For the fourth annual Notre Dame Dublin International Women's Day Gathering, we are delighted to be joined by Betsy Cornwell, a New York Times bestselling author and a graduate of the University of Notre Dame's MFA in Creative Writing.
Betsy will share from her new book, Ring of Salt, an inspiring and lyrical memoir about a writer and mother who flees an abusive marriage and must learn to reclaim the story of her life through a search for home on Ireland’s wild, western coast.
“Extraordinarily moving, exquisitely written, and socially revolutionary.” —The Irish Times
After finishing her MFA at Notre Dame, novelist Betsy Cornwell moved to the Aran Islands to work on her first novel (Tides, a YA retelling of the Irish selkie bride folktale). She soon fell in love, both with Ireland and a handsome horse trainer her book describes as “straight from the Colin Farrell school of Irish smolder," and married. On her baby's first birthday, she fled her abusive marriage and found herself homeless in a foreign country with a single-digit bank account balance. Between juggling jobs to pay for cramped, moldy apartments and a precious childcare spot, she scrolls through real estate listings she can’t afford. When she starts writing online, in a Smith College alumni group, about her dream of buying a home no one can take away from her, a global network of women, most of them strangers, step in and slowly help her achieve an unlikely dream: buying a crumbling house on a lake in rural Ireland and transforming it into a safe home for herself and her son and a residency space for other single moms, cultivating community by offering free, childcare-inclusive retreat space to make art.
Please join us at Notre Dame Dublin's O'Connell House (58 Merrion Square South) for an afternoon of camaraderie and conversation this International Women's Day.