Sue Divin is a Derry based writer and peace worker, originally from Armagh in the North of Ireland.
With a Masters in Peace and Conflict Studies and a career in Community Relations, her writing often touches on diversity and reconciliation. Her short stories, flash fiction and poetry, have been published in a range of literary journals.
Guard Your Heart is her first novel and is published by Macmillan (2021). In 2022 it won the Great Reads Award (Ireland) and was shortlisted for the prestigious Carnegie Award. The novel is translated into Georgian and a German educational guide has been published by Klett.
Truth Be Told is her second novel, not a sequel, but a similar gritty, contemporary style packed with dry wit, strong emotions and challenging exploration of issues. It won the McCrea Literary award and was shortlisted in the Irish Book Awards, Children’s Book Ireland Awards and UK Literacy Awards and Southern Schools Book Awards.
Both novels are widely read by teenagers and adults. Thankful recipient of Arts Council NI SIAP award, Sue tweets @absolutelywrite
So, here’s a confession. I stumbled into writing. Beyond an A-level in English Literature, I have no qualifications in writing. When I started writing Guard Your Heart, I told no-one for a year - I was terrified. I wrote for two reasons. Firstly, I’m a single parent and, after a few years of being stuck in the house every evening with scant access to babysitting, I was bored. I’d watched pretty much everything I could find of interest on TV (with a particular inexplicable penchant for teenage angst and coming of age dramas). Then I got an idea for a story of my own, so, in 2016 (in real time for when the novel is set) I switched off the telly and started to write. Secondly, whilst I’d written training resources, a GCSE citizenship textbook, and facilitated many workshops to help people grapple with issues of conflict, diversity and identity in Northern Ireland, I wondered if fiction might hold a stronger power to help understanding. I wondered why so much fiction in Northern Ireland is set in the Troubles when the complexities of peace provide such a rich ground for story telling. What eventually emerged was my first novel, Guard Your Heart.
The novel is a Romeo and Juliet, a love story across divides. It’s fiction, but the context is real. Guard Your Heart was inspired by the desire to tug hearts and minds into empathising that wherever it takes place, and in whatever form, reconciliation can be a fragile process. A courageous risk.
2021 marks the 100th anniversary of the Partition of Ireland. The creation of Northern Ireland. Brexit and changing politics in Ireland, north and south of the border, are generating conversations around a ‘New Ireland’ and a potential border poll. Whilst set in 2016 (another ‘big’ year in the Decade of Centenaries) the issues in Guard Your Heart remain very relevant.
As a young adult, I made choices to build peace.
Personal choices and career choices. After teaching History for 7 years, I switched jobs. For over 16 years now, I’ve worked in community peace-building for local government. For me, peace is about a lot of things, but it’s not about everyone being the same, brushing the past under the carpet and polite avoidance of tough conversations. It’s about understanding and respecting diversity, listening and talking, changing unfair systems and engaging with the issues. Failure to do this, hands the space over to ‘Fake News,’ extremists and propaganda. Don’t take peace for granted.
Why do I write? I like to make people think. I hope that Guard Your Heart will do that. Conflict dehumanises the ‘other.’ Stories connect us to the ‘other’. I write because fiction is a powerful tool for creating empathy, and empathy is a powerful tool for creating peace. In life, just as in my writing, I believe that hope happens because of risk takers...
Sue is available to speak at literary events about Guard Your Heart, her writing and influences and is available to deliver workshops with a particular interest in flash fiction, writing about contemporary issues, and helping emerging writers develop towards breakthrough. She co-ordinates a monthly voluntary group called ‘This Writing Thing…’ for emerging writers in Derry / NW / Inishowen.