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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20260927T150000
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SUMMARY:POSTPONED: Susan Donovan Bernhard: WESTERLY
DESCRIPTION:A Maine Irish Author Event\nDue to pending inclement weather\, this event has been POSTPONED! We are working with Susan to determine a new date in Spring of 2027. Stay tuned!\n\nJoin us on Sunday\, September 27th for a lovely afternoon of conversation with bestselling author Susan Donovan Bernhard! \nSusan will discuss her novel WESTERLY in conversation with Louise Miller\, of A CITY BAKER’S GUIDE TO COUNTRY LIVING and THE LATE BLOOMER’S CLUB. \nBooks will be available for purchase and signing at the event\, courtesy of Perkins Cove Bookshop. \n  \nAbout WESTERLY:\nIn an unforgettable saga of survival\, motherhood\, sisterhood\, and the secrets that haunt us\, one desperate decision creates a fault line that spans decades and threatens to break a family wide open. \nIn 1946\, two German sisters\, child refugees in a program dubbed Operation Shamrock\, arrive in West Cork\, Ireland to live in foster care while Europe recovers from war. Nearly fifty years later\, on a fateful day in a bustling Maine farmhouse\, an Irish newspaper clipping threatens to unravel Faye Sullivan’s carefully constructed life with husband William and daughters Maeve and Molly\, a life already on the brink of collapse. \nFrom Germany to Ireland to coastal Maine\, this tender family saga explores identity\, reconciliation\, and the true meaning of home. \nTo purchase in advance\, please visit Perkins Cove Bookshop in Ogunquit or head to https://www.susanbernhard.com/westerly \n\n\n\nAbout Susan Donovan Bernhard:\n \nSusan Donovan Bernhard is the bestselling author of the novels Westerly and Winter Loon\, which won the Boston Authors Club Julia Ward Howe Prize for Fiction. She is a Massachusetts Cultural Council fellowship recipient\, a GrubStreet Novel Incubator program graduate\, and a Tennessee Williams Scholar to the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. A dual citizen of the United States and Ireland\, Susan was born and raised in the Bitterroot Valley of western Montana and graduated from the University of Maryland. When she’s not traveling\, she lives and writes in Massachusetts. Learn more at https://www.susandonovanbernhard.com/ \n  \n  \n  \n  \n  \nAbout Louise Miller: \nLouise Miller is the author of THE CITY BAKER’S GUIDE TO COUNTRY LIVING and THE LATE BLOOMERS’ CLUB. In addition to being a novelist\, she is a professional pastry chef\, an art school dropout\, a certified field naturalist\, an old-time banjo player\, an obsessive moviegoer\, a meditation enthusiast and an amateur flower gardener. Louise lives in Boston\, MA\, where she lives with her partner and an assortment of cats. Learn more at http://www.louisemiller.net\n \n  \n 
URL:https://maineirish.com/event/susan-donovan-bernhard-westerly/
LOCATION:Maine Irish Heritage Center\, 34 Gray St\, Portland\, ME\, 04102\, United States
CATEGORIES:book-talk,Community
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ORGANIZER;CN="Maine Irish Heritage Center":MAILTO:maineirish@maineirish.com
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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20260625T183000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20260625T203000
DTSTAMP:20260616T174128Z
CREATED:20260402T185657Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260616T174128Z
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SUMMARY:Irene M. Drago's Irish Timber
DESCRIPTION:Irene M. Drago’s Irish Timber\nA Maine Irish Author Event\nThursday\, June 25th\n6:30pm\nDoors open at 6:00pm\nJoin us for an incredible evening of literature and history with Maine Author Irene Murtagh Drago as she discusses her latest novel Irish Timber. \nBooks will be available for sale and signing at the event from Print: A Bookstore! \nAbout the Book:\nInspired by true events\, Irish Timber is a standalone novel and a follow-up to Lavinia Wren and the Sailmakers. In the summer of 1931\, Susie Rowley travels to Ireland with her cousin\, a friend\, and the undoubtable Eliza Willey Walker. Eliza convinces the band of Yankee scholars to investigate the wreck of her grandfather’s ship\, the Alfred D. Snow. When Susie falls for Hugh Larkin\, a medical student from County Wexford\, their quest takes a detour. Later\, she returns to Dublin and takes a job at the national library working for Dr. Richard Hayes. The librarian is soon drafted by Irish Military Intelligence\, and Susie\, a gifted linguist\, is asked to join him to catch a German spy. As war engulfs their world\, Yankee and Irish families alike demonstrate the power of love and the enduring value of Irish timber. \n\n\n\nAbout the Author:\nIrene M. Drago is the award-winning author of three historical novels\, Daughters of Long Reach\, The Maine Point\, and Lavinia Wren and the Sailmakers. She also speaks three languages. During the Cold War\, she honed her Russian skills by working for the D.O.D. Later\, she taught Spanish at the high school and college level. Irene Murtagh Drago learned how to tell sea stories from her father\, a chief petty officer who served on U.S. Navy ships from 1940 to 1980. Her paternal grandparents were born in Ireland and her maternal grandparents were the children of Irish immigrants. Their voices bring a lilt to Irish Timber. \nLearn more at irenemdrago.com
URL:https://maineirish.com/event/irene-m-drago-irish-timber/
LOCATION:Maine Irish Heritage Center\, 34 Gray St\, Portland\, ME\, 04102\, United States
CATEGORIES:book-talk
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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20260203T183000
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SUMMARY:Maine Irish Author Talk: Betsy Cornwell
DESCRIPTION:In conversation with Patrisha McLean\nTuesday\, February 3rd\, 2026\n6:30pm\nDoors open at 6:00pm\n  \nJoin us for another Brigid’s Day program: a Maine Irish Author Talk with Betsy Cornwell! Focusing on her new memoir\, “Ring of Salt\,” Betsy will be in conversation with Patrisha McLean\, founder of Finding our Voices. We will have books for sale (and signing!) at the event from Print: A Bookstore! \n  \nAbout the Author:\nBetsy Cornwell is a New York Times bestselling author of six novels and founder of The Old Knitting Factory\, an arts residency and retreat space for single parents in Connemara. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Notre Dame and a BA from Smith College\, and currently teaches at the University of Galway. She serves as a mentor for the Irish Writers Centre and was the first recipient of their Blue Mountains (Australia) Residency in 2023. \nLearn more here: https://www.betsycornwell.com/about \n  \n\n\nAbout the Book:\n“Extraordinarily moving\, exquisitely written and socially revolutionary”—The Irish Times \n“Ring of Salt is so vast and tender and urgent\, it’s almost like reading a novel. I couldn’t put it down. I haven’t cheered for a heroine like Betsy in ages.” —Jen Hatmaker\, author of Awake \nFor readers of Maggie Smith and Stephanie Land\, an inspiring and lyrical memoir about a writer and mother who flees an abusive marriage and must learn to reclaim the story of her life through a search for home on Ireland’s wild\, western coast. \nAt twenty-four\, Betsy Cornwell runs away to Ireland for a fresh start. Leaving behind a painful past\, she chases her dream of becoming a novelist to the misty shores of the Aran Islands. There she meets a handsome and charming horse trainer\, and her life takes on the glow of a fairy tale when they elope to Gretna Green. \nFive years later\, her happy ending has twisted into a nightmare. Betsy is trapped in an abusive marriage\, isolated and afraid with a newborn baby. On her son’s first birthday\, she must flee home again\, this time turning to the women around her—her local survivor support group\, a trusted family friend\, and an online Smith College alumnae network—for help she’d never known she could ask for. \nAfter a brush with homelessness\, she struggles to scrape together a living for herself and her son. On sleepless nights\, she scrolls through real estate listings that might as well be castles in the air\, and starts to foster an impossible dream: What if she could use her writing to buy a home\, one that no one could take away from her and her baby? One that might become a haven\, not just for her family\, but other single parent artists and writers\, too? \nWhen she discovers a historic knitting factory and former cinema on Ireland’s rugged Connemara coastline\, left empty and crumbling for years\, that precarious dream becomes her lifeline. Over the next two years she works to crowdfund the old knitting factory’s purchase by sharing its story and her own\, in candid posts that range from the unexpectedly steep learning curves she encounters with home renovations and internet dating\, to her heartbreaking fight to keep custody of her son\, with her growing online community. But as the deadline to buy nears\, she realizes she will have to reckon with everything she believes about family\, survival\, and what happily-ever-after truly means for her dream to have any chance of coming true. \nRing of Salt combines a powerful and relatable narrative of survivorship and healing with lush writing about the windswept landscapes and rich mythology of rural Ireland to craft a real-world fairy tale about the ordinary\, but no less life-changing\, forms of magic we can all access: vulnerability\, community\, and the power of telling your own story. \n\nAbout Patrisha McLean:\nPatrisha McLean is the Founder+CEO of the grassroots nonprofit Finding Our Voices which is breaking the silence of domestic abuse across Maine.. She is also the host of the Let’s Talk About It podcast that is conversations with survivors of domestic abuse\, and an online book club featuring authors talking about the domestic abuse in their books\, lives\, countries. \nBetsy Cornwell is the guest of the online Finding Our Voices Book Club on March 24 at 1 p.m. Info and sign-up is here: https://findingourvoices.net/book-club \n  \nAbout Finding Our Voices:\nFinding Our Voices is the grassroots nonprofit breaking the silence of domestic abuse across Maine as well as providing resources and peer-support to women survivors. Its programs include preventive and educational outreach to students; access to donated dental care; financial assistance; and online support groups and Healing Together retreats. For more information visit https://findingourvoices.net \n 
URL:https://maineirish.com/event/maine-irish-author-talk-betsy-cornwell/
LOCATION:Maine Irish Heritage Center\, 34 Gray St\, Portland\, ME\, 04102\, United States
CATEGORIES:book-talk
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