Lucy Sweeney Byrne in Image

Lucy Sweeney Byrne wrote a moving piece about her restless twenties in Image magazine, including the experiences that informed Paris Syndrome:

This is what comes to mind, when I think of my twenties – being at sea. My years of drifting, when I had the experiences upon which the short stories in my book, Paris Syndrome, are based, and the period in which I wrote them. From the age of 23, the age at which I finished my degree and broke up with my first love, my boyfriend of seven years, to the age of 28, when I met the man I’ll marry, I was constantly travelling (or I was home, in my dad’s house in Greystones, working in the Pieman Café or, later, the James Joyce Centre in Dublin, and growing restless, waiting to have accrued enough money and energy and courage to be off travelling again).

Read the full article in the September issue of Image or online at Image.ie.