Programme

Rathfarnham Theatre Group will use drama, poetry and song to explore the literary landscape of stories by some well-known Irish women.

Rathfarnham Theatre Group will use drama, poetry and song to explore the literary landscape of stories by some well-known Irish women.

Lunchtime concert presenting works ranging from the songs of Ina Boyle almost 130 years ago to some of today’s leading young composers from Ireland to mirror the chronological survey of the Long Gaze Back.

Solo and ensemble pieces and short interviews with some of the composers about the pieces being performed.

Programme  is curated by Dr. Mark Fitzgerald of DIT Conservatory of Music and will include works by:

Ina Boyle (1889-1967) Three Songs –Roses (text Eva Gore-Booth), Blessing (text Austin Clarke) and Joy of Earth (text AE)

Eibhlis Farrell (b 1953) Earthloops for solo clarinet (2003)

Ailís Ní Ríain (b 1974) Don’t for clarinet and cello (2000 revised 2005)

Finola Merrivale (b 1987) ag fanacht, go chiúin for violin, cello and piano (2015)

Amanda Feery (b 1984) Rattle for solo bass clarinet (2010)

Jane O’Leary (b 1946) Mystic Play of Shadows for string quartet (1996)

Evening concert presenting works ranging from the songs of Ina Boyle almost 130 years ago to some of today’s leading young composers from Ireland to mirror the chronological survey of the Long Gaze Back.

Solo and ensemble pieces and short interviews with some of the composers about the pieces being performed.

Programme  is curated by Dr. Mark Fitzgerald of DIT Conservatory of Music and will include works by:

Ina Boyle (1889-1967) Three Songs –Roses (text Eva Gore-Booth), Blessing (text Austin Clarke) and Joy of Earth (text AE)

Eibhlis Farrell (b 1953) Earthloops for solo clarinet (2003)

Ailís Ní Ríain (b 1974) Don’t for clarinet and cello (2000 revised 2005)

Finola Merrivale (b 1987) ag fanacht, go chiúin for violin, cello and piano (2015)

Amanda Feery (b 1984) Rattle for solo bass clarinet (2010)

Jane O’Leary (b 1946) Mystic Play of Shadows for string quartet (1996)

Authors Susan Stairs, Nuala O’Connor and Eimear Ryan discuss their short stories in The Long Gaze Back. Chaired by Sinéad Gleeson

Nuala O’Connor‘s fifth short story collection Joyride to Jupiter was published by New Island in June 2017. Her third novel, Miss Emily, about the poet Emily Dickinson and her Irish maid was shortlisted for the Bord Gáis Energy Eason Book Club Novel of the Year 2015 and longlisted for the 2017 International Dublin Literary Award. Nuala’s fourth novel, Becoming Belle, will be published in 2018.

Eimear Ryan‘s writing has appeared in Winter Papers, The Dublin Review, gorse, The Stinging Fly, Granta.com and the Faber anthologyTown & Country. She is co-editor of the literary journal Banshee. From Co. Tipperary, she lives in Cork

Susan Stairs received her Masters in Creative Writing from University College Dublin in 2009 and her story ‘The Rescue’ was shortlisted for the Davy Byrnes Irish Writing Award the same year. She has published three novels: The Story of Before (2013) and The Boy Between (2015) and her third novel One Good Reason has recently been published.

Sinéad Gleeson is the editor of The Long Gaze Back and The Glass Shore, two anthologies of stories by Irish women writers. Her own collection of essays will be published in 2019 by Picador.

Herstory: Write your own story, or that of a woman in your family history. The tutor, Frances Browner, will help with proofreading and editing and give constructive feedback.  She will read excerpts from The Long Gaze Back, this year’s Dublin One City One Book choice. 

Frances is an experienced creative writing and history tutor who has had her work published and broadcast on radio.

Elizabeth Bowen is credited with writing this controversial US TV documentary about Ireland. Presented by Walter Cronkite and featuring leading political and literary figures and unflinching images of urban and rural life, the film portrayed Ireland as ‘a poverty-stricken country riddled with backwardness, unemployment and emigration’. With an introduction by Dr Eibhear Walshe.

Valerie Pakenham (Editor of Maria Edgeworth’s Letters From Ireland) will bring insight to Maria Edgeworth’s life through the many letters she wrote in an extraordinary span of Irish history.

The Anglo-Irish writer Maria Edgeworth features in The Long Gaze Back anthology with a short story called, ‘The Purple Jar’. January 1st 2018 also marks the 250th anniversary of the birth of Maria, who was born in Black Bourton, Oxfordshire in 1768.

Maria was a prolific and fascinating letter writer. She insisted that her letters were for private consumption only, but after her death, her stepmother and half-sisters produced a private memoir for friends using carefully selected extracts. Their literary quality was spotted by Augustus Hare, whose shortened version, ‘The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth’, appeared in 1894.

Valerie Pakenham has recently edited, ‘Maria Edgeworth’s Letters From Ireland’ (Lilliput Press). Valerie worked as a journalist in London at Condé Nast and the Daily Mail before her marriage to the writer Thomas Pakenham. Her most recent book is, ‘The Big House in Ireland’, an anthology published in 2001. She has lived in Westmeath, fourteen miles from Maria Edgeworth’s old family home in Edgeworthstown, for over fifty years and is familiar with many of the places described in the letters. The Pakenham and Edgeworth families intermarried in the early eighteenth century and were close friends across several generations.

Exclusive offer to RDS Members:

RDS Members who book for this talk and attend, will be entered in a free draw with a chance to win a signed copy of Valerie’s book, ‘Maria Edgeworth’s Letters From Ireland’. The draw will take place after the talk on April 25.

The above talk is admission free but prior booking is essential.

Voluntary donations by attendees to assist in covering costs are welcomed.

To celebrate the 2018 Dublin: One City One Book choice, The Long Gaze Back, we invite you to enjoy a special evening of readings, discussion, and songs featuring authors Anne Enright, Christine Dwyer Hickey, Lisa McInerney, editor Sinéad Gleeson, dramatised readings from actor Cathy Belton, and music by acclaimed singer and musician Lisa Hannigan.

Anne Enright was the inaugural Laureate for Irish Fiction. A leading contemporary voice, her work has won many awards including the Man Booker for The Gathering in 2007 and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction for The Forgotten Waltz in 2012. Her latest novel The Green Road was shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award in 2017. She lives and works in Dublin, her native town.

Sinéad Gleeson is the editor of The Long Gaze Back and The Glass Shore, two anthologies of stories by Irish women writers.Her own collection of essays Constellations will be published in 2019 by Picador.

Christine Dwyer Hickey has published seven novels, one short story collection and a full-length play. The Cold Eye of Heaven won the Irish Novel of the Year 2012 and was nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Tatty was nominated for the Orange Prize and was one of the 50 Irish Novels of the Decade. Her short story collection, The House on Parkgate Street  was published in 2013. Her latest novel The Lives of Women, was published in April 2015.

Lisa McInerney’s work has featured in Winter Papers, The Stinging Fly, Granta and BBC Radio 4 and in the anthologies Beyond The Centre, The Long Gaze Back and Town and Country. Her debut novel The Glorious Heresies won the 2016 Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction and the 2016 Desmond Elliott Prize. Lisa’s second novel, The Blood Miracles, was published by John Murray in April 2017. 

Madeleine Keane is the Literary Editor of the Sunday Independent

Cathy Belton is an acclaimed actor. Her recent screen credits include Philomena, A Little Chaos directed by Alan Rickman and My Name Is Emily, (dir. Simon Fitzmaurice). She recently acted in Mark O’Rowe’s play The Approach.

Lisa Hannigan has released three albums: Sea Sew (2008), Passenger(2011), and At Swim (2016). Her music has received award nominations both in Ireland and the USA.

Lecture by Dr. Leeann Lane (DCU) about the Civil War prison experience of writer Dorothy Macardle. Macardle was incarcerated from November 1922 until May 1923 in Mountjoy and Kilmainham Gaols, where she wrote many of the stories that would be published as Earthbound in 1924.

An evening of music and song with contemporary artists Inni-K, Lisa Loughrey, Sinéad White and Fehdah, who respond to the work of women songwriters, musicians and singers of the last 200 years and give their personal musings on the The Long Gaze Back.

A special literary tour of Kilmainham Gaol featuring women writers.

Due to unforeseen circumstances this event has been postponed. The NGI hopes to re-schedule this event in the near future.

Conversation with Sinéad Gleeson and Angela Bourke about the Dublin writer and journalist Maeve Brennan. Chaired by Aoife Barry (Assistant News Editor/Reporter at TheJournal.ie)

Angela Bourke MRIA, Professor Emerita, UCD School of Irish, Celtic Studies and Folklore is the author of Maeve Brennan: Homesick at the New Yorker.

Sinéad Gleeson is the editor of The Long Gaze Back (which features Maeve Brennan’s short story The Eldest Child) and The Glass Shore, two anthologies of stories by Irish women writers. Her own collection of essays will be published in 2019 by Picador.