Celebrating Maeve Brennan
- Ranelagh Arts
- Sep 21
- 2 min read
Ranelagh Arts Presents a Weekend Celebrating Maeve Brennan
Ranelagh Arts is delighted to announce a special weekend of events honouring the life and legacy of Ranelagh resident and The New Yorker writer Maeve Brennan. Born in Dublin and becoming famous in New York, Maeve Brennan wrote about two worlds at once, Ireland and America. A woman writer in a man’s world, an emigrant between two cultures, and a keen observer of invisible details, Brennan created prose that is being rediscovered by readers today after decades of neglect.
The centrepiece of the celebration is the premiere of the documentary Maeve Brennan: The Long-Winded Lady, inspired by historical walks curated by local historian Sally Corcoran.
Programme of Events
Documentary Premiere: Maeve Brennan – The Long-Winded Lady
Screened throughout the weekend at Ranelagh Arts, 6 Ranelagh
Saturday 11 and Sunday 12 October
A new documentary exploring Brennan’s remarkable life, her writing, and her enduring legacy inspired by local historian Sally Corcoran’s walking tours.
Exhibition: Maeve Brennan’s Life and Work
Ranelagh Arts, 6 Ranelagh
Monday 6th - Sunday 12 October
An exhibition exploring Brennan’s extraordinary life and writing.
Jazz Performance: Emille Conway
Sandford Church, Ranelagh
Saturday 11 October, 8pm
Award-winning jazz singer Emille Conway presents a performance weaving Brennan’s prose with an eclectic musical journey through her life. Buy tickets here:
Maeve Brennan Walking Tour
Meet at Ranelagh Arts, 6 Ranelagh
Sunday 12 October, 3pm
Local historian Sally Corcoran leads a walking tour of Ranelagh, retracing the places that shaped Brennan’s imagination and writing.
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About Maeve Brennan
Maeve Brennan (1917–1993) grew up at 48 Cherryfield Avenue, Ranelagh, before moving to Washington, D.C., with her family in 1933. After graduating in English from American University, she moved to New York, working first at Harper’s Bazaar before joining The New Yorker in 1949.
Brennan became celebrated for her incisive fiction and her “Long-Winded Lady” column in The Talk of the Town, capturing the rhythms of Manhattan life. Though admired in the U.S., she remained little known in Ireland during her lifetime. Her later years were marked by illness and poverty, and she died in New York in 1993.
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A Weekend of Remembrance
This special programme invites audiences to rediscover Maeve Brennan: a pioneering Irish woman of letters whose wit, insight, and luminous prose continue to inspire.
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