Open Book

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BBC Radio 4 LW

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Programme looking at new fiction and non-fiction books

Programme looking at new fiction and non-fiction books, talking to authors and publishers and unearthing lost classics

BBC Radio 4 FM

Open Book: Sinéad Gleeson

Sinéad Gleeson

BBC Radio 4 - Open Book, Sinéad Gleeson

Sinéad Gleeson talks to Octavia Bright about her new novel, Hagstone.

Sinéad Gleeson talks to Octavia Bright about her new novel, Hagstone, and finds out about the history of the printed book.

Sinéad Gleeson is a writer, broadcaster and editor of three anthologies of Irish writing. Her collection of essays, Constellations: Reflections from Life won Non Fiction Book of the Year at the 2019 Irish Book Awards, and now publishes her debut novel, Hagstone. 

Hagstone is set on a remote island of the coast of Ireland, it tells the story of Nell an artist whose work takes inspiration from the landscape and folklore. When she receives an invitation to create a piece of art from the Inions, a reclusive commune of women living sustainably on the island, things begin to unravel. Sinead discusses the precarity of living as an artist, the folklore which infuses Hagstone and dedicating the book to the late activist and artist Sinead O' Connor. 

The Book Makers by Adam Smyth is a celebration of five hundred and fifty years of the printed book, told through the lives of eighteen extraordinary people. The printers and binders, publishers and artists, paper-makers and library founders - who took the book in radical new directions. We hear about the binder who created Shakespeare's First Folio, a 16th century Dutch printer who created bestsellers on Fleet Street and the Cut and Paste Bible sisters who made art from the gospels. 

And Kick the Latch author Kathryn Scanlan discusses her love of Moyra Davey’s Long Life: Cool White, Photographs and Essays.

Book List – Sunday 21 March 

Hagstone by Sinéad Gleeson
The Long Gaze Back: An Anthology of Irish Women Writers by Sinéad Gleeson
The Glass Shore edited by Sinéad Gleeson
Constellations: Reflections from Life by Sinéad Gleeson
Kick the Latch by Kathryn Scanlan
Long Life Cool White: Photographs by Moyra Davey
The Book Makers by Adam Smyth

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