits and explains what these ghostly queers have to say about the carceral system and the colonial project. I am obsessed with (or possessed by?) Naoise’s brilliance and would recommend a listen, especially if you’re into Irish women writers.

There’s something strange in the neighbourhood. Who you gonna follow? @naoisemurphy and @Lena_Mattheis on Twitter and @queerlitpodcast on Instagram! (Doesn’t roll of the tongue though...)

Texts and people mentioned:

Elizabeth Bowen

Kate O’Brien

Dorothy Macardle’s The Uninvited (1942, originally titled Uneasy Freehold)

Molly Keane’s Good Behaviour (1981)

Soláthar díreach: Direct Provision



Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:

1. How do ghosts relate to queerness? Can you think of a queer ghost figure from literature or popular culture?

2. How does race and racism figure into Naoise’s research?

3. Naoise talks about marginalised people being turned into ghosts. In which ways are queer people turned into spectres and what does this do to a group of people?

4. Please look up at least one of the authors or texts Naoise mentions and find out a surprising (shocking? haunting?) fact about them.