The long and the short of Claire Allan
Claire Allan was born on the longest day of the year in the hottest summer on record - the glorious drought ridden 1976.
She was born into the very lovely Davidson family in the city of Derry~ Londonderry in the North of Ireland and spent her formative years playing in the mucky fields of the Creggan Estate.
She has two sisters - Lisa and Emma - and one brother, Peter.
Claire spent a great deal of her childhood making up really bad dance routines, playing with her beloved Sindy house or Cabbage Patch Doll and playing a game which involved Star Wars figures, a Christmas tree and a mythical journey.
One year, her mother got so annoyed with the playing with the Christmas tree - and the fact her children had toppled it several times - that she hauled it down before the big day. (It did go back up, honest.)
She attended Rosemount Primary School and Thornhill College before taking the very brave move up the road to Belfast to study at the University of Ulster, Jordanstown for her undergraduate degree in Humanities.
She did however learn quite a lot about philosophy and ethics and graduated with a 2:1 Honours Degree. before moving to the Belfast Campus of the University of Ulster to study for her Masters Degree in Newspaper Journalism.
She wrote her undergraduate dissertation on the ethics of genetic screening and her Masters’ thesis on the portrayal of women in the UK media.
She also wrote some really shockingly bad poetry during this time.
In 1999 she started working as a staff reporter for the Derry Journal - covering an array of news from politics to human interest stories..
The highlights of her career with the included being part of the award winning team that covered the Saville Inquiry into the events of Bloody Sunday, being appointed the paper’s first female columnist in 2002 and covering Derry's year as the first UK City of Culture.
As Claire approached her 30th birthday she decided to give writing books a shot. Basing her first novel ‘Rainy Days and Tuesdays’ very loosely on her own experiences with Post Natal Depression following the birth of her son Joseph in 2004 she wrote a book never knowing if anyone would read it.
Thankfully someone did. First of all the lovely Ger Nichol of The Book Bureau read it and agreed to act as Claire’s agent and then the even lovelier people of Poolbeg Press read it and agreed to publish it.
Rainy Days and Tuesday was published in 2007 and was an instant bestseller.
It has been followed by Feels Like Maybe, Jumping in Puddles, It's Got to Be Perfect, If Only You Knew, What Becomes of the Broken Hearted, The First Time I Said Goodbye and Still You.
Claire is married and has two children - the teen and the Wee Doll - and two cats, Alfie and Kitty Purry, and a puppy called Izzy. She still lives in Derry and in 2016 took the leap to become a full time writer, leaving behind her journalism career.
She is addicted to social media, reading, and spending time with her family, especially her children and her adorable nieces and nephews. She has a mild obsession with Michael Buble - who she met in November 2016. (Although she never talks about this. Much.)
She was born into the very lovely Davidson family in the city of Derry~ Londonderry in the North of Ireland and spent her formative years playing in the mucky fields of the Creggan Estate.
She has two sisters - Lisa and Emma - and one brother, Peter.
Claire spent a great deal of her childhood making up really bad dance routines, playing with her beloved Sindy house or Cabbage Patch Doll and playing a game which involved Star Wars figures, a Christmas tree and a mythical journey.
One year, her mother got so annoyed with the playing with the Christmas tree - and the fact her children had toppled it several times - that she hauled it down before the big day. (It did go back up, honest.)
She attended Rosemount Primary School and Thornhill College before taking the very brave move up the road to Belfast to study at the University of Ulster, Jordanstown for her undergraduate degree in Humanities.
She did however learn quite a lot about philosophy and ethics and graduated with a 2:1 Honours Degree. before moving to the Belfast Campus of the University of Ulster to study for her Masters Degree in Newspaper Journalism.
She wrote her undergraduate dissertation on the ethics of genetic screening and her Masters’ thesis on the portrayal of women in the UK media.
She also wrote some really shockingly bad poetry during this time.
In 1999 she started working as a staff reporter for the Derry Journal - covering an array of news from politics to human interest stories..
The highlights of her career with the included being part of the award winning team that covered the Saville Inquiry into the events of Bloody Sunday, being appointed the paper’s first female columnist in 2002 and covering Derry's year as the first UK City of Culture.
As Claire approached her 30th birthday she decided to give writing books a shot. Basing her first novel ‘Rainy Days and Tuesdays’ very loosely on her own experiences with Post Natal Depression following the birth of her son Joseph in 2004 she wrote a book never knowing if anyone would read it.
Thankfully someone did. First of all the lovely Ger Nichol of The Book Bureau read it and agreed to act as Claire’s agent and then the even lovelier people of Poolbeg Press read it and agreed to publish it.
Rainy Days and Tuesday was published in 2007 and was an instant bestseller.
It has been followed by Feels Like Maybe, Jumping in Puddles, It's Got to Be Perfect, If Only You Knew, What Becomes of the Broken Hearted, The First Time I Said Goodbye and Still You.
Claire is married and has two children - the teen and the Wee Doll - and two cats, Alfie and Kitty Purry, and a puppy called Izzy. She still lives in Derry and in 2016 took the leap to become a full time writer, leaving behind her journalism career.
She is addicted to social media, reading, and spending time with her family, especially her children and her adorable nieces and nephews. She has a mild obsession with Michael Buble - who she met in November 2016. (Although she never talks about this. Much.)
