The Women's Podcast

The Women's Podcast


Ep 502 Fíona Scarlett: Boys Don’t Cry

May 20, 2021

The inspiration for Fíona Scarlett’s debut novel came to her just over three years ago while scrolling through Twitter. The schoolteacher turned author happened across a tweet by a paediatric palliative care doctor, in which he had listed what his young patients said they would miss the most when they died. Using their answers as a springboard, Scarlett immediately opened up her laptop and wrote what is now the first chapter of Boys Don’t Cry. In today’s episode, she tells Róisín Ingle why, having only started writing in her mid thirties, it’s never too late to try your hand at something new. She also speaks lovingly about her father who died last year, the next book in the pipeline and her literary inspirations.