Ahead of the publication of A Seat by the Fire: Craicly Stories for Ireland this October, Trudy Feenane profiles Mercier author Jane Gormley and the storytelling suppers she has taken from a Kildare straw shed to castles, cottages and festivals across Ireland.

Jane Gormley is the subject of a warm feature in the Food & Wine pages of the Business Post this month. In ‘Meet the woman bringing dinner parties with a storied twist to castles and cottages across Ireland’ (10 September 2026), Trudy Feenane traces Craicly from a single supper in a straw shed to a storytelling platform that now travels the length of the country – and beyond – just as Jane’s first book heads for the shelves on 26 October.

From straw shed to storytelling movement

Three years ago, Jane threw open the doors of the straw shed on her family’s farm in Allenwood, Co Kildare, for what she assumed would be a once-off, no-frills evening of supper and stories for neighbours and friends. The prompt was a set of figures showing that Ireland had the highest rate of loneliness in the EU, and Jane – a former tech recruiter – wanted to do something practical and local about it. Twenty guests, a casual dinner and four storytellers later, the room had the energy of a wedding party and the guests were queuing up with stories of their own. Craicly was born.

Twenty nights a year, from Stradbally to Wisconsin

As Feenane reports, Craicly now stages around twenty gatherings a year in venues ranging from castles and cottages to festivals and farms. Recent outings have taken Jane to Electric Picnic in Stradbally, an Irish festival in Wisconsin and a bell tower in Hornsey, north London.

The venue sets the mood, and so does the meal: think of a very large dinner party in a very fine room, with time to eat, drink and mingle before the stories begin. Each evening has a theme, and four or five tellers are chosen in advance and guided by Jane on shaping a story of five to ten minutes. Nothing is staged and nothing is meant to feel like theatre – the stories Craicly wants are the quiet, local, personal ones that stay with a room long after the night is over. Phones are put away for the evening. Tellers have ranged from eighteen to eighty years old, and past themes have included journeys and reflections, sink or swim, and the natural world.

Behind it all, Feenane notes, stands the Irish tradition of oral storytelling – the rambling house, and the seanchaí who kept a community’s history, genealogy and folklore alive from one generation to the next.

Next stop: Cobh

Craicly’s next gathering, ‘Sea Stories Served on a Smoked Platter’, takes place at Hederman Smoke House in Cobh on Saturday 26 September. Frank Hederman’s timber smokehouse – Ireland’s only traditional one, where wild and organic salmon are still hung individually to smoke – will serve a three-course smoked seafood supper before an evening of stories about fishing, sailing and Ireland’s relationship with the sea, from Frank himself, Cork sailor Rom Hyde, writer, playwright and filmmaker Cónal Creedon, and Jane as host. Tickets are €90, supper and stories included, with natural wines and local cider available on the night.

Tickets and details · craiclystories.com

The book

Preservation – of craft, of place, of the stories that would otherwise slip away – runs right through the feature, and it sits at the heart of Jane’s first book. A Seat by the Fire: Craicly Stories for Ireland follows Craicly’s journey through Ireland’s historic and cultural locations, with contributions from the storytellers, photographs of the venues and their hosts, and a ‘story party kit’ to help readers host storytelling evenings of their own.

That kit is the point. As Jane told the Business Post: ‘People need people; it’s the best antidote to loneliness and isolation.’ What she wants most, she says, is for everyone to take Craicly and run with it – the whole idea falls flat if she is the only one doing it.

This book is the perfect gift for people who love stories and the craic!

A Seat by the Fire: Craicly Stories for Ireland

A Seat by the Fire is a collection of true stories along the way from farmers, bakers, butter champions, psychic mediums and one very reluctant Belfast best-man. Part memoir, part manifesto, it is a book about the oldest remedy for loneliness this country possesses: each other.

ISBN: 9781917453905

Pre-Order

A Seat by the Fire: Craicly Stories for Ireland by Jane Gormley is published by Mercier Press on 26 October 2026

Read Trudy Feenane’s full feature in the Business Post: ‘Meet the woman bringing dinner parties with a storied twist to castles and cottages across Ireland’, 10 September 2026.