Our Current Events

2023 Events

Doreen Cunningham & Alice Kinsella
The Gutter Bookshop, Cow’s Lane
Thursday 13th April 6.30pm until 7.30pm

Join us in our Temple Bar bookshop for this special evening with two brilliant authors in conversation to discuss their new books.

Alice Kinsella was in her mid-twenties when she became pregnant with her first child, newly engaged and about to embark on a life in an unfamiliar town on the west coast of Ireland. Into this warm cocoon, this big, empty house, would arrive a little baby. And soon Alice’s world began to expand and contract in ways she could never have imagined. Set against the backdrop of a seemingly changed Ireland, in Milk Alice draws for us her own map of motherhood, a crucial reflection spanning nine months of pregnancy and the first nine months of her child’s life. Intimate, warm, startlingly vivid and gentle, this is at once a delicate reflection on a moment of gigantic change in body and mind and a powerful, often painful confrontation of the politics of a country so deeply unsure about its women.

Doreen Cunningham first visited Alaska as a young journalist reporting on climate change among indigenous whaling communities. There, drawn deeply into an Inupiaq family, she joined the bowhead whale hunt, watching for polar bears under the never-ending light. Years later, now a single mother living in a hostel, Doreen embarks on this extraordinary journey: following the grey whale migration back to the Arctic, where greys and bowheads meet at the melting apex of our planet. ‘Soundings got under my skin. I finished it in tears’ AMY LIPTROT. This Event is Free and Everyone is Welcome.

Book Launch for Cacophony of Bone by Kerri ní Dochartaigh
The Gutter Bookshop, Cow’s Lane
Tuesday 2nd May 6.30pm until 8pm

Join us in our Temple Bar bookshop for the launch of Kerri ní Dochartaigh’s brilliant new memoir ‘Cacophony of Bone’. Two days after the Winter Solstice in 2019 Kerri and her partner M moved to a small, remote railway cottage in the heart of Ireland. They were looking for a home, somewhere to stay put. What followed was a year of many changes. The pandemic arrived and their isolated home became a place of enforced isolation. It was to be a year unlike any we had seen before. But the seasons still turned, the swallows came at their allotted time, the rhythms of the natural world went on unchecked. For Kerri there was to be one more change, a longed-for but unhoped for change. Cacophony of Bone maps the circle of a year – a journey from one place to another, field notes of a life – from one winter to the next. It is a telling of a changed life, in a changed world – and it is about all that does not change. All that which simply keeps on – living and breathing, nesting and dying – in spite of it all. When the pandemic came time seemed to shapeshift, so this is also a book about time. It is, too, a book about home, and what that can mean. Fragmentary in subject and form, fluid of language, this is an ode to a year, a place, and a love, that changed a life. This Event is Free and Everyone is Welcome.

We are delighted to be working with Sophie White to launch her new novel “My Hot Friend” at a very special evening at The Bernard Shaw in Drumcondra, Dublin 9. Sophie will be joined by special guests Louise McSharry and Emer McLysaght on the night and they’ll be discussing Sophie’s brand-new novel “My Hot Friend” in what is sure to be a fun and uproarious evening. Your ticket includes a copy of “My Hot Friend” and there will be an opportunity to get it signed by Sophie on the night. See Eventbrite for tickets & information >>>.

MOTHER OF POD LIVE! To mark the launch of Sophie’s new book, My Hot Friend, Jen and Soph are dusting off their fallopian tubes and doing their first MOP live in four years! On stage they’ll be covering it all, from snack corner to crotch corner and everything in between, as well as a highly interactive game of chat roulette! Your ticket includes a copy of “My Hot Friend” and there will be an opportunity to get it signed by Sophie on the night. See Eventbrite for Tickets & Information>>>.

Bookclubs!

Previous bookclub members are welcome to re-join their bookclub on the relevant date. We currently have some spaces available in our Classics bookclub (2nd Tuesday of the month 6pm in Cow’s Lane) and The Gutter Bookclub (4th Tuesday of the month in Cow’s Lane). If you’d like to join either of these bookclubs, please email us at info@gutterbookshop.com. Bookclub spaces are always advertised via this Events Newsletter so do keep an eye on it for other spaces!

Wednesday 5th April 6pm – Dalkey Bookclub – Grey Bees by Andrey Kurkov
Tuesday 11th April 6pm – Classics Bookclub – Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson
Tuesday 18th April 6pm – Third Tuesday Bookclub – Voting Day by Clare O’Dea
Tuesday 25th April 6pm – Gutter Bookclub – All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
Thursday 27th April 11am – Get Active Bookclub – Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout

Tuesday 9th May 6pm – Classics Bookclub – All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
Wednesday 10th May 6pm – Dalkey Bookclub – tbc
Tuesday 16th May 6pm – Third Tuesday Bookclub – We Are Not in The World by Conor O’Callaghan
Tuesday 23rd May 6pm – Gutter Bookclub – How to Gut a Fish by Sheila Armstrong