This book club takes place in Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin 1, for the first two sessions and Rua Red Arts Centre, Tallaght, for the second two sessions.

For the first session, the book which will be discussed is A Ghost in the Throat by Doireann Ní Ghríofa.

All sessions will happen from 2pm - 4pm, on the following dates:

Saturday 22 October: at Hugh Lane Gallery

Saturday 5 November: at Hugh Lane Gallery

Saturday 19 November: at Rua Red

Saturday 3 December: at Rua Red

Participation in this book club is free and open to all, though space is limited.

The reading material covered will be from the following list:

• Wanderlust by Rebecca Solnit
• A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit
• Tangleweed and Brine by Deirdre Sullivan
• What My Bones Know by Stephanie Foo
• The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter
• A Ghost in the Throat by Doireann Ní Ghríofa (to be discussed at first session)
• Notes to Self by Emilie Pine
• Deborah Levy’s ‘living autobiography’ series: Things I Don’t Want to Know, The Cost of Living and Real Estate
• A Life’s Work by Rachel Cusk
• Making Babies by Anne Enright
• Repeal the 8th Anthology by Una Mullally
• Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert
• handiwork by Sarah Baume
• On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King
• Hunger by Roxane Gay
• The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison

The Bones Book Club

The Bones Book Club has emerged from the Bones in the Attic Summer School, which took place in August 2022 at Hugh Lane Gallery. The Bones in the Attic Summer School explored themes from the Bones in the Attic exhibition - an inter-generational exhibition comprising the work of eleven Irish artists, each exploring recurring and ongoing societal issues affecting women. Works by key artists in the Hugh Lane Gallery collection – Rita Duffy, Dorothy Cross, Kathy Prendergast, Alice Maher and Jesse Jones – are exhibited alongside works by invited artists Myrid Carten, Eleanor McCaughey, Amanda Doran, Sarah Jayne Booth, Ruby Wallis, and the art collective Na Cailleacha. The reading list above was compiled by the participants of the Bones in the Attic Summer School, as a way to collectively continue their enquiry into these important contemporary feminist themes.

At Rua Red, these themes are explored through The Magdalene Series, an ongoing exhibition programme exploring Mary Magdalene’s associations with the incarceration and institutionalisation of women and other themes such as forced labour, morality, shame, reparation, and penitence. The series proposes a new world, uncurbed by religious, political, or societal doctrine, a world led by the experience of the Magdalene and viewed through the lens of contemporary feminism and feminist theology. The Magdalene Series features artworks by the artists Amanda Coogan, Alice Maher and Rachel Fallon, Jesse Jones, and Grace Dyas.

Crossovers between artists, artworks, and themes illuminated through the exhibitions at both Hugh Lane Gallery and Rua Red will be explored in the book club through selected texts from the list above.