Speakers

Our Autumn Gathering theme this year is NATURE and her influence on the creative works of Lady Gregory, W.B. Yeats and their fellow collaborators at Coole.

And so this year’s speakers come from a wide range of disciplines — botany, literature, geology, drama, Irish language and folklore — each specializing in an area of Irish Culture that illuminates the unique regional and natural rhythms at play in the creative and cultural legacy of Gregory, Yeats and the Celtic Revival… all the way into the present moment.

We are thrilled to introduce you to this year’s speakers.

A smiling man with glasses, wearing a dark shirt and a gray blazer, standing indoors with wooden furniture and bookshelves in the background.

Patrick Lonergan

Professor of Drama and Theatre Studies
University of Galway

Patrick Lonergan is the Professor of Drama and Theatre Studies at University of Galway. Patrick is also a member of the Royal Irish Academy, an Executive Committee member of the International Federation for Theatre Research, and Chair of the Board of Directors of the Galway International Arts Festival.

At present, he is carrying out a transnational research project called "CoastARTS: Coastlines as Zones of Ecocultural Crisis – Shaping Resilience through Transnational Performance-based Arts", together will collaborators in the UK, Spain, Portugal and Norway.

He has written many books about Irish theatre, the most recent of which was Druid Theatre: Fifty Years (Lilliput Press, 2025). He has lectured widely on Irish writing internationally, including in Austria, Brazil, Italy, Japan, Poland, and the United States. Patrick was the 2019 Burns Visiting Fellow for Irish Studies at Boston College.

Siobhán de Paor

Filé, Filmmaker, Writer, Gaelgóir
Co-Founder of Wild Irish Cultural Center

Siobhán de Paor is a bilingual poet, dramaturg and celebrant who creates immersive ritual theatre and spoken word. She is a contemporary iteration of the traditional bard, who held a political, social and shamanic function in their tribe.

Siobhán shares both process and result in her shows, articulating unspoken herstories and bringing story medicine to audiences. Accessibility is a key theme of her work, which sits within the movement of 're-indigenisation', contemporarising Irish mythologies, and reclaiming pre-Catholic/colonial traditions using Ireland's native language as an artistic medium.

Her work as a ritual maker/bean an tí informs her art. Siobhán writes and choreographs ritual community participation spectacles, including for rites of passage and the Celtic fire festivals.

Siobhán founded the Wild Irish in 2017 with her partner, Diarmuid Lyng. Currently based in Kilkenny, they continue developing innovative Irish-language immersion experiences in nature. They are each leading voices in the Indigenous Ireland movement, exploring Ireland’s indigenous language and culture in both traditional and new ways.

Woman in a blazer with short hair looking into the distance outdoors on a sunny day, with bare trees and a building in the blurred background.

Belinda McKeon

Novelist & Yeats Scholar
Director of MA in Creative Writing, Maynooth University

Belinda McKeon is the author of the novels Solace (2011) and Tender (2015). She has presented on Yeats at the National Library of Ireland (The Joseph Hassett Annual Lecture of 2024) and the Yeats Winter School (2026). She directs the MA in Creative Writing at Maynooth University, where she is an Associate Professor in the English Department. 

A group of men outdoors with hurling sticks, with two men in the background smiling; additional man in foreground is smiling and has long hair and beard.

Diarmuid Lyng

Facilitator & Hurler
Co-Founder of Wild Irish Cultural Center

Diarmuid Lyng has dedicated his life to preservation and celebration of the Irish Culture through his work with the language, with hurling and with the Irish terrain,

A former GAA hurler (Wexford captain), Diarmuid offers ‘wild hurling’ experiences, exploring how it may have felt and moved throughout Ireland’s deep history with the sport. He also leads men’s nature retreats, as featured in the Irish Independent.

A qualified teacher by trade, he marries his experience at elite level performance with his natural talents in education to curate experiences where participants of all walks, talks and backgrounds can improve their situation at an emotional, physical, financial and spiritual level.

Diarmuid is co-founder with his partner, Siobhan, of the Wild Irish Cultural Center, where they run a sustainable farm and retreat workshops while raising their three children on their land near Kilkenny. They are leading voices in the current Indigenous Ireland movement, working to explore and amplify Ireland’s indigenous language and culture.

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Tiernan Henry

Hydrologist & Senior Lecturer, Earth & Ocean Sciences
Ryan Institute, University of Galway

Tiernan Henry has been working on water for more than 30 years in mines and quarries, in turloughs and lakes, in springs, rivers, wells and in estuaries. He’s particularly interested in exploring how water interacts with the ground; how it changes the ground and how it is changed by the ground, and how it moves from one place to another and how it moves things (elements, salts, heat) from place to place.

He did his undergraduate degree in Trinity College Dublin and completed his MSc at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and received his PhD from NUI Galway in 2014. He worked in groundwater consultancy for a number of years and has worked in the University of Galway for more than 25 years

Tiernan is also an accomplished maestro, and host of Vinyl Hours with the Galway International Arts Festival.

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Maíread Delaney

Archivist
The Abbey Theatre

Mairéad Delaney is the lead Archivist of the Abbey Theatre, Ireland’s national theatre, founded by Gregory and Yeats.

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Danny Burke

Irish Seaweed Cultural Guide
Wild Kitchen & Tours

Danny Burke spent his childhood rummaging in rock-pools and never really grew out of it! Today farming takes up much of his time, tending his organic cattle and sheep and the land they graze. But when the conditions and the tide are right he’s still to be found by the shore foraging, or just off the shore, fishing from a boat or kayak.

Danny holds degrees in Botany (UCD) and Archaeology (University of Galway), and currently consults as an ecologist. He has also published in the field of Archaeology, mainly pertaining to his research into megalith-using tribal groups in North East India.

A man with white hair, beard and glasses standing in front of a wooden sailboat's white sail, holding a book titled 'Ulysses' by James Joyce, with a background of a blue sky with clouds.

Edward Maggs

Bookseller, Maggs Bros Ltd.
Executor, Estate of Warwick Gould & Deirdre Toomey

Ed Maggs has had an interest in Irish literature from youth and has been lucky enough to handle much fine Irish material over his nearly fifty years of bookselling at his family's firm of Maggs Bros Ltd., in London. Now, as he begins to retire from the hurly-burly of running a substantial business, he is blessed to live in rural South Kerry, where he plays around with boats, trees and books.

He is also Administrator of the Estate of Warwick Gould and Deirdre Toomey, both eminent Yeats scholars and deeply involved with the Yeats Summer School. Edward’s work has involved the donation of much of their excellent Yeatsian library to the Senate House library of the University of London, and the bulk of their estate to the Gould & Toomey Fund, administered by the Willison Foundation, to support book history research.