23 – Clare O’Dea

Welcome to Day 23 of our 2022 West Cork Literary Festival Advent Calendar. Our author today is Clare O’Dea.

Clare O’Dea worked as a journalist in Ireland, Russia and Switzerland before publishing her first book, The Naked Swiss: A Nation Behind 10 Myths in 2016. Originally from Dublin, she is also the author of a non-fiction book about Ireland, The Naked Irish: Portrait of a Nation Beyond the Clichés. Voting Day is her first novel. She lives in Switzerland.

Clare is reading an extract from Voting Day which was published by Fairlight Books in April 2022. Today’s video unlocked on 23rd December 2022 and may be viewed below. Closed caption subtitles are available and may be turned on or off. Press the play button or click “Watch on Youtube” to watch it in full screen.

About our WCLF Literary Advent Calendar

2022 was another wonderful year for Irish writing and so many incredible books by Irish authors and authors living in Ireland were released this year. We’re delighted to bring you a small selection of these authors and we’ve invited twenty-four writers to submit a short video reading from their new books. Our selection is an attempt to show the wide range of Irish writing and in particular to focus on writers whose books we feel deserve more attention and those who were not previously featured in WCLF 2022 events. We hope that you will enjoy the chance to hear these writers reading their own work and to discover some new books for your reading piles.