Leaves Festival 2025
Spoken Stories Event with Claire Byrne, Evelyn Cusack, Kíla
Clíodhna Ní Anluain, Roisin O’Donnell, Mary Costello and Colm O’Snodaigh
Spoken Stories is a curated literary series on RTE Radio 1 showcasing 36 original short stories by some of Ireland’s most talented and dynamic writers. Each story explores themes like identity, grief, memory and belonging and is voiced for radio by a cast of acclaimed Irish actors.
For this year’s Leaves and in association with Spoken Stories curator and producer, Clíodhna Ní Anluain, we will present our own special rendering of the radio series. Three of the commissioned writers, Mary Costello, Roisin O’Donnell and Colm O’ Snodaigh will join us for the evening. Their stories will be read by a cast of well-known Laois voices, including broadcaster Claire Byrne and the former darling of the meteorological world, Evelyn Cusack.
The legendary Kila will be a roof raising addition to this specially crafted evening. Their blend of traditional Irish music and global rhythms is guaranteed to ensure a rousing festival finale.
Clíodhna Ní Anluain’s present RTÉ audio work includes SPOKEN STORIES, Continental Riffs and RTÉ100. Her work is informed by extensive cross-discipline experience including being an award-winning theatre producer and new plays commissioner, museum curator, festivals programmer and events panellist and chair, New Island and Lilliput Press anthologies editor and producer for international architecture archive, Pidgeon Digital. In her visual arts practice IMMA screened her architecture, broadcasting and workplace related film Pillar Talk and published its text in Self-Determination: A Reader (IMMA:2023). The Dock, Leitrim commissioned her exhibition Beautiful Things without [undue] Comment, relating to RTÉ’s first television arts programme (2022).
Claire Byrne is broadcaster and journalist working on radio and in television for the last 30 years. She has presented in Ireland, the UK and the Channel Islands over the course of her career - working for RTE, the BBC, ITV and Channel 5. Claire has presented programmes including Claire Byrne Live, Prime Time, and the Today radio show on RTE and Newstalk Breakfast, TV3 News, Ireland AM and Channel 5 news for ITN. She has covered some of the major news stories over those years including 9/11, Brexit and the covid pandemic. Claire will be beginning a new phase of her career in 2026 when she joins Newstalk as host of the mid-morning radio show on the network.
Mary Costello has published two novels and two short story collections. The China Factory, her first collection, was nominated for the Guardian First Book Award and the Irish Book Awards. Her first novel, Academy Street, won the Irish Novel of the Year Award and was named overall Irish Book of the Year in 2014. It was shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award, the Costa First Novel Prize, the EU Prize for Literature among others. Her second novel, The River Capture, was shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards (2019), the Kerry Group Novel of the Year and the Dalkey Novel Award. Barcelona, her latest collection of stories, was published in 2024. A new novel, A Beautiful Loan, is forthcoming in March.
Colm O’Snodaigh has been a member of the band Kíla for the past thirty years. He has recorded twenty albums with Kíla (including the recent Raise the Road – Kíla with Brass, toured the world with the band and recorded two solo albums. He has contributed to the song-writing and music composition of all the Kíla albums and soundtracks including the recent soundtrack to the Cartoon Saloon animated feature Wolfwalkers. He has played and collaborated with many musicians including Lisa Hannigan (Ireland), Les Brithonics (Brittany) Jaka (Poland), Hiroshi Yamaguchi (Japan), Gnobé Dahoré (Sierra Leone),Bruno Clouais (France), Mundy (Ireland), Imelda May (Ireland) and Oki (Hokkaido). He has also published a collection of essays about music Istigh sa Cheol (2013) and he compiled and co-ordinated the publication of Kíla – Book of Tunes (2010) – a collection of notation of 100 Kíla compositions. His recent book of short stories Cnaipí & Scéalta Eile won wide praise. His story Scoilteanna was broadcast on RTÉ Radio 1 as part of the Spoken Stories series edited by Clíodhna Ní Anluain.
Evelyn Cusack started her career as a weather forecaster in Met Éireann in the 1980s. Evelyn is best known from nearly 30 years as a TV and radio weather broadcaster and commentator and has won several awards for science communication. She went on to become the Head of the Forecasting Division in Met Éireann and was part of the National Emergency Coordination Group for such red level events as Ophelia and the Beast From the East. Evelyn also worked on ‘unifying’ the presentation of weather warnings in Ireland as well as the successful storm-naming system in Europe. She has recently published her 1st book (with Seamus Walsh) They Say It Might Rain: The Highs & Lows of Ireland’s Weather & Climate
Kíla Formed at school in Dublin’s late 1980’s, Award-winning band, Kíla, are heralded as one of dition, yet inspired by a myriad of influences and ideas from all around the world. Often defined as contemporary Irish World music, Kíla fuse the effects of their own melodies and Irish (Gaeilge) lyrics, Irish folk instruments such as whistles, fiddles, Uilleann pipes, bones and bodhrán with djembe, congas, drums, mandolins, brass, and acoustic/electric/ bass guitars. Kíla’s s even members come from the differing musical backgrounds of traditional, classical, and rock. The result is a fresh blend of freewheeling instrumentals, furious jigs, and primal rhythms that transcend the traditional boundaries of Irish music. Kíla have worked extensively in TV and film. In 2020 they won the IFTA for Best Original Score for the soundtrack or Arracht (TG4). Their most notable collaborations have been with French composer Bruno Coulais on the soundtracks for Cartoon Saloon’s three Oscar-nominated animated films The Secret of Kells (2010), Song of the Sea (2014), and most recently for Wolfwalkers (2020).