Nell McCafferty was one of the most remarkable journalists and campaigners of recent Irish history. Her immense reputation and outspoken views on women’s rights, gay rights and Irish nationalism helped Ireland move on from an era of stifling social conservatism. The festival is moved to honour her in this special event with Rosita Sweetman, Ailbhe Smyth and Muire McCallion (Nell’s niece).

A Derry woman and civil rights activist, she was present on Bloody Sunday in 1972, when paratroopers shot dead 14 civil rights protesters in Derry. “It is not a myth that all of us there were changed for evermore by the experience; it is a fact,” she wrote later. “It is in the Derry air. It is limned in our blood.”

Fellow founder of the  Irish Women’s Liberation Movement, writer Rosita Sweetman met Nell at a time when “down south we were politely attempting to extricate ourselves from the deathly embrace of Catholicism and respectability”. Muire McCallion feels that Nell belonged to the Bogside in Derry and remembers her firebrand aunt with great affection. Ailbhe Smyth recalls Nell McCafferty as a feminist and an activist who cared deeply for those who were marginalised. 

They will be in conversation with Eoin McNamee, a writer whose superb novels have often explored the territory between the border lands of Northern Ireland and the Republic. His latest novel is The Bureau.

Tickets €14/€12 from glór box office on 065 6843103 or online here

Details of all events to be held at Ennis Book Club Festival from March 6 -8 can be found here

Kindly Supported by 

The Ennis Book Club Festival is supported by the Arts Council of Ireland.