Marie MacSweeney: Letters From A Recalcitrant Woman

Marie MacSweeney will launch her new book, Letters From A Recalcitrant Woman (Letters to Editors and Talk Show Hosts, 1974 to 2013), at the High Lanes Gallery, Laurence Street, Drogheda on Thursday, 28 November at 8pm.

Michael Reade of LMFM will officially launch the book and refreshments served.

Marie MacSweeney is a Drogheda-based writer, a ‘Kerrywoman born in Dublin and living in County Louth’, as she describes herself.

She has, over a period of forty years, engaged in public debate by means of Letters to the Editor and Emails to current affairs programmes. This book contains a selection of these letters on topics as diverse as blasphemy, capital punishment, the Paisleys, peanuts, Bertie’s make-up, the Irish language, divorce, cruelty to animals, Adam and Eve, St. Patrick, Marilyn Monroe and much more.

Best known for her short stories and poems, Marie wrote her first letter to the press over four decades ago and in reading these letters today it becomes obvious that she always had something specific to say and said it frankly and sincerely.  Hers is a unique voice which both challenges and subverts. It is unlikely that the reader will agree with everything in this book, but hopefully will conclude that she argues well, and entertains.

Marie MacSweeney has published Our Ordinary World and Other Stories in 2004. She also published two collections of poems, Mother Cecily’s Music Room (2005) and Flying During the Hours of Darkness (2009). Her stories and plays have been transmitted by RTE Radio One, where she also broadcasts occasional talks.