Elaine Feeney returns to Cúirt to launch her second novel, How to Build a Boat, in Kenny’s Bookshop.
With tender prose and vivid imagery, Feeney introduces us to 13-year-old Jamie O’Neill, whose two biggest ambitions are to build a Perpetual Motion Machine and to connect with his mum, Noelle, who died when he was born.
How to Build a Boat is the story of how Jamie’s mission transforms the lives of those in his community. Elaine will be joined in conversation by Sinéad Gleeson.
Join us in the festival club, Galway City Distillery, that evening to toast Elaine’s book.
Duration 1 hour
Elaine Feeney is a writer from the west of Ireland and she has published three poetry collections including The Radio was Gospel and Rise (Salmon Poetry). Her first novel, As You Were (Vintage, 2021) won the 2021 Dalkey Book Festival’s Emerging Writer Prize, The Kate O’Brien Prize and The Society of Authors’ McKitterick Prize. It was nominated for Irish Novel of the Year and shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize. Feeney lectures in Poetry and Creative Writing at The University of Galway, where she is also a founding member of the Tuam Oral History Project; she is the Poet Laureate for Athenry, Co Galway.
Sinéad Gleeson is a writer, editor, freelance broadcaster and journalist. She has edited several anthologies, among them The Long Gaze Back (New Island, 2015), which won the Irish Book Award for Best Irish Published Book of the Year. Her first essay collection, Constellations (Picador, 2019) was shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize 2020. Her work has appeared in Granta, Winter Papers, Gorse, Banshee and The Irish Times, among other publications.
