Online and DIY Ellen Hutchins Festival 2020

This year’s Festival programme is out and bookings are open for the online events. We hope to inspire you to explore the natural heritage at your doorstep, and provide resources for you to do just that. The online and DIY Festival means that you can be part of the action wherever you are. See the full programme https://ellenhutchins.com/events-ellen-hutchins-festival/

One of the free online events is a webinar on Ellen Hutchins: an inspiration, on Tuesday 18th August, 7:30pm to 9pm. Join novelist Marianne Lee and poet Laura McKenna in conversation with Finola Finlay of Roaringwater Journal. The session will include readings from A Quiet Tide by Marianne Lee, a recently launched historical novel based on the life of Ellen Hutchins (1785-1815) botanist and botanical artist of Bantry Bay, and poems by Laura McKenna, inspired by Ellen’s correspondence with fellow botanist Dawson Turner, and the landscape and natural world of the Beara Peninsula. Laura McKenna has a PhD in Creative Writing from UCC, and her poetry has twice been nominated for a Hennessy Award. There will be an opportunity to pose questions to the speakers.

The Ellen Hutchins Festival, first run in 2015, has been surfacing and sharing Ellen’s story which was one of West Cork’s best kept secrets. Now, five years on, we are celebrating a novel and a series of poems, written by Irish women of today who were inspired by Ellen’s story from over two hundred years ago. A story pieced together from Ellen’s correspondence, contemporary botanical writings, and illustrated by Ellen’s watercolour drawings of seaweeds and specimens of special plants from Bantry Bay.