Sports to the fore in discussion at literary festival
Dromineer Literary Festival takes place from October 5 to 8
The Dromineer Nenagh Literary Festival will showcase sports writing in a special event about the GAA this Saturday night.
Eimear Ryan’s 'Grass Ceiling' asks what it is like is to be a girl, or a woman, in a male-dominated sporting world. If you play on the boys’ team, more people pay attention – but you get treated like an outsider. When you switch to playing with girls and women, you have to live with a smaller audience, diminished status, and – if you’re a professional – lower pay. And what if – as is the case for camogie player Eimear Ryan – the sport that you play has a different name for women than it does for men, despite identical rules? And what if you don’t even feel entirely comfortable in an all-female sporting environment because you’re shy, bookish, not really one of the girls?
Tipperary-born Eimear was the 2021 Writer in Residence at the School of English, UCC. She is a co-founder of the literary journal Banshee and its publishing imprint, Banshee Press. Her short fiction has appeared in Granta, The Dublin Review, The Stinging Fly, The Long Gaze Back (New Island) and Town & Country (Faber). She is also a sports columnist with the Irish Examiner and has written about women in sport for The42.ie, Image, Stranger’s Guide, Winter Papers and elsewhere. She lives, writes and plays in Cork city.
Ciarán Murphy in his This Is The Life: Days and Nights in the GAA looks at the plight of rural clubs that are losing their players to the cities - and he does so not only as a journalist but as a footballer who made the same move himself. He looks at the plight of rural clubs that are losing their players to the cities - and he does so not only as a journalist but as a footballer who made the same move himself (and who once, flying home to play a club match, found himself alone on the plane with Jedward). He writes about working as an assistant in the clothing shop owned by the family of Jarlath Fallon - who was both Ciaran's all-time sporting hero and the local postman. And he looks at things we usually prefer not to talk about, like the role of social class in the GAA.
Ciarán Murphy is an acclaimed podcaster (with Second Captains), a trusted columnist (with the Irish Times), and an ageing Gaelic footballer (originally with Milltown in Co Galway, latterly with Templeogue Synge Street in Dublin). This is the Life is his first book.
Leading the discussion will be Joanne O’Riordan, an activist for people with disabilities, a motivational speaker and a sports columnist with The Irish Times.
FURTHER DETAILS
Grass ceilings, hurdles and hurls takes place in the Abbey Court Hotel on Saturday, October 7th from 7.00pm. More festival details is available at www.dnlf.ie.