About Me

Megan Easley-Walsh, PhD History, is an author of historical fiction, a researcher, and a writing consultant and editor at Extra Ink Edits. She is an award-winning writer and has taught college writing in the UNESCO literature city of Dublin, Ireland. She is a dual American and Irish citizen and lives in Ireland with her Irish husband. Megan is a Professional Member of the Irish Writers' Centre, a Full Member of the Irish Writers' Union, a member of the Historical Novel Society, a Full Member of ACES: The Society for Editing, a member of the Irish Association of Professional Historians, and a member of the American Historical Association. Additionally, she was shortlisted for the 2021 Hammond House International Literary Prize in Poetry.

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Author Questions and Answers

Beside the Papyrus
Getting Back to the Roots of Writing
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  • When did you begin writing?
    I made up my first story when I was 3. I couldn't yet write, but my mom wrote the story down for me. I, therefore, love this quotation from Ursula Le Guin, "But when people say, Did you always want to be a writer?, I have to say no! I always was a writer."
  • What do you read?
    A wide variety of fiction and nonfiction, especially history, historical fiction, and classics. A few of my favorite authors are Shakespeare, Margaret MacMillan, Jack Cavanaugh,Jacqueline Winspear, and Ray Bradbury. A few books off the top of my head that I've especially enjoyed are The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, To Kill a Mockingbird, Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World, The Complete Sherlock Holmes, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Night Circus, Shakespeare's Restless World, Maisie Dobbs, and The Prisoners of Geography.
  • Which book have you read the most?
    I don't often re-read, because I always have a lot on my to-be-read list. But, each Halloween since I was 12, I've read The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.
  • How do you write?
    I wrote my first three novels (Flight Before Dawn, What Edward Heard and Meridian-- they were published in a different order than I wrote them) entirely by hand in notebooks. Then I typed them. In the fourth novel, Across the River, the characters began talking too quickly for me to keep up with by hand writing the entire story and so I began typing. I still keep a notebook as I write each book though, full of snippets of dialogue, plot points, and future ideas.
  • Where do you get your ideas?
    Ideas can be found everywhere. A few places include while reading, in museums, in galleries, while in nature, from my academic studies, from my travels, from having lived in many different places and three countries, and from family history. In case you're curious, I've lived in the United States in New York, Alaska, Illinois, California, and South Carolina. I lived in Germany for nine years and I've lived in Ireland for the past ten years. I've also visited Canada, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Switzerland, Austria, Lichtenstein, Italy, Vatican City, the Czech Republic, and Hungary. You may recognize a few of those locations from my novels!
  • How long does it take you to write a book?
    Every book is different. Flight Before Dawn was my first novel and took over a year. North Star Home was the quickest, at five weeks.