Celebrating Culture Night at Clare County Library

Culture Night is an annual all-island public event that celebrates culture, creativity and the arts. This year, it will take place on Friday 18th September 2015. Culture Night comprises hundreds of events across Ireland and overseas. From the nation’s capital to county towns, everyone’s getting involved! Arts and cultural organisations open their doors until late with hundreds of free events, tours, talks & performances for everyone to enjoy. Special events and workshops are specifically programmed at participating locations and everything is available free of charge. Clare County Library has planned two events to celebrate, and both events are free of charge and all are welcome.

The Life and Works of Edna O’Brien, a Culture Night event at Scariff Public Library
Clare County Library has produced an exhibition on the life and works of Clare-born writer Edna O'Brien entitled "From Country Girl to Literary Queen". The exhibition will go on display in Scariff Public Library on Friday, 18th September to coincide with Culture Night 2015. Also in the library, from 5.30-6.15pm on the same day, actor Eleanor Feeley will give a selection of dramatic readings form the works of Edna O'Brien.

A Passion for Books: The early letters of Nancy Nolan to Leonard Woolf (1943-1944), a Culture Night event at De Valera Public Library, Ennis
Anne Byrne, from the School of Political Science and Sociology in NUIG, will visit the De Valera Public Library in Ennis to celebrate Culture Night with a fascinating insight into the letters written by Nancy Nolan, Dublin housewife and fan of author Virgina Woolf, to Virginia’s husband Leonard Woolf. Nancy’s admiration for the life and literature of Virginia Woolf first prompted her unsolicited 4-page letter to Leonard on the 9th of February 1943, two years after the death of Virginia. Anne Byrne's interest in what Nancy wrote about to Leonard and what circumstances prevailed so that Nancy took up her pen and wrote that first letter, Irish woman to English man, in the middle of World War 2, prompted Anne to look further into this unique correspondence. This talk will consider the first year of the correspondence, in which Nancy writes 17 letters to Leonard, sometimes twice a month; a correspondence that is wholly concerned with a passion for books. Anne will share her views that Mrs Nolan’s letters to Mr Woolf might contain more than musings and were a possible source for biographical reflection on women’s lives in 20th century Ireland.