Teachers often spend their summers relaxing, recharging, and — at Gilman’s Upper School — reading for the Upper School All-Faculty Book Club. Before the start of summer break, Head of Upper School Brian Ledyard always assigns reading material for the club, which is then discussed before school begins again. For the start of the 2025–2026 academic year, the selection was Claire Keegan’s “Small Things Like These.”

On Thursday, August 21, Upper School educators came together and discussed their impressions of the novel, what resonated with them while reading it, and themes introduced in its pages, like the importance of unconditional kindness and empathy. Ledyard spoke about the author’s style and drew parallels between her words and the experience of teaching — and truly seeing — boys at Gilman.

Forty-five minutes into the talk, Keegan, an award-winning novelist and short story writer who lives in rural Ireland, joined the opening faculty meeting virtually. Self-described as “terribly old-fashioned,” she stepped out of her comfort zone to log into Zoom to be with the group, and teachers took turns asking her questions. Over the course of her visit, she talked about the importance of creativity in education and insights into her personal creative process. 

On how she knows when a story is complete, she said, “When you’re finished you should be tired.” She went on to clarify, “When you’re tired of the text it means you’re just beginning. You should be tired in the way that you’re empty: There’s nothing more you can say, there’s nothing more you can correct. … Most manuscripts would sing the song — if they could sing — you left me just when I needed you most.”

Responding to a question about how she plans out the scenes of her books, Keegan admitted that she often doesn’t know where a story will take her. “I try to feel my way through it. I believe fiction is about how it feels to be alive. It’s not academic. If you are writing from a central character, you are writing about somebody who doesn’t know how to manage what is to come.”

As she reflected on her creative stories, she shared that her imagination was likely nourished as a child as a result of boredom. “I think it’s important for children to be bored. Instead of being entertained all the time, I used to go around the woods. … My imagination had to come into play because I didn’t have anything to distract me.”

Woven into many of her answers, Keegan made clear her deep love of paragraph structure. “A paragraph is not a plate. A good paragraph is a bowl,” she began. “Everything that’s in it needs to belong together and mixed up.” She went on to say, “You empower people when you give them structure.”

Ledyard noted, “When faced with difficult circumstances, like the battle between ‘self preservation and courage’ that Keegan’s central character navigates, we want our students to do something, especially if that means caring for someone else.” In an interview with the Booker Prizes, Keegan explained that “without being loved as a child, Furlong might have been brutalised, grown hard as others did and self-centered.” Ledyard added, “Her story is a fictional reminder of the importance of our charge to know, love, and challenge our students to be their best selves.”

Thank you to Brian Ledyard for bringing this author, virtually, to Gilman’s Upper School!