Lunch Series: Celtic Conversations with Irish author, Brigid Carrick

​This regular lunch series will feature insights and an engaging presentation from a special guest speaker in our community, over a delicious catered set lunch and the opportunity to connect with fellow club members in a welcoming setting.

​*Your ticket price includes conversation and insights from our guest speaker and a catered two course set lunch.

​This month we welcome Brigid Carrick, a Melburnian originally from Dublin, where she trained as a midwife in the 1960s, the experience of which inspired her first novel, published last month, The Belfast Express

​Dublin, 1971. Free-spirited 18-year-old Brianna Robinson defies her Mother's expectations, her neighbour's judgment and the authority of the local Parish Priest by enrolling in nursing college in London. But made to stay in Dublin by her father, she befriends fellow nurses Muriel, Iris and Shauna and the four friends are assigned midwifery in the grim slums of Dublin. Corporation Place was home to large families, cramped spaces, hidden violence, desperate poverty and perpetually pregnant women. The four friends soon learn that it's not just "girls with loose morals" who have unwanted pregnancies. When Brianna is assaulted by her parish priest she finds herself needing to end her own pregnancy. From then on, she finds the strength to champion the rights of Irish women against the Catholic Church. A raucous trip to Northern Ireland gives access to contraception unheard of in the south and the Belfast Express train becomes a regular arrival at Dublin's Connolly Station. Brianna finds her power, purpose and love in this heart-warming story of being a young woman in 1970s Ireland.