Órfhlaith Foyle

Poet, Writer, Playwright

[SEEN in Publishing @SEENPublishing]

And this is who we are...

[Sonya Douglas @SonyaDouglas]

The Taliban are raping women and girls they arrest for ‘bad hijab’, but the @UN has assured them no Afghan women will participate and women’s rights will not be discussed at the conference in Doha on 30/6

How nice for the boys @UNWomen

#WhatIsMisogyny https://t.co/SXdIaTirsg

[Órfhlaith Foyle @FoyleOrfhlaith]

Congratulations Conor @ConorMontague1

[Conor Montague @ConorMontague1]

Chuffed to win The Plaza Short Story Prize. Huge thanks to competition judge, Vanessa Onwuemezi, for embracing the wild west of 90s Galway.
Congrats to my fellow prize winners, Simon Roberts and Lucy Fielding.
@irishcultctr @IrishLitSoc @IrishLitTimes @galwayad @ThisIsGalway

[Samantha Rose Hill @Samantharhill]

"You see, my plans for the summer are no plans."

— Hannah Arendt

[Clodagh Finn, now on Instagram @FinnClodagh]

#ThroughHerEyes
She was born #otd in 1863, so it's a good day to call for the introduction of a Sarah Cecilia Harrison tour of Dublin city.

The work done by this amazing woman, artist, activist, suffragist, first female councillor, friend of the poor, is stitched into the fabric of the city.

As her biographer @MCappock wrote in a beautiful piece for Her Keys to the City: 'The traces of her legacy are evident in a multitude of places. Her paintings hang in the Hugh Lane Gallery, the National Gallery, the Royal College of Surgeons, the Law Library and City Hall.'

Here are some of those wonderful paintings.

For more, Her Keys to the City is still available at just €7.99 from @FourCourtsPress
Four Courts Press | Her Keys to the City

[Órfhlaith Foyle @FoyleOrfhlaith]

@LeggettBohan @artscouncil_ie Congratulations Róisín @LeggettBohan

[Estelle Birdy @BirdyBooky]

Natasha O’Brien is the courageous and dignified young woman who, along with her female friend, called out to Cathal Crotty, gently ‘Ah here, lads, come on’ when Crotty was hurling homophobic abuse at a young man across the street walking alone.

When Crotty ran across the street, got Natasha O’Brien by the hair and started to punch her to the ground, it seems that neither Crotty’s friends nor any other man who was there at the time when the assault started tried to help Natasha O’Brien. Thankfully a passerby did eventually pull Crotty off her.

I can’t help but wonder what might have happened in court had Natasha O’Brien NOT tried to steer Crotty away from the homophobic abuse of the man walking down the street, had Crotty, as Natasha O’Brien feared he would, attacked that young man instead of the young woman who tried to protect him.

If Crotty had attacked the young man and given him the exact same injuries along with the homophobic slurs, would he be roaming free today? Especially if that young man was indeed gay. One would be a ‘hate crime’ surely, one is not.

[Clodagh Finn, now on Instagram @FinnClodagh]

#ThroughHerEyes
On Juneteenth, the annual commemoration of the ending of slavery in the US in 1865, I'm thinking of Sarah Parker Remond who travelled to Ireland in 1858 to talk about abolition.
When she spoke, on the invitation of the Dublin Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society, she outlined the horrors faced by women in particular ...
"on behalf of the female slave, the most deplorably and helplessly wretched of human sufferers. Of all who dropped and writhed under the infliction of this horrible system, the greatest sufferer was defenceless women (hear!) For the male slave, however brutally treated, there was some resources: but for the woman slave, there was neither protection nor pity."
Sarah Parker Remond was “hailed with long and repeated plaudits" and praised in the Freeman’s Journal.
While Frederick Douglass might be better remembered, he was one of about 30 black abolitionists who came here. Sarah stayed with the same family who had hosted Douglass, as Christine Kinealy writes in this great piece. "Having for the first time experienced equality, she could not bear to return to America. Instead, she completed a degree at a college in London and moved to Italy, where she trained as a medical doctor."
She continued to work closely with Irish abolitionists.
https://t.co/Wugext0xpb

[Cormac Kinsella @CormacKinsella]

John McGahern Prize for debut Irish fiction 2023 shortlist revealed. Huge congrats to ⁦@michaelmagee__⁩ Colin Walsh & Noel O’Regan ⁦@PenguinIEBooks⁩ ⁦@AtlanticBooks⁩ ⁦@GrantaBooks⁩

https://t.co/coyahT1qje

[Alan McMonagle @mcmonaglewriter]

The Good Crank has been playing to full houses in The Villager. Tomorrow's performance is also sold out, but there is some availability for remaining three performances...
https://t.co/1OdroQAZl9

[The Pig's Back @ThePigsBack1]

Prose workshop with @hollowaywriter2 https://t.co/aefHMobn4u

[Katie Donovan @katiedon5]

Looking forward to reading my poems at the United Arts Club on Friday - where Yeats was a member - a hive of creative energy in a fabulous old Georgian Dublin building. I hear the food is great! And maybe some of the poems will go down well too...

[Alan McMonagle @mcmonaglewriter]

The Good Crank opens tomorrow evening in The Villager in Chapelizod. Opening performance is sold-out, check out the link below for subsequent dates...

https://t.co/h5JaKtX6QN

[Órfhlaith Foyle @FoyleOrfhlaith]

'As soon as you label yourself, your writing will be expected to continually fit that mould.'

[The Critic @TheCriticMag]

The instinct towards appeasing “sensitivity” stifles the creative impulse, writes @rosemaryj77 https://t.co/zZjp9rLoQd

[Katie Donovan @katiedon5]

Delighted to be in such company!

[Sonia Sodha @soniasodha]

This is depressing. Shame on those at Hay and Edinburgh who caved to fringe activists, thus paving the way for this. It's on them.

https://t.co/7IGDVVRPFn

[Amanda Craig @AmandaPCraig]

The new ⁦@PrivateEyeNews⁩ spells it out for the poltroons of Fossil Free Nooks, litfests, signatories of the virtue-signalling letter against Baillie Gifford etc

[Amanda Craig @AmandaPCraig]

Growing sponsorship row leaves UK summer arts festivals in turmoil. “It gravely jeopardises the fragile ecosystem that has taken decades to build.” Thanks Fossil Free Books for trashing that. https://t.co/t2TwVG9STN