Dr Tracy Fahey, a lecturer at Technological University of the Shannon (TUS) and award-winning author, has published her latest book, Queens of the Crone Age, a collection of interconnected stories that draws on Irish folklore to explore themes of power, autonomy, healing and transformation in women’s lives.
Dr Fahey, who lectures in Critical and Contextual Studies at Limerick School of Art and Design (LSAD), TUS, and lives in Sixmilebridge, Co. Clare, said the book examines the connections between the Irish Hag or Cailleach and contemporary women in midlife.
“Queens of the Crone Age is a project that examines the connections between the Irish Hag or Cailleach and contemporary women in midlife, and what she has to say to them about autonomy, power and sovereignty,” she said.
“The metanarrative is that of the Hag of Béara who reawakens in the present to find older women now ignored and marginalised. Devotional talismans left at her altar unlock fourteen stories of healers, midwives, síle-na-gigs, migrant women, domestic abuse survivors, narratologists and storytellers. But as the stories unfold, the Hag’s own tragic past recurs – and the whole book becomes a quest for healing and liberation.”
Dr Fahey said the book would not have been possible without the support of LSAD and TUS, including approval of a career break that enabled the research to take place.
Professor Anthony Caleshu, Dean OF LSAD, said: “Dr Fahey’s new book is a wonderful example of her ‘practice as research’. Invested in themes around womanhood and innovative in form, this is creative writing at the intersection of criticality. Dr Fahey is a long-standing member of LSAD staff and, in addition to the benefits of her new work for the general reading public, we are delighted that our students continue to have the benefit of Dr Fahey’s instruction and inspiration.”
The book continues Dr Fahey’s long-standing engagement with themes of folklore, Gothic literature and women’s experiences, subjects that have earned her recognition as both a writer and academic. Although rooted in darker themes, Dr Fahey describes the work as offering a hopeful vision for the future.
“Queens of the Crone Age is what I’m calling folkpunk,” she said. “Just as solarpunk writing envisions resolved futures and soilpunk literature imagines solutions to world problems within the context of what we already have on Earth, folkpunk offers a hopeful vision of the future where we can connect more deeply with nature, healing, storytelling and a more inclusive, community-based model of living.”
The origins of the book can be traced to a 2021 residency at Cill Rialaig in Kerry, a place steeped in stories of the Hag tradition. Research and writing continued across seven residencies, including a Saari Fellowship in Finland awarded by the Kone Foundation, before the book was completed during a residency at Cove Park in Scotland in 2025.
“It was a very special moment to write ‘The End’ as I looked out on the mountains sacred to the Scottish Cailleach in Argyll and Bute,” she said.
In addition to her teaching role at LSAD, Dr Fahey serves as Research Lead for the Layered Spaces research group. She holds a PhD in the Gothic and increasingly, her creative practice has become her academic research practice.
Her work has become the subject of growing academic interest, with recent papers delivered on her writing at conferences in Ireland, Scotland and Poland.
The book was recently showcased at Cymera Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland’s premier annual literary festival dedicated to speculative fiction, where Dr Fahey was interviewed about the work by Scottish writer Cailean Steed as part of a panel alongside Emma Cleary and Hester Steel.
Looking ahead, Dr Fahey is preparing for what she describes as the “Hag Tour 2026”, a programme of conferences, festivals, public talks, readings and book signings across Ireland and the UK.
“It’s going to be a busy year,” she said. “Next up is a residency in Methana, Greece. The Hag Tour 2026 includes conferences in Ireland and the UK, festival appearances, a public talk in Dublin and a variety of readings and book signings.
“I also have another book coming out later this year with Black Shuck Books, Down We Go Together, which is a mini-collection of Gothic crime stories. The rights to my ninth book, Women Changing, have been acquired by Manchester-based Fly On The Wall Press and it is scheduled for publication in 2027.”
Dr Fahey will speak on folklore, female ageing and the figure of the Hag as part of Seed Talks at The Sugar Club in Dublin on July 26. A local launch of Queens of the Crone Age is also planned for O’Mahony’s bookshops in Limerick this September. The book art was commissioned from illustrator Jacob Stack, a 2012 graduate from LSAD