Felicity Hayes-McCoy Author: Blog and Website

As the 1916 centenary commemorations continue, two things become increasingly evident. First, that the Dublin-centric version of Ireland's Easter Rising on which many of us were raised has obscured a far wider national story. Secondly, how many personal stories have yet to come to light. Marion Stokes. Cumann na mBan. Enniscorthy garrison Easter Rising 1916 My book A Woven Silence: Memory, History & Remembrance was inspired by a sense that I ought to know more about my grandmother’s cousin, Marion Stokes, one of three Cumann na mBan women who raised the tricolour over Enniscorthy’s Athenaeum in Easter Week 1916. County Wexford rose late, confused at first, like the rest of the country, by MacNeill’s order countermanding the rising, then responding to subsequent orders from the GPO to destroy the eastern railway approaches to Dublin. The Athenaeum garrison was the last to surrender, holding out stubbornly until its commanders were brought under a white

Book promotion in Dingle can be more complex than you might expect.  Especially if you grow spuds. Last year the tourist office in Dingle town offered me a window display to advertise The House on an Irish Hillside and Enough Is Plenty.  We put a kitchen chair, some posters, a couple of copies of the books and a pile of promotional postcards in the back of the car, added a twist of oat straw and a spade from the shed and drove them into town. The lovely staff at the tourist office gave us a corner window facing onto the pier, right by the office where you book trips to visit Fungie .... ... and right through the year book lovers have paused to peer through the glass or come in to pick up a postcard and be told which shops in the  town will sell them my books. Then today I dropped into a friend's restaurant in Green Street ... ... and suddenly I realised Spring has arrived. Her restaurant interior has been relaid out and redecor