About

Welcome to the Anti-Room, the home of many Irish ladies writing about everything from fashion to feminism, pop culture to politics, and lots of things we haven’t even thought of yet. The Anti-Room was founded in 2008 by four Dublin-based journalists, including Anna Carey, Sinéad Gleeson and Edel Coffey who initially wrote under pseudonyms. Now with Carey and Gleeson as the site’s managers and editors, the blog has expanded to welcome a wide range of regular contributors. All opinions are the contributors’ own. We encourage readers to comment  and debate on all posts, but ask them to keep things civil. Personal, offensive, malicious and libelous comments will be deleted. Please don’t feed trolls.

Any questions? Want to get in touch? Send us a mail: theantiroom AT gmail DOT com

The Editors:
Anna Carey is a freelance journalist from Dublin who is a regular contributor to the Irish Times and RTE. She studied German and History of Art at Trinity College Dublin and then completed an MA in Journalism in DCU. She began her career at the Sunday Tribune in 1998 and worked there as a features writers and arts critic for five years before moving on to freelancing. In 2006, she was one of the founding editorial team of The Gloss Magazine, a women’s fashion and lifestyle magazine. She worked at The Gloss for three years, first as Assistant Editor and then as Literary Editor, writing, commissioning and editing features, before leaving in 2009 to return to freelancing. Her first book for young adults, The Real Rebecca, will be published by the O’Brien Press in 2011. She lives in Dublin with her husband.

She is Pro: Coronation Street, vintage dresses, feminism, indie designers, German soap operas, French cheese, Radio 4, libraries, knitting, comics, second-hand bookshops, Rosalind Russell, listening to lots of different bands and cycling in sunny weather. She is anti olives, social and cultural snobbery, the pressure on small girls to be pink and decorative all the time, misogynist journalists with persecution complexes and cycling in the rain. @urchinette

Sinéad Gleeson is a freelance journalist and regular radio and TV contributor. She writes for The Irish Times about music, books, the arts, popular culture, television and topical issues. She is a regular contributor to The View on RTÉ television and Arena, RTÉ Radio 1’s arts show and is a weekly contributor to The Last Word on Today FM. She has previously guest-presented Cultureshock and The Orla Barry Show on Newstalk. She also reviews books for The Sunday Business Post. She previously wrote a column for The Herald, and contributed to The Irish Daily Mail, The Irish Independent, U Magazine, Food & Wine Magazine, Village, Foggy Notions, Capital, RTÉ.ie, and various websites. She edited the online arts and politics magazine, Sigla, and co-founded the book site, Bibliofemme. She lives in Dublin.

She is Pro: books, cake, quizzes, notebooks, too many types of music to list here, quality radio, football, Powell & Pressburger, lavender, reading magazines in the bath with glass of wine, 1940s films with no-nonsense heroines, short stories, woolly blankets and talking to old ladies at bus stops. She is Anti: celery, rudeness, crappy Hollywood remakes, condescending doctors, being cold, plane landings and ironing. @sineadgleeson

The Contributors:

Aoife Barry is Pro: spending too much money in health shops, reading cookbooks in bed, great music on dusty vinyl records, cute dogs, good veggie food, dark chocolate & white tea, Kathleen Hanna, bento boxes and doing different accents. She is Anti: mushrooms, crappy fashion mags with airbrushed photos, flying insects, cleaning the kitchen, spitting in public and sexist crisp ads. @sweetoblivion26

Rosita Boland is Pro: being constantly curious, Martinis, excellent journalism, books, secondhand china, travelling, the west of Ireland, open fires, sticking one’s neck out, eclectic clothing, good manners, champagne, radio, oysters, and making her own cards. She is Anti: smoking (sorry!), waffle, shoulder pads, horoscopes, and laziness. @rositaboland

Susan Daly is Pro: good novels, bad TV, brave film-making, freewheeling downhill, pop archaeology, tissues with added balsam, walking around deserted buildings, open-minded nonegenarians, being swayed in her strongly-held convictions by good points well argued. She is Anti: women who begin sentences with ‘I’m not a feminist but…’, men with a goddess/whore complex, bad manners, grey days without rain, frozen peas (fresh are fine), hayfever, pigeons. @BiddyEarly

Siobhán Dowling is Pro: Barrys tea in a cup with milk, public art, beer gardens, Weimar Berlin, choice, libraries, equal pay, nattering, Bruno Taut, empathy, cardigans, beans on toast, LFC, Isabelle Huppert and Jean Seberg. She is Anti: Earl Grey tea in a glass, elitism, Brussels sprouts, belly buttons, getting married, bullying, turnips, entitlement, cherries, stinginess and anything aniseed-like.  @SiobhanDowling

Eleanor Fitzsimons is Pro: indie bookshops that make an effort, leaving the suburbs to enjoy the benefits of living in a vibrant capital city, gender balance, red wine (too much so alas), reliable baby sitters (we have the best one of them all), exploring Europe and box sets of Miss Marple. She is Anti: intolerance, the pressure to conform to an unrealistic body image, relentless negitivity of the type that is dominating the airwaves and print media currently, cold callers and cabbage. @EleanorFitz

Sarah Franklin is Pro: books, reading, trees, small messy boys of all ages, fringes, laughing ’til you can’t breathe, and the joys of seemingly random connections. She is Anti: complaining for the sake of it, punctuality, any sweet thing that doesn’t involve chocolate, and pointless meanness. @neversarah

Antonia Hart is Pro: Marmite on toast and the first few sips of tea, secondhand bookshops, dogs in the house, theatre nights, home-made gear, letters and diaries, saving the preface to read at the end, speaking out, the fat of the land, clean sheet day, Dublin. She is Anti: snobbery, overheated houses, stinginess, one-upmanship, textspeak, gossip, Monster Munch, people breaking off mid-sentence to answer the phone, prissy types, controlling types, cowardly types, typecasting, myopia.

Claire Hennessy is Pro: books, young adult fiction, overthinking, wine, yoga, laughter, writing, musicals, appropriately large mugs of tea, To-Do lists, sleep and Long Island Iced Teas. She is Anti: people who bend the covers of books back over the spine, airport security, lives lived for the sake of Facebook photos, procrastination, and reality television. @clairehennessy

Arlene Hunt is Pro: weekends, good food, lunch with friends, fine wine, challenging sports, reading, pets, deadlines. She is Anti: Blood sports, frauds, bullies, uncharitable people, cucumber, deadlines. @arlenehunt

Clare Kleinedler is Pro: cooking, less is more, a well-fitting pair of jeans, dusty old bookshops, Sunday morning lie-ins, brunch, weekend getaways, hill walking with himself, Italian reds, flaky croissants. She is Anti: bullies, tantrums, nightclubs, grody chippers, generic pop music, bad customer service, flight delays, spoiled kids, stodgy food. @clarekleinedler

Hazel Larkin is Pro: Love, laughter and good wine. Friendship, travelling and knitting. Cooking, mothering and reading. She is Anti: Gardening, small-mindedness and sexism.  NLP, cults and doctors with God complexes. Queuing, rudeness and BO. @hazelklarkin

Jude Leavy is Pro: mango smoothies, the New Scientist, art galleries, boots, 1920s fashion magazine illustrators, conversations with strangers on public transport. She is Anti: rhubarb, heights, bits in food, crisp crumbs on knuckles, having life all planned out. @judearoo

Megan McGurk is Pro: sun cream, cheese, afternoons at the cinema and Ladies Who Lunch. She is Anti: misogyny, fake tan, snobs and flip flops. @MeganMcGurk

Lisa McInerney is Pro banter, video games, clever lyrics, long discussions about the motives of fictional characters, non sequiturs, and japes n’ shenanigans. She is Anti:national sweethearts, people who tweet sugary proverbs nd spl liek dis, white socks, Simon Cowell’s teeth, the assumption that a woman’s criticising the actions of another woman is always down to jealousy, and the word “brisk”. @SwearyLady

Anthea McTeirnan is Pro: Aston Villa, Shane Meadows, pop, boots, Boots, Kelly from Misfits, curries, scratchings, reality TV, lager, not paying full price. She is Anti: furry things coming near her, racists, religious fundamentalists, self-promoters, people who are mean, beatification.

Nuala Ní Chonchúir is Pro: writing, good vegetarian food, books, ladybirds, decent tattoos, feminism, breastfeeding, peacocks and rivers. She is Anti: mushrooms, chicklit, girl/boy bands and wasting her life on housework. @NualaNiC

Léan Ní Chuilleanáin is Pro: making things, writing things, singing things, flowers, stories, irreverence, self-work, respect, enthusiasm, her children, really good food, picking your battles, and speaking truth to power. She is anti: cynicism, trompe l’oeil, platitudes, grapefruit, certainty, corporate irresponsibility, deliberate ignorance, and the kyriarchy (delenda est). @leannich

Jennie Ridyard is Pro: rain on a tin roof, books made from paper, perfume, kindness, painting, liberty, wine, dogs, Africa, deserts, desserts, morning tea, new bars of soap. She is Anti: winter, diets, drizzle, dribble, drivel, reactionaries, racism, dying. @JennieRidyard

Laura Slattery is Pro: fast talkers, retro televisions, cheap eyeliner, Steven Moffat, Saint Etienne, Armando Iannucci, the Berliner format, the Big British Castle and men who’ll do the childcare. Anti: ageing, jingoism, prime numbers, immoral executive salaries, competitive cookery shows and blowdrying my hair. @lauraslattery

Former contributors:

Catherine Brodigan is Pro: bicycles, baking, saffron gin, chunky necklaces and Spotify. She is Anti: noisy neighbours, tomato juice except in bloody marys, ignorant jaywalkers and the words ‘moist’ and ‘armpit’. @backpedalling

June Caldwell is Pro: modern poetry, short stories, aubergines, wild-hearted men with stubble, cats, ice-cream, kissing, angry seas, sunflowers, train journeys, seabass, cottages, velvet, gargoyles. She is Anti: clogs, superglue, misogynists, martyrs, fundamentalists, stray toenails, flatpack wardrobes, loose toilet seats, football, cold soup, decking, suede gloves, crochet, turnip. @junecaldwell

Edel Coffey is Pro: listening to the radio, reading in bed, feeding stray cats and falling asleep in her window chair whilst keeping tabs on her neighbours. She is Anti: over-familiar people who call her ‘hun’ and large groups of people and the places you find them, including but not limited to shops, St. Patrick’s Day and the streets at rush hour. @edelcoffey

Leigh is Pro: Disco, shopping, facials, Hollywood memoirs, well-built men, the Lighthouse Cinema, good underwear. She is Anti: Badly made Martinis, diets, namedroppers, public urination, metrosexuals, anyone who’s famous for being famous.

Aoife Kelleher is Pro: documentaries of almost every kind, crosswords (non-cryptic), current affairs, learning something new, Miss Marple, short stories, cheap chocolate, The Lives of Others, French pop, The New Yorker, Tom Stoppard, forgetting how to play anything at all on the piano apart from that one nocturne, baking, faffing about in the garden and lurking in bed. She is Anti: everything and nothing, depending on her frame of mind. @aoifekelleher

Rosemary MacCabe is Pro peanut butter, cycling, The Ewoks spin-off movies, singing along with her iPod in public, having her cake and eating it (too) and talking about herself in the third person. She is Anti: frowning, baby animals being suckled by other species, books with removable dust jackets, public remonstration and going two weeks without seeing her mother. @rosemarymaccabe

Naomi McArdle is Pro: emotion, opinions, computers, natural history, epic novels, subtitled films and Irish music. She is Anti: conformity, rudeness, telephones, trophies, mascara, flip-flops and olives. @uneamino

Molly McCarthy is Pro: Jaffa cakes, creative writing, sport, cooking, all things French, hill-walking, poker and breakfast in bed. She is Anti soap operas, nosy neighbours, unnecessary newspaper supplements, fake tan and the quality of camera phone images.

Claire O’Connell is Pro: science, shoes, handbags, TED.com, cycling and her kids, but not in that order. She is Anti: jobsworths, personal attacks, anything looking back at her from a plate and people refusing to at least try to peer around to the other side of an argument. @claireoconnell

Margaret E. Ward is Pro: female entrepreneurs, women making money, economics, science, radio documentaries, black and white photos, libraries and books, archives, kids with messy hands and faces (fun!), gorgeous thoughtful partners, good dark chocolate, prosecco, Italy, short stories, 1950s and 1960s fashion, dressmakers, charm bracelets, classical guitar and opera and visual journalism. She is Anti: elitism, snobbery, cronyism, injustice, weak media, fake friendships, small talk and badly written press releases, reports, articles and public documents. @margareteward @journalistIE