Orla McAlinden is the award-winning author of The Flight of the Wren https://flightofthewren.com (Mentor/Red Stag Books, 2018) and The Accidental Wife   http://amzn.to/2csjFX2(Sowilo Press, 2016.)

As seen in the Sunday Times (Ireland) and on the Ryan Tubridy show (RTE Radio 1) and BBC Radio Ulster- The Flight of the Wren explores the lives of real and imagined Irish women as they strive against all odds to survive the great Famine of 1845-1849. Exploring themes of desperation, loss, survival, love and flight to the New World upon a penal transportation ship as a prisoner of her Majesty’s Department of Convicts.

Orla lives in Kildare in Ireland, beside the Curragh Plains, where the Curragh Wrens, a band of camp-followers eked out a precarious existence on the edge of the Curragh military barracks during and after the Famine. The voices of these destitute women informs her debut novel.