New Web site

Our new website is now up and running although very much in an experimental stage and can be found at http;//homepage.eircom./~thewriterscircle    Over the coming week this website will be updated on a regular basishttp://homepage.eircom./~thewriterscircle, Tommy Murray

Book Sales Update

"Swimming with Dolphins" will have to sell seven more copies to equal "Once on Tara's Plain" and a further two to equal the sales of "Famine Trilogy" and a massive fifty more to equal "The Boyne and other Poems"
With less than four months since it appeared  it still has plenty of time to catch up.   It is unlikely however, that any of these will come anywhere near the two thousand nine hundred copies of "Meath Voices that were sold in the first year and are still available on Amazon WHsmith and Blackwells and Eason's.  I dont have figure for "Counting Stained Glass Windows" but my very first poetry collection," Something Beginning with Spring" which was published in the early eighties sold three hundred and thirty in the first month. 
My folk and Ghost Story collection is now with the publisher and is being chopped and changed as new stories come in.   It is all so bloody boring.  
The following list is in chronological order

Memorable Meath Views
Something Beginning with Spring
Where Was Wellington Born ? 
Stella's Cottage
Once on Tara's Plain
The Boyne and other Poems
Trim, Looking Back
Voices of Trim
Meath Voices
Images of Meath
With the Boyne Through Trim

Counting Stained Glass Windows
Famine Trilogy
Swimming With Dolphins

All Ireland Poetry Day

Members of the Meath Writer's Circle will be celebrating All Ireland Poetry Day with a ' Read your Favourite  Poem ' reading in the Navan Library on Thursday 4th October at 7.30 pm.  The event is being organised by poets Tom French and Tommy Murray  and all are welcome.  This means that the meeting of the Meath Writer's Circle due to take place on that evening will now b e postponed to the following Thursday 11th October

Meath Ghost and Folk Tales

Now taking orders for ' Meath Ghost and Folk Tales. ' Priced 12 euro this is a fascinating collection of accounts of paranormal and ghostly tales from around the county.    Over 300 orders have already been placed for what  is expected to be a total sell out.
So whether it's a big black hound, a tall dark man or a headless horse that scares you there is something is  this collection to make sure that you keep the door bolted this winter.    With stories from Navan, Kells and Trim where nearly every street has its own scary story there are stories too from Ballivor, Kiltale Clunbun,
From the Meath Westmeath border and form the coast.   Ten years in the gathering this collection will go straight into the folklore of the county.   With 300 orders to date there will be a further 200 up for grabs, before a second run will be considered

                           Lone Bush at Kiltale has survived despite extensive road works

Busy Times

Little time for posting these days or indeed nights.  Trying to get Golden Rhymes  to the printer in time for an October launch and busy  trying to sell copies of 'Swimming with Dolphins' There are a few other ventures in the pipeline but together with writing a few competition poems these are top priority.  More later

One of Ireland's most exciting new writers Shauna Gilligan will be launching her novel'Happiness Comes from Nowhere.  at 6.30pm, Wednesday, 12th September 2012 at  Irish Writers’ Centre, Parnell Square, Dublin.
The Launch will be performed by Nuala Ní Chonchúir


 Shauna will be giving a reading at the October meeting of the  Meath Writers Circle


Born in Dublin, Ireland, Shauna has worked and lived in Mexico, Spain, India and the UK. She holds an MA in History from University College Dublin having also studied English as an undergraduate. She is currently completing a PhD in Writing at the University of Glamorgan, Wales. As part of her research, she is examining suicide and writing processes in a selection of novels by and in a series of interviews with Irish writer Desmond Hogan.
Her work has been published in New Writing: The International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writing and in The Ulster Tatler's Literary Miscellany. She has given public readings of her fiction in Ireland and USA and has presented on writing at academic conferences in Ireland, UK, Germany and USA.
.

Happiness Comes From Nowhere follows the lives of the Horn family: Mary, Sepp and Dirk. Their paths cross and intertwine with those of extended family, friends and acquaintances as journeys are made through the changing city of Dublin. People also venture further in search of happiness: Mary and Dirk wander the streets of Rome and Ita watches a cargo ship unload in Spain. Expressed in ways as different as suicide, art and sex, the inseparable pangs of loss and happiness – remembered and present – are threaded through the novel.

Reviews

“Fresh and original…Shauna Gilligan is a name to watch.” Sue Leonard, The Irish Examiner







Born in Dublin, Ireland, Shauna has worked and lived in Mexico, Spain, India and the UK. She holds an MA in History from University College Dublin having also studied English as an undergraduate. She is currently completing a PhD in Writing at the University of Glamorgan, Wales. As part of her research, she is examining suicide and writing processes in a selection of novels by and in a series of interviews with Irish writer Desmond Hogan.

Her work has been published in New Writing: The International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writing and in The Ulster Tatler's Literary Miscellany. She has given public readings of her fiction in Ireland and USA and has presented on writing at academic conferences in Ireland, UK, Germany and USA.



Happiness comes from Nowhere is her first book to be published.

Shauna will also be launching our children's book,'Golden Rhymes in October