Join Solas Nua's Isabel Cabezas in conversation with NYT bestselling author Betsy Cornwell about her debut memoir, Ring of Salt, an inspiring and lyrical memoir about writing, motherhood, and reclaiming the story of her life through a search for home on Ireland’s wild, western coast. Her NYT Modern Love essay offers a flavor of the book, on sale 9/30.
Copies of the memoir will be available to purchase on site, and Betsy will sign books during the post-talk reception. This event is generously co-hosted by the Notre Dame Club of Washington, DC.
When: Thursday, October 2, 6:00-8:00 p.m. (6:00 reception, 6:30 talk, 7:30 book signing)
Where: Keough School of Global Affairs (1400 16th St. NW Suite 120, Washington, DC 20036)
Price: FREE to attend
After moving to Ireland to finish her first young adult novel, Tides, a retelling of Irish selkie folklore, novelist Betsy Cornwell fell in love, both with the country itself and a handsome horse trainer she describes as “straight from the Colin Farrell school of Irish smolder.” On her baby's first birthday, she flees an abusive marriage and, on a single-digit bank account balance, barely gets by with writing gigs and the support of both an online community of Smith College alumnae and a domestic abuse service in Galway. As she navigates the constraints of being a homeless single mother in a foreign country, she dreams of one day being able to provide a home for her son – a home where she could also offer artist retreats for other single mothers, with childcare included. When she starts writing online 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: crowdfunding a rent-to-own offer on a 1906 knitting factory in rural Ireland, originally meant as a school to teach textile skills to unmarried women as a means of self-sufficiency, 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.
Maid meets Under the Tuscan Sun in this inspiring memoir as Cornwell combines a powerful and relatable narrative of survivorship and healing with lush writing about the windswept landscapes and rich mythology of rural Ireland to craft a real-world fairy tale about the ordinary, but no less life-changing, forms of magic we can all access: vulnerability, community, and the power of telling your own story.
Betsy Cornwell is a New York Times bestselling author of six novels and founder of The Old Knitting Factory, an arts residency and retreat space for single parents in Connemara. Extracts from the unedited manuscript of Ring of Salt received the Markievicz Award from Ireland's Arts Council in 2024. She serves as a mentor for the Irish Writers Centre and was the first recipient of their Blue Mountains (Australia) Residency in 2023.
Betsy holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Notre Dame and a BA from Smith College, and currently teaches at the University of Galway.
Isabel Cabezas is the Development & Marketing Manager at Solas Nua. She previously worked in communications and cultural engagement at both the European Parliament and the Embassy of Ireland to the United States. Her experience in the Irish art world includes a Fulbright at the Hugh Lane Gallery, curating a retrospective exhibit for Ireland's premier sculptor Imogen Stuart RHA at the Notre Dame Kylemore Abbey Global Centre in Connemara, and an internship at the National Gallery of Ireland.
Isabel holds a Masters in Public Relations and Corporate Communications from Georgetown University and a Bachelor of Arts in Art History from the University of Notre Dame.
