In this episode, Peter talks to novelist and poet Niamh Boyce whose new historical novel Her Kind is a reimagining of the events leading up to the Kilkenny Witch Trial of 1324.
Niamh Boyce’s debut novel, The Herbalist, a ‘deeply moving and viscerally powerful novel about the lives of women in 1930s Ireland’, was released back in 2013. Boyce’s follow-up, Her Kind, the subject of this episode’s conversation, is also a historical novel set in Ireland but we have to look much further back to the 14th century for the events that inspired it. The Kilkenny Witch Trial, while historically significant, has been neglected in fiction and Boyce’s novel intends to shift the perspective to those central to the trial: Alice Kyteler and her servant Petronilla.
Her Kind is published by Penguin Ireland and you can buy the book here.
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2 replies on “Podcast, episode #3: Niamh Boyce on her novel Her Kind and the Kilkenny Witch Trial of 1324”
Brilliant interview, Niamh really draws a great picture in her words and her descriptions of the carachters in Her Kind and of Kilkenny. I could nearly feel the soil of the old pavement under my feet and smell the smoke coming from the mediaeval chimney s. I’m so looking forward to reading this book.
Thank you! I hope you enjoy Her Kind Una.