“Will and I left London with our six-month-old son Bruce in the winter of 2008. We moved to Cavan to be near my parents. On a rare night out in Dublin a year later, we made the decision to start a magazine combining our love of art and literature. I had worked as a fiction editor, and Will had some experience of magazine publishing. And, frankly we had nothing to lose. We’d been doing what we needed to make ends meet. All either of us wanted to do was paint and write and, being new parents, make our son proud.

“The magazine’s title was inspired by Bruce, who was fixated on a moth that landed on a painting in our living room. He kept asking where it had gone, and I kept telling him it had flown to the moon … The first issue of The Moth was launched on Bruce’s birthday at the Flat Lake Festival at Hilton Park in Monaghan in 2010.

“We ploughed on, set up several prizes, including the poetry prize (sponsored by Darina Allen for a few years). Our son Ralph was born in 2012. We set up The Caterpillar in 2013. Will threw himself into Moth Productions, touring packed GAA clubs with new plays. We ran into difficulty when one play flopped. That was a stressful time but we downsized and got through it. I went back to work two weeks after Nancy was born in 2014. She wouldn’t take the bottle, so Will would bring her in to me for a feed and then take her off again.

“It’s thrilling to be constantly introduced to new writers and artists through work. We’ve been lucky enough to feature the early writings of people like June Caldwell, Sara Baume, Rob Doyle and Claire-Louise Bennett. A highlight was being serenaded by JP Donleavy on his grand piano. Another was being given a feed of pancakes at Dermot Healy’s home in Sligo. It was thrilling when the winner of The Moth Poetry Prize, Ann Gray, was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Poem. The Moth Retreat has been hugely rewarding too [a cottage where writers, poets and artists can stay and work]. We live in a beautiful place. The kids are happy and free. And Will and I are finally doing what we set out to do (some of the time). My first novel [He Is Mine and I Have No Other] was published in 2018, and Will had his first solo exhibition in 2019.”

Rebecca and Will celebrate ten years of The Moth this spring, starting with an exhibition of Will’s photographic portraits of Irish writers at the Museum of Literature Ireland (MoLI) in March. The official birthday party will be at the Irish Writers’ Centre in Dublin with events at the Seamus Heaney Homeplace and The Bloomsbury hotel in London, hosted by the Irish Literary Society, in April.

How did you meet? We met in London in 2007. I went along to a life drawing group which Will was running at a gallery in Notting Hill. We were married nine months later. Describe each other Rebecca is funny, passionate, beguiling. Will is endlessly talented, ruthlessly efficient, absolutely gorgeous. Who is the early riser, the night owl? Will gets up early for the dogs and the hens. Rebecca used to be a night owl, before the kids arrived. Now she is very happy to be in bed by 9pm with a good book. The money-minded one? Rebecca does the book-keeping, so is usually the one saying we can’t afford it. The here-and-nower / the Futurist? Rebecca worries about the minutiae. Will is good at looking at the bigger picture. Who blows, and who stews? Becky is a great sulker. Living with Will is like living with Basil Fawlty. The extrovert, the introvert? Will is definitely the extrovert. Becky doesn’t have anything to prove. Who’s the Instagrammer? I like Will’s Instagram account because it’s so much about his passion for nature. 

www.themothmagazine.com