Val Mulkerns obituary

Novelist and poet who became an important female voice in the literary canon of Ireland

Val Mulkerns, who has died aged 93, was a unique figure in the world of Irish literature. Very few women, let alone young ones, played any sort of role in literary, academic or public life in the Ireland of the 1950s, but she thrived and enjoyed success.

Her first novel, A Time Outworn (1951), a tragic love story that deals with issues of the time including partition and the Irish language revival, was published in London when she was 26. From 1952 to 1954 she was an associate editor of the Dublin literary journal the Bell, befriending writers including its founder, Seán O’Faoláin, its then editor, Peadar O’Donnell, and the literary editor David Marcus.