The National Library of Ireland

Podcaster in Residence - Episode 9 - The Reader - Adrian Crowley

Adrian Crowley This is the final episode in this podcast series The Reader with Zoë Comyns Podcaster in Residence at The National Library In each episode of this series a guest imagines a fictional reader who explores the collection. In this episode to talk about old maps of Dublin, liminal spaces and forgotten card games Zoë is joined by songwriter, singer, composer and writer Adrian Crowley. Adrian was born in Malta, raised in Galway and now calls Dublin home. He was nominated on three occasions for Ireland’s Choice Music Prize for album of the year, winning the prestigious award in 2010 for his album Season Of The Sparks. To date he has released ten solo albums. His most recent, Measure Of Joy was produced by John Parish and was met with widespread acclaim. Adrian has ten studio albums and has recently toured Europe including shows in Vienna, Amsterdam and two nights in the legendary Paris venue, La Cigale in March of this year. Adrian is in his own words ‘a restless and constantly searching artist’, and as he writers, composes and sings he isn’t satisfied to settle on just one artistic discipline pushes boundaries in multiple disciplines. Crowley has recently been involved in film and theatre projects as an actor. Last Summer he performed with Olwen Fouéré at the National Gallery of Ireland for a special production of Fouéré’s short play entitled Duet. Adrian takes as his inspiration a map Zoë found in the manuscripts room which depicts Dublin in the 17th Century and features an area in called The Whole Land of Tibb and Tom. Adrian has channeled Tib* & Tom into shadowy characters in his short story Gleek. It’s hard to say when Lenny first started feeling the presence. It never felt like an ill-meaning thing, no, but a presence all the same. Faint and friendly sadness in the room. And there was the song. The song that he found himself humming at times, when he was in the depths of his work, That in slow increments became apparent that in some way in his mind was connected to the presence.. The broken melody gave him a feeling that wasn’t at all unpleasant but at the same time had a slow building expectancy about it As if it were an invitation to, a prelude to an act. An act that felt familiar to Lenny but when he tried to focus the lens of his waking mind on it, it was lost. Lenny has come to name this presence. He calls this presence Tib and Tom. Zoë and Adrian chat about the history of the area’s name (it refers to a card game called Gleek). Adrian’s main character Lenny is loosely based on a real person, a former tour manager of his. The setting for the story in a framer’s workshop, is also based on a real location. Adrian says it took some time to quietly summon the story into being. He used his own attunement to liminal spaces and talks about how he has always felt connected to ghostly presences. He talks about two specific incidences one in his childhood and another living in a Dublin flat, where he felt he was on the threshold of other worlds. The Map featured in this episode is to be found in the Manuscript Room. MS 46,575 (1-2) Dublin in the 17th Century: an attempt to identify streets by T Phillips, 1685/L.R.S del 1905. If you’d like to listen back to any of the episodes in this series you can find links to stories by Jan Carson, Nuala O’Connor, Adrian Duncan, Niamh O’Brien, Clara Kumagi and of course this episode with Adrian Crowley. Have a listen back to how these writers were inspired by collection items and visit yourself, become The Reader and write your own responses. Thanks to you all for listening to the podcasts in this residency. Thanks to The National Library of Ireland and The Arts Council of Ireland for supporting this podcast.

Podcaster in Residence - Episode 8 - The Reader - Clara Kumagai

In this penultimate episode of The Reader Podcaster in Residence Zoë Comyns chats to writer Clara Kumagai about botanical drawings of Manitoban plants, snakes and ecological crisis. Clara Kumagai is from Ireland, Japan and Canada. Her debut Young Adult novel, Catfish Rolling, was a YOTO Carnegie Medal nominee, shortlisted for the Great Reads Award and winner of the 2024 KPMG Children’s Books Ireland Books of the Year. Her most recent novel, Songs for Ghosts, was longlisted for the YOTO Carnegie Medal for fiction and the Jhalak Children’s & Young Adult Prize 2026. She lives in Ireland. In each episode a writer is commissioned to write a short story – they are to imagine a fictional reader and write about what brings this character to the library. Clara took as inspiration, Plants of Manitoba by Hay Strafford Stead, and specifically an illustration of Seneca snake root. Her main character Willow is directed to the library in an absurd series of events on St Patrick’s Day. Ever since the snakes had come back the country had been in an uproar. There was the usual end-of-days proclaiming; it was the most convincing portent yet. It was down to climate change which was end-of-days stuff, but those proclamations had become mundane long ago. That redemption might have happened in Willow’s lifetime but people had resigned themselves to being sinners. She prayed to be carbon neutral in the next life; it was simply too hard to do in this one. The other contributing factor was that snakes had become a trendy pet several years ago, particularly the designer kinds with scales bred with patterns like smiley faces or question marks. Willow despised the people who had bought them. When the trend cycle moved on people let the snakes slither off to meet their own ends, and in the past they would have succumbed, poor things, to the chill of winter and the damp of all the other Irish months. Now there was the heat. It had culminated in this year’s Paddy’s Day parade being cancelled… In the podcast Clara also chats to Zoë about AI, storytelling and young adult fiction. She discusses the research she did in the National Library as well as speaking to Krista Leddy, a Métis Knowledge Keeper - Clara and she spoke about traditional cures and customs which feature in the Plants of Manitoba story that Clara has written for the podcast. “Aunty Rose was the one who taught me about Seneca snake root. Named for the Seneca Nation. She showed me other plants, the ones that had adapted and were still growing. She wasn’t really my aunty. She had been a girl on the prairies, and so had her mother, and all her mothers before that.” “Her family must have been in Canada for a long time,” the Keeper said. “Her family was in Canada before it was Canada.” Clara’s novels for young adults Catfish Rolling and Songs for Ghosts are both published by Zephyr, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing and are available in bookshops. And if you want to make an appointment at The National Library you can look at the thousands of illustrations and drawings in the collections including Plants of Manitoba’s (call number is PD 4691 TX). Thanks to Assistant Keeper Laura Ryan for finding this gem in the collection and sharing it with the podcast.

Podcaster in Residence - Episode 7 - The Natural History of Cage Birds - Adrian Duncan

In this episode Zoë has delved into the NLI collection to find a book that brings together a number of interests for writer Adrian Duncan: engineering, Victorian tables, the natural world and a link to Germany where Adrian lives. The Natural History of Cage Birds is a book by JM Bechstein - it explores 'Their Management, Habits, Food, Diseased, Treatment, Breeding, And The Methods Of Catching Them'. It gives details, and to modern sensibilities, shocking advice for keeping birds in captivity. Adrian was interested in the engineering and design of these cages and how they tell us as much about Victorian society and ambitions as they do about birds. Adrian has written a specially commissioned short story for this episode that shows some of the overlapping absurdity of the Victorian era and the Celtic Tiger. In it the narrator comes across a slip of paper tucked into Bechstein's book, but who wrote it and why? Adrian Duncan is an artist and award-winning writer based between Ireland and Berlin. He is the author of five novels and a work of non-fiction. His debut, Love Notes from a German Building Site, won the John McGahern Book Prize in 2019. His second novel, A Sabbatical in Leipzig, was shortlisted for the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award in 2020. His short story collection, Midfield Dynamo (2021), was longlisted for the Edge Hill Prize. His third novel, The Geometer Lobachevsky, was shortlisted for both the Walter Scott Prize and the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award. His fourth novel, The Gorgeous Inertia of the Earth, was published in January 2025 by Tuskar Rock Press. His fifth, A Thought without Collision, is due out later this year. His first non-fiction book, Little Republics: The Story of Bungalow Bliss, explores rural Irish domestic architecture from the 1970s to the 1990s. He is also editor of PVA journal - its latest edition focuses on Monuments.

Podcaster in Residence - Episode 6 - An Cailín Bán - Nuala O'Connor

In this episode Zoë Comyns’ guest is writer Nuala O’Connor – they discuss writing historical fiction and specifically the case of An Cailín Bán – Ellen Hanley. An Cailín Bán/The Colleen Bawn was 15-year-old Ellen Hanley from Limerick who, in 1819, married John Scanlan a 28-year-old squire’s son. He convinced her to elope with him; he took her dowry and after six weeks of marriage he ordered his servant Steven Sullivan to kill her and dispose of the body in the Shannon estuary. Zoë speaks to historian Pat Fitzgerald about stories related to Ellen Hanley, he refers to some of the literary and stage adaptations of An Cailín Bán and the primary source National Library of Ireland documents that exist from the inquest and trial of Ellen Hanley’s murderers. Zoë has commissioned a short story by Nuala O’Connor which imagines the reader of these NLI documents. In White Ellen a descendent of one of the murderers comes to Ireland to find out more about the murder and explore the shame she feels being related to a murderer. White Ellen is read by Carla C Emmons. Nuala O’Connor Nuala O’Connor is a novelist, short story writer and poet. She is the author of numerous novels, including Becoming Belle, Miss Emily, Nora and Seaborne. She has written six short story collections, her most recent being Birdie (2020). Her short fiction has won the Francis MacManus Award, the James Joyce Quarterly Fiction Contest and the UK’s Short Fiction Journal Prize. Nuala’s novel’s has also been nominated for numerous prizes including the Edge Hill Short Story Prize, the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award, the Irish Book Awards Novel of the Year and the International Dublin Literary Award. Nora was shortlisted for the 2021 An Post Irish Book Awards RTÉ Audience voice Award. She is editor-in-chief at flash e-zine Splonk.

Podcaster in Residence - Episode 5 - The Meteorites - Niamh O'Brien

In this episode Zoë Comyns and Niamh O’Brien discuss an article by EM Lindsay in a 1968 edition of the Irish Astronomical Journal which describes The Limerick Meteorites that fell in 1813 in the county. Niamh uses her experience in deep mapping, harp playing and audio making to write and compose a new story set to harp inspired by this collection item. (call no: Ir 5204 i 4) Niamh O’Brien is a harp player, singer, composer and sound artist. She has performed solo in Ireland and abroad, and with traditional groups such as The Chieftains, AnTara and Hoodman Blind. Since 2017 she has been active in audio and radio, working as a recordist, editor and producer on podcast and documentary projects. She was awarded a PhD by University of Limerick in 2024 for her research in the field of sonic arts and deep mapping. Her current compositional practice combines traditional, folk and electronic music, with voices, interview materials and field recordings. This year she is a Fulbright-Creative Ireland Professional Fellowship Scholar - Niamh will explore the work of Irish folklore and traditional music collectors at University of Colorado in Boulder - and through this she will explore experimental media archaeology and Irish cultural history.