Hi all and welcome to this months newsletter.
There's loads to get through so lets get going.:
Readers' Day - A Sense of Place - 27th May
There will be an Irish Girls' Readers' Day in Deansgrange Library on My 27th. Speakers will include Sheila O'Flanagan, Martina Devlin, Karen Gileece, Orna Ross, Kate Kerrigan (Morag Prunty), Tina Reilly, Sarah Webb, Marita Conlon McKenna, Julie Parsons, Marisa Mackle and Catherine Daly. More speakers to be confirmed. There will also be a special talk for writers and aspiring writers and Megan from the write on site will be involved in that. The day was programmed by Sarah Webb, in association with the south Dublin libraries.
Time 10am till 4.00 pm, lunch included. The whole event is free!
Booking from 2nd April on. Sarah Webbwill post booking details on the
write on website in late March.
Open Door LaunchThe Open Door series 5 will be launched on Tues 28th Feb in Eason, O'Connell Street by Mary Hannifan, TD. The series includes titles by Cecelia Ahern, Roddy Doyle, Nick Hornby, Patricia Scanlan and Sarah Webb. Do drop in if you are in town.
Look out for the books in your local bookshop. The Open Door series was set up to provide good books for adult learner readers and has been a huge success both in Ireland and abroad.
Sarah's book is called Behind Closed Doors and the proceeds will go to the Kisiizi Hospital in Uganda. More details on her website -
www.sarahwebb.infoCompetition to meet Judi CurtinMessage for anyone with girls aged 9-12. If they check out this month's issue of Girl Talk magazine, they can enter a competition based around Judi's '
Alice Next Door.' The prize is............lunch with Judi. The lucky winner gets to travel to London for the privilege, and they also get a trip on The London Eye, a visit to a musical, and a shopping spree in New Look.
Competition to win a copy of Sarah Webb's bookSarah Webb's new paperback, Take a Chance, will be published on 2nd March. To celebrate the publication Sarah is offering 10 readers the chance to win a personally signed copy of the book. Just email your name and address to
sarah@sarahwebb.info before the end of March to enter the draw. And don't forget to include the special message or dedication you'd like on your book.
Good luck! More details of the competition on
www.sarahwebb.infoIrish Pen March MeetingNon-Fiction
For everything you've wanted to know about writing non-fiction, come along to Irish PEN to listen to:
They will read from and speak about their work.
Venue:
The United Arts Club, 3 Upr Fitzwilliam St, Dublin 2
Date: Thursday 9 March 2006 at 8 o'clock
All welcome but
booking necessary: Phone: 296 4679; or:e-mail:
irishpen@ireland.comTracy's new e-bookA first I think from on of our members-
Tracy Culleton has released an e-book about using EFT (tapping on the acupuncture points) to clear all sorts of issues which block us from writing. Details are available from
http://www.unleash-the-writer.com/.
Kathleen Sheehan O'Connor's first novel finds favour with book collectorsNesta Tuomey (secretary Irish Pen) has been trawling the internet and has some rather exciting news about Kathleen's book Silver Harvest (1992), now out of print, but still very much sought after -
At Abebooks.com - limited copies of this book are available and are now fetching $411 in New York.
UK prices for the same book vary from top of the market $109 (Alibris) to slightly lower $80.71 (Abebooks) .
So Congrats to Kathleen -for having written a book that people want so much they will pay those prices!
Our latest on line interviewee -Tina Reilly went down a storm- read the interview
here. And any writers out there- if you'd like to do an interview, get in touch.
My Own book Launch, For 'A French Affair' will take place on Tuesday 21st March at 6:30pm in Hughes and Hughes Bookstore in the St Stephen's green centre. I'm delighted that John Murray has agreed to launch the book for me, so I look forward to seeing loads of you there.
I've uploaded a preview of A French affair onto
http://www.catherinedaly.com/French_affair_extract.htmlIt should be out just in time for mother's day-Happy reading!
And finally- a
special report by our member Megan:
Susanne O'Leary's launch:
I arrived at the book launch early so that I could check out the shop Hughes and Hughes. The first thing I noticed was that one side of the front window was devoted entirely to Susanne’s book ‘Fresh Powder’. I was mightily impressed with that! All powder blue posters and snowflakes!
I’d never been to a proper book launch in town before so I was interested to see what form it would take. A table stood near the back of the shop with glasses of red and white wine. There were also tumblers of water and orange juice (I was delighted to see them as I’ve noticed a definite correlation of late between the number of sore throats I get and the amount of alcohol I drink!) I didn’t nab a drink yet though as I didn’t want to appear too greedy. Susanne hadn’t even arrived!So instead I got stuck into her novel ‘Fresh Powder’ and it was great. I was half way down an aisle of books standing upright, with bags and a coat hanging out of me completely lost in the world of Lucy and Claire having a row ten years ago in Dublin. Then Catherine Daly came up and said ‘Hello’ and I came out of my trance. It was good to see her. Minutes later the star of the evening arrived – Susanne! I was delighted to see her and to be at her book launch. Susanne has been so supportive to me on the website, always answering my questions about writing and giving me encouragement, so I wanted to buy her book and support her back. Catherine, who has been to many more book launches than I, had the bright idea of nabbing Susanne early to sign our books. It was a good plan and I now have my own copy of ‘Fresh Powder’ with ‘To Megan with love from Susanne’ inscribed in the front!Quite a few of the Irish Write on Girls were there: Tracy Culleton arrived from Donegal looking as fresh as a daisy and I met Mary Bond again. She was a newly published writer last year and her second book is due out in May. It was good to chat to them both.Then the speeches began. Christine Dywer Hickey was launching the book. For those of you who don’t know her, she wrote a book called ‘Tatty’ about a young child who grew up in the family of an alcoholic. It has won loads of awards and done really well. She is a real straight talker and I enjoyed her speech. She said that she enjoyed the mood of ‘Fresh Powder’ and that it is a very European book. She also said that anyone who loves ski-ing would enjoy it and anyone who doesn’t, but intends to bluff that they do (like her!), will also get a lot out of it! She compared Susanne’s descriptions of snow to those in ‘Miss Smila’s Feeling for Snow’ by (I think!) Peter Hoeg – very high praise indeed! It’s a great book!After that Susanne spoke. She thanked her agent Aine McCarthy and her editor in New Island, Deirdre Nolan for being gentle with her! I liked the sound of that! And she told a funny story about one copy of her book being lost in the post. She looked lovely as always and glowing with good health. ( I thought I must check out one of her non-fiction books on good health, she is a good ad for them!)Finally her publisher from New Island spoke ( Edwin Higel) and he said how in the 1970’s in Ireland very few people spoke of skiing or had anything to do with it! But now all are au fait with trendy skiing terms and so he is delighted to be publishing Susanne’s book and is sure that it will be a best seller.
Megan keeps us all in touch with what's going on, so trawl through the
Forum for her informative posts. And if anyone else wants to report on a book event near them- e-mail it to me, or post it online in the Forum and I can pick it up for the newlsetter.
Keep the news coming- with the blog format it's easier to put news up as it comes in.
And don't forget to read beyond the the newsletter at other posts. You can access old posts by clicking on the links to the right. Older posts are archived on a monthly basis.
If you want to
comment on any of the posts, click the comment link and follow the instructions!
that's all for now
xx catherine
