Books: My partner and I moved back to Cork for safety after we were robbed 

I moved to Crosshaven in Cork when I was five. My parents are both Irish, but I was born in Chichester in Sussex in the south of England.

When I first started in school there, I had a thick English accent and had trouble saying ‘Munster’ without thinking of something hiding under my bed.

The accent was very obvious to my classmates and my soon-to-be best friend announced to the class: “You speak funny.” I had said yaw-ghurt instead of yo-ghurt.

I think it was then I realised the power of the spoken word, and how a syllable could suddenly make you the same or the other.

I was a messer. Easily distracted and always up for a laugh.

As I grew up, I became obsessed with expression - I loved drama, escaped through books and poetry. I was always in plays and the local speech and drama teacher, Eileen McCollum, who passed away only a year or so ago, became a long-time friend and a very important presence in my upbringing.

I thought for a long time that I would be an actor, but I feared rejection. The irony is not lost on me that I ended up writing.

I was constantly in silly trouble in secondary school, and was very much saved and guided by my secondary school English teacher, Colette Murphy, to whom I owe a lot.

In my third year of university, I went to University of North Carolina Wilmington (UNCW) and studied creative writing - fiction and poetry.

After a semester there, Karen E. Bender, an incredible writer and professor, asked me had I ever thought about an MFA, “because whatever ‘it’ is, you have it”.

I had to ask what an MFA was - it stands for a degree of Master of Fine Arts - but went on to do one in Glasgow.

While in UNCW, I met my now wife Cintia, who is from Porto Alegre in Brazil, and we started a mad adventure. It seemed I loved to make things difficult.

We did two-and-a-half years of a long distance relationship before I went to Porto Alegre for a few months to figure out what we were going to do - I ended up there for nine years.

I was lost at the start - my greatest gift, language, stripped from me. I felt incredibly stupid.

Leaning on Cintia for everything. I thought I’d learn Portuguese in rapid-speed time - I was wrong. It was torturous.

I struggled on, and eventually was accepted into a PhD programme and, after the first semester, I was invited to a party. Ci came with me. The other students told her how nice I was, how quiet, how shy. She pulled me aside, stunned. In Portuguese, I had become someone else entirely (at the start at least), and so my intrigue into language and identity became my main focus for the PhD.

Since then, we have moved back ‘home’ to Cork, in the middle of a pandemic. We were those people on the flight you just did not want to sit next to - a baby (Luna Faye) and a toddler (Aurora). We also brought our dog (Lyra) and the cat (Will).

I apologised to those we sat close to, promising them drinks were on me, knowing full well the drinks were free.

We moved back to Ireland because of safety - I was once robbed at knife- point by two men; Ci was robbed with a gun to her head.

But we also moved home because I really - and I mean really - wanted to write. I wanted to write seriously, whatever that means, and wanted to carve out a path that would hopefully bring me to a career as a writer.

I’ve been incredibly lucky since moving home. Irish writers are sound and encouraging.

It’s been a really brilliant process getting to where I am. I’ve met with writers I hugely admire and they have been so supportive: Elaine Feeney, Donal Ryan, Mary O’Donnell, Cat Hogan, and Sean Hewitt, to name a few.

I also set up the literary journal The Four Faced Liar with three other brilliant writers. We’re on issue three, with very little funding, and we pay our writers and artists competitively. I’m very proud of this.

Through the Evolution programme with The Irish Writers’ Centre, I taught undergraduates of Creatve Writing at NUIG.

Things seem to be falling into place (I don’t want to jinx it), after a long struggle to get the book out there, to reestablish myself in Ireland.

My debut novel, The Language Of Remembering has just been published, and I was delighted to be introduced by the brilliant Danielle McLaughlin at Waterstones, Cork, yesterday (February 27) for its official launch.

The Language Of Remembering is about Oisin, who is returning from Brazil with his wife and daughter. He is looking to rebuild a life in Ireland and reconnect with his mother, Brigid, who has early onset Alzheimer’s.

As her condition deteriorates, she starts to speak Irish, the language of her youth, and reflect on her childhood dreams and aspirations.

Mother and son embark on a journey of personal discovery, and as past traumas are exposed, they begin to understand what has shaped them and who they really are.

The Language Of Remembering asks how we connect to the people we love, and how we move on from the past to find meaning in the present.

The Language Of Remembering is out now. Writer Donal Ryan said of it: “Holloway is a rare and immense talent. The Language Of Remembering is full of the grit and texture and sweetness of life, the sorrow of loss, the wonderful, terrible mystery of our humanity.

“The characters feel real, their voices sing from the page and the writing is sublime. I loved every line of this novel, readers are going to love it too – it will soar.”