Sinéad Gleeson and Kim Gordon’s collection of essays by female writers about female artists that matter to them, This Woman’s Work: Essays on Music was published in April this year. The book “seeks to challenge the male dominance and sexism hard-coded in the canons of music, literature, and film and has forced women to fight pigeon-holing or being side-lined by carving out their own space.” Author and journalist Sinéad Gleeson talks inspiration and fandom with Patrick Freyne.

Sinéad Gleeson’s essay collection Constellations: Reflections from Life won Non-Fiction Book of the Year at 2019 Irish Book Awards and the Dalkey Literary Award for Emerging Writer. It was shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. She is the editor of The Long Gaze Back: An Anthology of Irish Women Writers, The Glass Shore: Short Stories by Women Writers from the North of Ireland and The Art of Glimpse: 100 Irish Short Stories. Sinéad has engaged in multi-disciplinary collaborations with artists and musicians, including commissions from City Gallery Wellington, The Wellcome Collection, BBC and Frieze. In 2021, she collaborated with composer Stephen Shannon and artists Aideen Barry on By Slight Ligaments (Limerick City Gallery) and Alice Maher and Rachel Fallon on The Map / We Are The Map (Rua Red). She is co-editor with Kim Gordon of This Woman’s Work: Essays on Music (White Rabbit Books/Hachette, 2022) and is currently working on a novel.

Patrick Freyne spent most of his twenties trying to be a rock star before turning to the much more stable and secure world of journalism. He has had short stories and essays published in The Dublin Review, Banshee and Winter Papers and is a features writer at the Irish Times. His book of essays, OK, Let’s Do Your Stupid Idea, was published by Penguin Sandycove in 2020. It was nominated for an Irish Book Award, longlisted for the Rathbones Prize and shortlisted for the Dalkey Prize.

Kildare Readers Festival is brought to you every year in October by Kildare County Library and Arts Service. For more information about KRF see https://kildarecoco.ie/library/KildareReadersFestival/