Christmas story telling in Ballybane Library

Here are some of the many happy faces at the Christmas Story Telling session that took place in Ballybane Library on Saturday 20th of December 2008 with Clare Muireann Murphy

Winning Young Poet from Ballybane

The Library
By
William Ikenna-Nwosu

The Library is my favourite place
There I always see a friendly face
In the Library there are a lot of books
But you cannot judge them by their looks

There are lots of books on the shelves
Some about fables some about elves
Lots about the human body
For the babies, some about Noddy

If you just ask me
It’s a wonderful place to be
You could go with your buddy
Instead of getting very muddy.

This poem was a winner in the Junior Poetry Competition which was held as part of Children’s Book Week during October in Ballybane Library.

Final Over The Edge: Open Reading of 2008

The final Over The Edge: Open Reading of the year will take place in Galway City Library, St. Augustine Street, Galway on Thursday, December 18th, 6.30-8pm.

The Featured Readers are Paula Gilbert, Denise Heneghan & Clare Muireann Murphy.

Clare Muireann Murphy is a professional storyteller. She has performed at festivals such as The Electric Picnic, Vienna Lit, Kilkenny Arts Festival, Baboró Children's Festival with Rab Swannock Fulton and Singapore Out of the Box Puppet Festival. Clare played Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in a solo show as part of the Tales for Winter series in November. Her repertoire includes the Irish myths and legends as well as many more tales from world folklore. She founded Story Night, the monthly story share gathering at the Spirit Centre on Nun’s Island. She is an Arts Foundation Fellowship nominee and a winner of the Social Entrepreneurs Award 2007 for her storytelling work.

Paula Gilbert is originally from Meath but moved to Claremorris, Co. Mayo when she was young. She has always loved writing and would love to write a book of short stories. She has attended John Corless’s Creative Writing Classes at G.M.I.T-Castlebar. She read her story ‘Mad Mooney’ at this year’s Force 12 Writers’ Weekend in Bellmullet. She is secretary of Mayo Writers Block, who won first prize at this year’s National Writers Group Festival in Longford.

Denise Heneghan is a social entrepreneur with a background in technical management and voluntary leadership. She started writing poetry four years ago, and has attended workshops facilitated by Geraldine Mills and Kevin Higgins. She is currently a member of the advanced poetry class at Galway Arts Centre. She has been a finalist at a number of Cúirt and Baffle Poetry Slams. She won third prize at Baffle 2005, and was shortlisted in the 2008 Over The Edge New Writer of the Year competition.

As usual there will be an open-mic when the Featured Readers have finished. This is open to anyone who has a poem or story to share. New readers are always especially welcome. For further details phone 087-6431748.

French novelist Le Clézio wins Nobel literature prize

French author Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio, a globetrotting novelist hailed as a child of all continents, has won the Nobel prize for literature.
"His works have a cosmopolitan character. Frenchman, yes, but more so a traveler, a citizen of the world, a nomad," Horace Engdahl, permanent secretary of the Academy, told a news conference to announce the laureate.

There are few modern writers more cosmopolitan than Le Clézio. He was born in France. His father was a Mauritian-born British doctor. He spent part of his childhood with his father in Africa and several years in the 1970s living with an Indian tribe in Panama. He now lives and teaches for most of the year in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He once said: "The French language is my only country, the only place that I call home."
His best-known book, written in 1980, is Desert, which contrasts the ugliness and ignorance of Europe, as experienced by immigrants, with the simple nobility of a lost Tuareg civilisation in the Sahara, destroyed by French colonialism.
The Swedish Academy said it had awarded Le Clézio the prize of 10 million Swedish kroner (£790,000) because he was an "author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, an explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilisation".

Ballybane Library

Here are some images of the activities that took place during the October 2008 Children's Book Festival in Ballybane Library