Writer Eva Kenny discusses contemporary Irish women writers and the themes that occupy them. 

Books in focus:  Niamh Campbell’s This Happy, Naoise Dolan’s Exciting Times, Emma Dabiri’s Don’t Touch my Hair, Sinéad Gleeson’s Constellations, Emilie Pine’s Notes to Self and Sally Rooney’s Normal People.

Eva is a writer based in Dublin. She holds a doctorate in comparative literature from Princeton University and is at work on a debut collection of stories and essays.

Normal Women: Contemporary Irish Women Writers (with writer Eva Kenny)

The wonderful Mila from dlr Libraries shares her favourite #LGBTQIA books for Young Adults. 

Books reviewed or mentioned include: 

Hani and Ishu's Guide to Fake Dating - Adiba Jaigirdar
The Falling in Love Montage - Ciara Smyth
Queen of Coin and Whispers - Helen Corcoran
All the Bad Apples - Moira Fowley-Doyle
Perfectly Preventable Deaths - Deirdre Sullivan
The Space Between - Meg Grehan

Let's Talk About Love - Claire Kann
The Black Flamingo - Dean Atta
Giant Days series - John Allison
The Prince and the Dressmaker - Jen Wang
Keep This to Yourself - Tom Ryan
Clap When You Land - Elizabeth Acevedo
Cinderella Is Dead - Kalynn Bayron
Dread Nation - Justina Ireland
Heartstopper - Alice Oseman
Wayward Children series - Seanan Mcguire
Full Disclosure - Camryn Garrett
Felix Ever After - Kacen Callender

  #loveislove #YoungAdultFiction #readwithpride #DublinPride2021

Best LGBTQIA+ books for Young Adults (with Mila from dlr Libraries)

Dan Connaghan, conservation officer at BirdWatch Ireland, shares his personal favourite books and articles on the topic of nature writing. They range from the pastoral literature to writings of an activist nature.

Writing/books discussed include: 
The Peregrine by AJ Baker, The Outrun by Amy Liptrot, Silent Spring by Rachel Carson and Whittled Away by Padraic Fogarty, Pioneers of Ecological Humanism by Brian Norris and The Ecology of Freedom  by  Murray Bookchin, as well as various short stories and articles.

The best of Nature Writing with conservation specialist Dan from Birdwatch Ireland

With over 400 letters, memos, cards, telegrams, drawings, notes and photographs, The Presidents’ Letters reveals a personal and unexpected story of Ireland since the inauguration of our first president, Douglas Hyde. Most of these have never been published before and a handful have never been seen by the public. Meticulously researched and handpicked for this unique book, these correspondences bring to life our presidents, Áras an Uachtaráin and all those who have passed through its doors.

This podcast from the launch event at dlr LexIcon on 30 October 2021 features Publisher and Managing Director of New Island Books, Edwin Higel, Former President of Ireland Mary Robinson, author, political presenter and journalist Flor MacCarthy and Aoife K. Walsh, MC and Commissioning Editor at New Island Books. The podcast finishes with a beautiful rendition of Mná na hÉireann by Niamh Ní Charra - musician, composer, singer and archivist!

Uploaded at dlr LexIcon, Dún Laoghaire on Wednesday 17 November 2021.

Lexicon 30 Oct 2021 Flor MacCarthy Book Launch

We are pleased to present a talk by Christopher Fitz-Simon on Jane Francesca Elgee, later Mrs William Wilde, later still Lady Wilde, who was born in Wexford 200 years ago. A poet who wrote inflammatory patriotic verse for The Nation newspaper, she was better known in the world of literature during their lifetimes than her now much more celebrated son – upon whose life she cast such an extraordinary spell.

This talk took place as part of a series of events coinciding with the exhibition All Right on the Night celebrating the work of Anne Makower and Christopher Fitz-Simon in theatre, opera, television and radio. The exhibition can be enjoyed online at https://libraries.dlrcoco.ie/events-and-news/online-exhibition#all-right-on-the-night

Uploaded at dlr LexIcon, Dún Laoghaire on Thursday 2 December 2021.

Speranza: Oscar’s Mama

Recording of the talk Peter Pearson gave in the Studio, dlr LexIcon on the 23rd of March 2022.

Peter Pearson is well-known as a passionate advocate for the conservation of Ireland's architectural heritage and also as a historian and highly regarded painter. He is the author of numerous publications including Dún Laoghaire/Kingstown and Between the Mountains and the Sea. His new book The Granite Coast (O'Brien Press) will be published later in 2022. This exhibition is a celebration of his wide-ranging work.

Lexicon Peter Pearson 23rd March 22

This talk for parents of children with ADHD and adults with ADHD alike will explain what is ADHD and will also explode some of the popular myths and misconceptions around this condition, which affects 5% of the population. Think of it as a crash course in the condition!

Ken Kilbride is the CEO at ADHD Ireland. Ken has over 25 years experience in senior management positions in a wide range of both very large and very small not for profit organisations in Ireland. His role with ADHD Ireland is to enact the vision and strategy of the Board, and in the words of Captain James T Kirk take this ADHD organisation to where no ADHD organisation has ever been before!

What is ADHD and what it isn't, a talk with Ken Kilbride, CEO of ADHD Ireland

WILD WOMEN - A St Brigid’s Day Celebration

dlr LexIcon 31st January 2023



Recording of an event held to celebrate St Brigid's day 2023 in dlr LexIcon library.

Learn about some of the unconventional and unruly women who followed in Brigid’s footsteps and broke the mould.

Meet the women today inspired by them – and her.

- Activist Ailbhe Smyth talks about Brigid/St Brigid – pagan goddess and Christian saint. She discusses this fearless, powerful woman who was healer, poet and warrior.

- Panel discussion chaired by broadcaster Flor MacCarthy featuring RTÉ’s Zainab Boladale, Senator Eileen Flynn, bestselling writer Sarah Webb and Irish Times columnist Justine McCarthy.

- Extract from Call Me Madame, a black comedy about Countess Markievicz by Martina Devlin, read by acclaimed actor and scriptwriter Lise-Ann McLaughlin. The two are in conversation afterwards.

Photo credit: Ger Holland

Lexicon St Brigids Day: Wild Women

A five-part series of talks and workshops exploring how engaging in creative arts can improve your brain health. These talks, led by Karen Meenan, Global Atlantic Fellow for Equity in Brain Health at the Global Brain Health Institute (GBHI), will feature neuroscientists, researchers and especially creative artists who work to improve brain health.

This week featuring site director of the Global Brain Health Institute (GBHI) Professor Brian Lawlor, writer, musician and performer Mike Hanrahan, and musician, composer and choral conductor Norah Constance Walsh.

This event took place on Wednesday October 11th at the Studio, dlr LexIcon.

Creative Brainwaves Week 1 Part 1

A five-part series of talks and workshops exploring how engaging in creative arts can improve your brain health. These talks, led by Karen Meenan, Global Atlantic Fellow for Equity in Brain Health at the Global Brain Health Institute (GBHI), will feature neuroscientists, researchers and especially creative artists who work to improve brain health.

This week featuring site director of the Global Brain Health Institute (GBHI) Professor Brian Lawlor, writer, musician and performer Mike Hanrahan, and musician, composer and choral conductor Norah Constance Walsh.

This event took place on Monday October 11th at the Studio, drLexIcon.

Creative Brainwaves Week 1 Part 2

A five-part series of talks and workshops exploring how engaging in creative arts can improve your brain health. These talks, led by Karen Meenan, Global Atlantic Fellow for Equity in Brain Health at the Global Brain Health Institute (GBHI), will feature neuroscientists, researchers and especially creative artists who work to improve brain health.

This week we hosted Professor Sven Vanneste who is a neuroscientist, Global Brain Health Institute facility member and Professor of Psychology at Trinity College Dublin.
Olwyn Lyons, who is a choreographer, dance artist and community dance facilitator who has worked extensively with arts and older people and Dr Anusha Yasoda-Mohan is a perceptual neuroscientist and Global Atlantic Fellow for Equity in Brain Health with a special interest in hearing loss and tinnitus.

Creative Brainwaves Week 2 2023

Louis de Bernières, internationally acclaimed author of Captain Corelli's Mandolin, for an unforgettable evening of book chat, laughter and music.

Louis, whose latest novel is Light over Liskeard, will be in conversation with author Martina Devlin. It's a book which takes a penetrating but lighthearted look at what really matters in life.

Louis is also a talented musician, and will duet with guitarist Seán Whelan.

Louis de Bernières in conversation with Martina Devlin

A five-part series of talks and workshops exploring how engaging in creative arts can improve your brain health. These talks, led by Karen Meenan, Global Atlantic Fellow for Equity in Brain Health at the Global Brain Health Institute (GBHI), will feature neuroscientists, researchers and especially creative artists who work to improve brain health.

Week 3 hosted Neuropsychologist Professor Ian Robertson. Poet Ron Cary and Singer Frances Elliott.

Creative Brainwaves Week 3 2023

A five-part series of talks and workshops exploring how engaging in creative arts can improve your brain health. These talks, led by Karen Meenan, Global Atlantic Fellow for Equity in Brain Health at the Global Brain Health Institute (GBHI), will feature neuroscientists, researchers and especially creative artists who work to improve brain health.

This week features Chief Operations Officer of the Global Brain Health Institute (GBHI) Dr Anne-Maire Glynn, Poet Tony Curtis and illustrator Caroline Hyland.

This event took place on Wednesday 1 November, 2023 at the Studio, dlr LexIcon.

Release date:
10 Nov 2023

Creative Brainwaves, Week 4 2023

A five-part series of talks and workshops exploring how engaging in creative arts can improve your brain health. These talks, led by Karen Meenan, Global Atlantic Fellow for Equity in Brain Health at the Global Brain Health Institute (GBHI), will feature neuroscientists, researchers and especially creative artists who work to improve brain health.

The final week in the series hosted Professor Agustin Ibánez, Director if the Latin American Brain Health Institute (BrainLat), Roisin Hayes, music therapist and author Kevin Quaid and Dementia advocate Helena Quaid.

Creative Brainwaves Week 5 2023

Readers’ Day in The Studio Theatre, dlr LexIcon, Saturday 25 November
Programmed by writer Martina Devlin on behalf of dlr Libraries, it features a sparkling range of writers and thinkers.

History Girls Emily Hourican and Hazel Gaynor with Zainab Boladale

Against the Odds Nuala Moore with Prof Ian Robertson

Good Friday Agreement Reboot Martin Doyle with Carlo Gébler

Desert island Books Martina Devlin with Martin Doyle, Emily Hourican and Carlo Gébler

Studio Lexicon

The Women Science Forgot Prof Luke O'Neill with Anne Cassin

Reincarnated as the mistress of macabre, the grande dame of the dark, Ireland’s beloved newsreader delights in presenting her fabulously frightful anthology of Irish ghost stories, which have excited, unnerved and, for better or worse, stayed with her over the years.

Tales of the Otherworld – Anne Doyle In Conversation with Deirdre Sullivan

Alice Kinsella and Easkey Britton in conversation with Kerri ní Dochartaigh on climate emergency, care-giving and the sea as the original mother.

SEA MOTHER – on milk and tears and ice

The benefits of the natural world for our mental and physical wellbeing have long been recognised, but perhaps never more so than in the last few years. Writer, journalist and author of This is My Sea, Miriam Mulcahy, is joined in conversation by two nature experts as they explore how our desire to reconnect with nature has resulted in a surge in popularity of activities in the outdoors, as well as a drive towards sustainability and a commitment to
‘leave no trace.’ Wild Derrynane: A Wildlife Year Explorer’s Guide, Stories and Memoir by wildlife film maker, naturalist and outdoor educationalist Vincent Hyland is a visual natural history of the Skellig Coast, and an invaluable record of the area’s changing biodiversity. The forthcoming The Complete Book of Wild Swimming in Ireland by Maureen McCoy, complete with spectacular photos by Paul McCambridge, is a comprehensive guide to discovering dramatic and lesser known locations around Ireland for swimming, diving and snorkelling. Maureen McCoy, from Hillsborough, County Down, is an award-winning open-water swimmer, having swum in the sea, loughs and rock pools with her brothers since she was a small child. In 2009, just after her fortieth birthday, she fulfilled her childhood ambition to swim the English Channel. Maureen enjoys outdoor swimming throughout the year and always keeps a swimsuit in her car - just in case.
Miriam Mulcahy is a writer and journalist living in Kildare. She contributes to the Irish Times, writing for the property section every week, and last year curated the Surrealist Gallery at Dun Laoghaire Institute of Visual Arts. This is My Sea, published by Eriu/Bonnier in August 2023 was an Irish no 1 bestseller, was nominated for an An Post Irish Book Award and was one
of the Irish Times books of the year for 2023. This is My Sea comes out in paperback this May. Vincent Hyland is a multi-award-winning underwater filmmaker, publisher and digital broadcaster. He was an early adopter of digital technology, establishing Ireland's first digital design bureau in the mid-1980s. He spent ten years working in technology at Microsoft. He
established and published Ireland's first Wildlife magazine "Wild Ireland", has filmed the underwater marine life of Galapagos and Antarctica and worked for the BBC's Natural History Unit. He has appeared on BBC, RTE, TV3 and TG4 television including directing and narrating the recent series "Call of the Wild" for RTE One television. His practice combines music, art
and outdoor education. His recent discoveries include night-time fluorescence in underwater temperate marine life. He has just published his life's work "Wild Derrynane" - a Visual Natural History of the Greater Skellig Coast. He is nominated in the 'Eco Individual of the Year' category in the Outsider.ie annual awards that will take place in February 2024. He lives with his partner Mo and son, Neil in Caherdaniel, Co. Kerry.

Ireland Reads Day 24 Feb 2024 - Miriam Mulcahy in conversation with Vincent Hyland and Maureen McCoy

Join broadcaster Rick O’Shea in conversation with authors Elaine Feeney and Paul Murray.
Nominated for An Post Irish Book Awards – Book of the Year, How to Build a Boat is the beautiful novel about a young boy whose mission transforms the lives of his teachers and brings together a community. Winner of the An Post Irish Book Awards – Book of the Year and shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Nero Prize, The Bee Sting explores the failures and vulnerability of the Barnes family and the consequences of a single moment that can change
the direction of life.
Elaine Feeney is a writer from the west of Ireland. Her 2020 debut novel, As You Were, was shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize and the Irish Novel of the Year Award, and won the Kate O'Brien Award, the McKitterick Prize, and the Dalkey Festival Emerging Writer Award. Feeney has published three collections of poetry including The Radio Was Gospel and Rise, and her short story ‘Sojourn’ was included in The Art of The Glimpse: 100 Irish Short Stories, edited by Sinéad Gleeson. Feeney lectures at the National University of Ireland, Galway.
Paul Murray is the author of An Evening of Long Goodbyes, Skippy Dies and The Mark and the Void. An Evening of Long Goodbyes was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award and nominated for the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award. Skippy Dies was shortlisted for the Costa Novel award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and longlisted for the Booker Prize.
The Mark and the Void won the Everyman Wodehouse Prize 2016. He lives in Dublin.
Rick O’Shea is a broadcaster with RTE, currently weekdays on RTE Gold. He was previously a presenter on RTE2FM and of The Book Show on RTE Radio 1. He runs Ireland’s largest book club - The Rick O’Shea Book Club on Facebook, hosts and curates public author interviews at festivals, and chooses the Eason Must Reads lists 4 times a year. He is a member of the An Post Irish Book Awards voting academy. Currently, Rick is literary curator for the annual UCD Festival and a board member of Fighting Words NI in Belfast. He’s a former judge of the Costa Book Awards and Dalkey Literary Awards, and a previous curator of the Waterford Writers Weekend.

Ireland Reads Day 24 February 2024 - Rick O’Shea in conversation with Elaine Feeney and Paul Murray

As part of Poetry Day Ireland 2024, we came together to celebrate the life and work of poet Eavan Boland, who died in 2020.
A selection of invited writers read their favourite of Eavan's poems, and shared a memory of their connection with her. There was also music, contributing to what was a friendly and inclusive evening to commemorate the beloved poet.

MC: Evelyn Conlon
Readers: 
David Butler - Mise Éire
Mary Rose Callaghan - An Irish Childhood in England:1951
Ella Barry - Legends (for Eavan Boland)
Susan Connolly - The Lost Land
Evelyn Conlon - The Grape Pickers
Katie Donovan - The Pomegranate
Anne Fitzgerald - That the Science of Cartography  is Limited
Catherine Phil MacCarthy - The Journey
Mary Milne - In Our Own Country
Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin - The Oral Tradition
Mary O'Donnell - A Woman Painted on a Leaf
Gerard Smyth - Unheroic
Louise C Callaghan - Margin
Joseph Woods - Quarantine
Máiride Woods - Love
Sarah Casey - Eviction
Musicians:
Róisín Ward Morrow & Breifne Holohan - The Wounded Hussar and Cailín as Contae Lú

Reading Eavan: A Tribute to the Poet Eavan Boland

Part of the One Dublin, One Book programme of events for 2024, join Louise Nealon in conversation with Sheila Armstrong, Olivia Fitzsimons and Aingeala Flannery as they meet to discuss the role of the sea in their lives, both on and off the page. At the beginning of Sheila Armstrong’s Fallen Animals, a body washes up on the Northwest coast of Ireland, and the search for his identity causes a ripple effect in the lives of people he would never meet. In Olivia Fitzsimon’s The Quiet Whispers Never Stop, a tumultuous relationship comes to blows on a beach in Donegal. The sea is a constant presence in Aingeala Flannery’s The Amusements, which explores the lives of the characters in the seaside village of Tramore, while in Snowflake; the One Dublin, One Book choice for 2024, Louise Nealon’s characters find solace on a fictional island of their own. In the gorgeous Studio space of dlr LexIcon, the writers will meet to discuss their relationship with the sea, their literary influences and more.

One Dublin, One Book: The Role of the Sea in Contemporary Irish Literature

A talk on the exhibition, given by David Davison, authors of Frank Browne: A Life Through the Lens. David Davison is a photographer living in Dublin. He and Edwin Davison have been responsible for the conservation and cataloguing of Father Browne’s original negatives.

Frank Browne Exhibition talk with David Davison.MP3

Angela Davis

Ciarán Casey is an Irish economic historian who is currently researching the history of the Department of Finance. Books discussed include: Cormac Ó Gráda- A Rocky Road, Mary Daly- Sixties Ireland, Roy Foster- Vivid Faces and Conor Cruise O'Brien- States of Ireland.

Best books on Modern Irish History with economic historian Ciarán Casey

Fiction & arts writer Sue Rainsford, discusses representations of violence in literature & shares some books that have really impressed her this past year. 

Various books discussed with a focus on Kea Wilson's We Eat Our Own,  Susanna Moore's In The Cut, Fernanda Melchor's Hurricane Season and Our Bodies, Their Battlefield by Christina Lamb.

Warning: This podcast includes discussion of violence of a sexual nature and war crimes in literature and non-fiction.

Author Sue Rainsford on representations of violence in literary fiction

Dún Laoghaire Rathdown County Library service host a varied programme of events throughout the year, some of which we record, including a series of literary events called dlr Library Voices and an annual literary festival called Mountains to Sea dlr Book Festival run in collaboration with dlr Arts Office. Our books podcast Need To Read is where authors, professionals and avid readers share their favourite books across their area of interest, expertise or obsession.

Popular tracks by dlr Libraries Podcasts