Reading

11 April 2026 at 4pm

We were pleased to host Mary O’Donnell and her reading of her compelling new novel, Sweep the Cobwebs off the Sky on Saturday, 11 April 2026 at 4pm. The event was part of the Five Lamps Arts Festival.

The book explores the lives of three older women, two daughters and their 93-year-old mother, and how returning to the family home awakens bitter memories of childhood abuse. The house itself is haunted by a poltergeist, reflecting the inner distress experienced by the novel’s protagonist.

Mary O’Donnell is a prolific and well-known poet and novelist. Her latest novel Sweep the Cobwebs off the Sky has just been published by Époque Press, and her tenth poetry collection Tenderness appears with Wake Forest University Press in September. Her collection of short stories Walking Ghosts appeared last year from Mercier Press. She is a member since 2001 of the artists’ affiliation Aosdána.

The reading will finish with a Q&A by Mia Gallagher who is a Dublin-based writer of novels, short stories, essays, and theatre. Her novel HellFire (Penguin, 2006) won the Irish Tatler Literature Award, and Beautiful Pictures of the Lost Homeland (New Island, 2016) was longlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Award.

Her short story collection Shift (2018) was shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards. Her work has been widely anthologised, and recent work includes writing for The Stinging Fly and a short story broadcast on RTÉ Radio. She is a contributing editor with The Stinging Fly and a member of Aosdána.