A Girl's Writing Is Never Done (c) Shauna Gilligan 2026
I am very much looking forward to working with writers and artists on Saturday 9th October exploring Brigid and our sense of place at 2pm and Brigid and the Sacred Feminine at 7pm.
Both workshops are fully booked and have a waiting list.
Margo McNulty and I would like to thank everyone for engaging with our collaborative endeavour Mantles (Funded by Creative Ireland/ Kildare County Council/Roscommon County Council)
This year I was awarded a Creative Ireland Bursary (Kildare County Council) with Margo McNulty (Roscommon County Council), to work on our collaboration Mantles which explored Brigid through place, symbols, artefacts and heritage.
On Tuesday October 5th at 2pm, Margo and I talk with Clodagh Doyle (Keeper, Irish Folklife Division, National Museum of Ireland), about our extensive research including the use of public archives and artefacts, and our image and word making. Margo will discuss some of her images in detail and I will give two short readings from my writing on Brigid.
Please join us – sign up for this FREE event: Kildare Readers Festival Eventbrite
A few years ago I was delighted to take part in Neil Donnelly’s documentary on Irish writer Aidan Higgins edited by Seamus Callagy. The documentary premiered in the Irish Film Institute and this week aired on RTE. If you didn’t catch it, watch it here on playback. (I appear briefly in Part Three discussing Dog Days with other Kildare writers)
For more background and information about this documentary take a read of my 2019 Writers Chat with Neil.
Seamus Callagy writes for RTE about his experience on the documentary.
Watching the documentary has prompted me to return and re-read the extensive and expansive prose of Higgins and to explore Alannah Hopkin’s A Very Strange Man: A Memoir of Aidan Higgins.
Shauna Gilligan Writer 