Julie Breathnach-Banwait

Poet

Julie Breathnach-Banwait is an Irish-language poet from Ceantar na nOileán in Connemara, County Galway. She has published several collections and now lives with her family in Australia, where she publishes in both Irish and English.

Breathnach-Banwait was raised in an Irish-speaking community and first encountered English at school. She later studied at the University of Wales and is now a psychologist. After two decades in Australia, she returned to Irish as a medium of expression and also served as editor of the Journal of the Australian Irish Heritage Association.

She has stated that, as a psychologist, bilingualism and social constructionism seemed linked, reflecting on how "assumptions of our reality are shaped and moulded by shared understandings, and the impact of culture and language on these constructs”. She has said that she writes in Irish to remind herself of who she is and to balance herself between two linguistic worlds.

She has published in Tinteán (Australia), An Gael (New York City), and Comhar (Ireland).

She is associated with Bobtail Books, an Australian publishing house devoted to bilingual publishing.