Bantry / Sunday 7 – Saturday 13 July - West Cork Music

THURsday 11 July14.30 / St. Brendan’s School Hall / €18WRITING CRAZY LOVEwith BARBARA CLAYPOLE WHITEBarbara Claypole White, author of The Unfinished Garden (MIRA, 2012), writes stories in whichcharacters find love and hope in the shadow of mental illness. When she created James, the first obsessivecompulsiveromantic hero in mainstream fiction, she wanted only to create a believable character. However,she is constantly answering questions that chip away at the stereotypes James contradicts: ‘Why isn’t he ahand washer?’ ‘How can an obsessive-compulsive have a tattoo?’ Barbara will talk about OCD and readfrom The Unfinished Garden (think Silver Linings Playbook with garden settings) and will discuss researchingher second novel.Barbara Claypole White grew up in an English village with dreams of becoming a novelist. After a detourthrough women’s and medieval history at York University, she landed a job promoting London fashion.Part of the first British Designer Show, she measured celebrities in their underwear and worked for DameVivienne Westwood. After falling in love with an American professor who followed her around JFK Airport,she became a faculty spouse in a Midwest college town, where she worked as a marketing director andstarted writing her first novel, about the rag trade and AIDS, but after the birth of her son, Barbara becamea stay-at-home mom and a woodland gardener. She returned to her manuscript, but slammed into anotherdetour: her young son developed obsessive-compulsive disorder. The Unfinished Garden – a story about grief,OCD, and dirt – was published in 2012. The In-between Hour follows in 2014.Barbara Claypole White (photo: Adam Richard Rottinghaus)16.00 / Maritime Hotel / €10LET’S TALK WORDS with Magi Gibson, Peter Murphy and Ian MacphersonWe all have them: words that we love to love, and love to hate; words that we abuse, overuse, no longer useand misuse; words that we always misspell … Whether reader, writer or talker, bring along your pet wordsto this discussion, and maybe even catch out our panellists with some obscure vocabulary of your fancy.19