Free talk The Old Coach House, Old Lucan Road, Palmerstown Thurs 27 Sep @ 7.30pm all welcome

THE LIFE OF HELENA MOLONY: NATIONALIST AND FEMINIST Thursday 27th September 7.30pm.
A talk by Nell Regan, author of Helena Molony: a radical life, 1883-1967
At The Old Coach House, Old Lucan Road, Palmerstown.  All welcome.

Hosted by Stewarts Care Library as part of South Dublin Libraries History and Heritage Summer

http://www.southdublinlibraries.ie/sites/all/libraries/tinymce/jscripts/tiny_mce/plugins/filemanager/files/HH18.pdf

Dalkey Book Festival 17 June 2018

Looking forward to speaking at this years Dalkey Book Festival on 17 June at this event

57. Unreasonable Women: the Equality War Goes On

The Masonic Lodge

Next year marks the 100 – year anniversary of women getting the vote in Ireland. Much has been achieved in terms of gender equality, but women are still fighting on many of the same issues and women are still a minority in government today. How important was and is female activism in effecting change and, 100 years after suffrage, where are we now with regards to equality? And what would Markiewicz make of it all?

With Senator Lynne Ruane, Margaret Ward, Nell Regan, Yassmin Abdel-Magied and Martina Devlin.

 http://www.dalkeybookfestival.org/sessions/57-unreasonable-women-equality-war-goes/

Great programme which runs from the 14th June inc Michael Ondaatje, Lionel Shriver, Paul Muldoon, Deborah Levy & many more http://www.dalkeybookfestival.org/

April Events – Féile Londubh and Poetry Day

Really looking forward to doing a slew of poetry readings & events this month.

First up is Féile Londubh in Ashford. Check out the great programme of events www.feilelondubh.com 13 – 15 April 2018. On 13 April the free launch concert takes place after a workshop w/ Oisin McGann in the Mobile Library & a Fighting Words workshop . As well as trad group Perfect Friction and students rappers with Music Network, I’ll be introducing work of the Transition Year students of Colaiste Chill Mhaintain where I undertook a World Wise Global Schools series of workshops in association with Poetry Ireland WIS.

On Saturday 14 April @8pm  I’m delighted to be introducing Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin Ireland Professor of Poetry at a concert in Nun’s Cross Church ‘If Music and Sweet Poetry Agree’ who will be reading with the wonderful trad and jazz singer Aoife Doyle and musicians, Cormac Breathnach and Greg Felton. Booking now at https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/feile-londubh-concert-if-music-and-sweet-poetry-agree-tickets-44522980433?aff=es2

 

Next up are three events for Poetry Day ( or week!) 23-28th April

  • Monday 23rd April @ 6.30pm I’ll be giving a free workshop in

The Coach house, Old Lucan Road, Palmerstown, Dublin 20 http://www.poetryireland.ie/whats-on/poetry-workshop-with-nell-regan

  • Thursday 26th April @ 7.30pm

Come to a  reading and open mike in The Mermaid Arts Centre http://www.mermaidartscentre.ie/events/details/national-poetry-day

I’ll also be taking part in the wonderful @lablelit #PoetryDayIRL project – keep an eye out for luggage labels with poetry on them!

  • Saturday 28th April 2pm I’ll be introducing and talking with poet Catriona O’Reilly as part of waywithwords.ie in Blessington Library.

Book of the Year – Metamorphic Ovid Anthology

Delighted to have a poem on p 100 of this cracking Ovid collection Metamorphic edited by Nessa O’ Mahony and Paul Munden which has just been  selected by Joseph O’Connor as a book of the year in the Irish Times

Anyone who enjoys poetry would find much pleasure in Metamorphic, edited by Nessa O’Mahony and Paul Munden, a rich, generous, multitoned collection of new poems occasioned by the 2000th anniversary of Ovid’s death.

Joseph O’Connor, Irish Times Books of the Year https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/fiction-history-humour-emotion-the-best-books-of-2017-1.3311019

Ireland’s Notable Women @ Dublin Book Festival! 8pm 8 November Blanch Library 

Really looking forward to talking about Helena Molony: A Radical Life at this years’ Dublin Book Festival. I’ll be taking part in the event ‘Ireland ‘s Notable Women’ in conversation with Martina Devlin along with Valerie Packenham on Maria Edgeworth and  Clodagh Finn on Mary Elmes.

8 November, 8pm in Blanchardstown Library – the event is free but booking is advised.

For more information and the rest of the Dublin Book Festival programme see http://www.dublinbookfestival.com/category/news/welcome-2015/irelands-notable-women/

This important book tells the extraordinary tale of a true-life Wonder Woman: Damian Corless reviews Helena Molony A Radical Life in the Irish Indo

A cracking review in the Irish Indo July 9th by Damian Corless

http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/book-reviews/political-agitator-actress-and-guntoting-feminist-35903694.html

“A new book delves into the life of Helena Molony, a bundle of contradictions who Maud Gonne hailed as ‘the most gallant and bravest’.

This important book tells the extraordinary tale of a true-life Wonder Woman who popped up again and again at pivotal points in the making of modern Ireland, a sort of Zelig with a cause.

Biographer Nell Regan has done a major service by piecing together the jigsaw of a dazzling life that featured more Byzantine twists and turns than that Hollywood bamboozler The Usual Suspects.”

Irish Times and Dublin Review of Books reviews of Helena Molony A Radical Life by Catriona Crowe and Pádraig Yeates

There is a considered and lengthy review of Helena Molony: A Radical Life, 1883-1967 by Pádraig Yeates  in  July’s Dublin Review of Books.

See http://www.drb.ie/essays/selfless-radical

  ” a book that has done more to rehabilitate its subject than anything else written over the past half-century.”
” There is no one better qualified to write her life than Nell Regan, who published what Senia Pašeta has described as “a pioneering biographical essay on Molony” in 2001. That was the fruit of a decade’s intermittent research and meant, crucially, that, in Nell’s own words, “I was lucky enough to be doing my initial research at a time when there were still people alive who had known her”, such as Francis Stuart, Louie Coghlan O’Brien and Finian Czira. She was writing about someone who was the proverbial handshake away and a poet’s insight made that link all the more palpable.”

In May, following on from the launch at Liberty Hall, there was a substantial review by Catriona Crowe in the Books section of the Irish Times,

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/helena-molony-a-radical-life-review-fleshing-out-a-complicated-woman-1.3082767

“This first biography of Molony fleshes out our knowledge of this complicated woman and joins a number of other biographies of women activists during these years whose lives are being excavated by a new generation of historians of Irish women, building on the pioneering work of Margaret Ward’s Unmanageable Revolutionaries and Mary Jones’s These Obstreperous Lassies, published in 1983 and 1988. The decade of centenaries has brought a welcome focus on women involved in feminism, nationalism, militarism, pacifism and socialism during the period.”

Podcast of Sunday Miscellany, RTE Radio 1, 30 April 2017

Delighted to have a piece in this broadcast about the first commemoration of Easter 1916. Great timing as it was also the weekend of the launch of Helena Molony: A Radical Life in Liberty Hall.

You can listen to the podcast here

https://www.rte.ie/radio1/sunday-miscellany/programmes/2017/0430/871473-sunday-miscellany-sunday-30-april-2017/?clipid=2472988#2472988