The award-winning children’s author talks about the poetics of her first novel for adults, and why she remains steeped in the Catholicism of her Irish upbringing

“Hail, Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy,” begins Sarah Crossan, “Hail, our life, our sweetness and our hope.” Almost without realising, I find myself joining in with her: “To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve …” It is the only time in three decades that I can remember jointly reciting a prayer out loud in a newspaper interview, but it feels as natural as when both of us used to say such prayers as part of the daily routine of our Catholic schools.

It all has all come about because we started by talking about poetry. Crossan writes many of her award-winning novels in blank verse. So far her audience has been what publishers call YAs (Young Adults) – teenagers to the rest of us. Her first, 2012’s The Weight of Water, was shortlisted for the prestigious Carnegie Medal for children’s writers, as was 2014’s Apple and Rain. In 2016, One went one better and won.

And the honours have kept coming. In 2018, the 39-year-old was named as Ireland’s Laureate na nÓg, or children’s laureate, her two-year tenure ending during lockdown. “It was a shock when I was asked, completely,” she recalls. “I didn’t think I had enough books out.”