It's 16 years since children's author Mary Murphy bought her house overlooking a bay between Clarinbridge and Kilcolgan, Co Galway. Technology enabled her to live and work remotely, and to build a successful career as writer and illustrator of about 40 books, some for babies as young as six months, many published by UK children's book publisher Walker Books.

Now she wants to move back to Dublin – she grew up in Templeogue – to be near friends and is selling her house six doors down from Moran's of The Weir seafood restaurant. Her detached four-bed house on a third of an acre, The Weir, Kilcolgan, Co Galway, is for sale for €445,000 through Yvonne Sweeney Auctioneers, in Oranmore, Co Galway.

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Built in 1994, the detached 185sq m (2,000sq ft) cottage-style house is effectively a dormer bungalow, with upstairs bedrooms having Velux roof windows. Accommodation downstairs includes a cosy livingroom with a solid fuel stove, a kitchen/diningroom with a green Stanley range in a brick-lined alcove, a good-sized utility room and two bedrooms, one of them en suite. Murphy currently uses one of these as her workroom; there are glass French doors between the workroom and the livingroom There is also a downstairs toilet. The kitchen/diningroom is a good size, divided by a breakfast bar.

Upstairs are two bedrooms, one en suite, a tiled family bathroom, and a tiny room next to the main bedroom that could be a nursery, study or sewing room, suggests the agent.

Kilcolgan is about 19km from Galway city, about a half-hour drive. The house is 2km west of the N18, overlooking an estuary at Dunbulcaun Bay.