Hosted Cohort · 8 Women · June 2028
Gregans Castle Hotel · The Burren, County Clare
You land at Shannon in the morning and drive west. The road narrows as you move into County Clare, the hedgerows give way to stone walls, and then the Burren appears — a vast plateau of pale limestone that rolls to the edge of the Atlantic, cracked and ancient and covered, impossibly, in wildflowers. Arctic plants and Mediterranean plants growing side by side in the fissures of the rock, because the limestone holds the winter heat and the Atlantic keeps it from freezing. It shouldn't work. It does.
Gregans Castle Hotel sits at the foot of Corkscrew Hill with views across the water to the Aran Islands. The house has been in the same family for decades. The kitchen uses what grows in the walled garden and what comes off the boats at Doolin. Your room looks out over the Burren. In June, at nine o'clock in the evening, it is still fully light.
You've been reading toward this since January. Five books, five months — Irish women writing the west of Ireland with the kind of specificity that only comes from knowing a place in your bones. Edna O'Brien, who grew up twenty miles from here. Claire Keegan. Anne Enright. The women who wrote Ireland before Ireland was ready to hear it.
The group chat has been going since winter. Someone will be in the car park when you arrive, waving.
Why This Is Different
Most literary travel puts the landscape in the background. You fly in, you see the famous sites, you have some conversations about books in a hotel conference room, you go home. The landscape is decoration.
The west of Ireland doesn't work that way. Edna O'Brien didn't just set her novels in County Clare — the landscape formed her. The limestone, the Atlantic, the particular quality of Irish rural silence, the weight of what was expected of women there for generations. Reading her work here, on this terrain, is a different experience than reading it anywhere else.
The book club arc runs January through June 2028 — five months of reading Irish women's fiction before you board the plane. By the time you arrive in Shannon, you'll know these books in your bones. The landscape gives them back to you in a different register. That's not a metaphor. That's what actually happens when you read serious fiction about the place you're standing in.
Five months of reading Irish women's fiction before you arrive. Two calls per month. The trip is the finale, not the introduction.
The Book Club Arc
The arc runs January through June 2028 — five books, five months, two calls per month. One call is public: open to anyone who wants to read along, no charge, no commitment. The other is private: cohort only, for the eight women who are going to the Burren.
The reading list is built around Irish women writers — specifically writers who wrote the west of Ireland, who grew up here or chose it, who understood that this landscape does something to a story that other landscapes don't. The list doesn't avoid the difficult parts of Irish women's history. It heads straight for them, which is why the conversations are worth having.
The final book on the list, we finish in Ireland. There will be an evening at Gregans, with the light still going at nine o'clock and the Burren visible through the window, where the last book's discussion happens. That's the design. That's where the arc lands.
Is This Trip For You?
The Week
Based at Gregans Castle Hotel on the edge of the Burren. Day trips to Galway, the Cliffs of Moher, Doolin. Long evenings with the light still going at nine-thirty. Unhurried mornings. A reading list that makes everything you're seeing make sense.
The limestone pavement looks barren from a distance. Walk into it and there are wildflowers in every crack — mountain avens, bloody cranesbill, spring gentians, orchids. Arctic plants and Mediterranean plants growing in the same square meter because the limestone does something no other geology does. June is peak flowering. You'll spend time out here and you'll want more of it.
An hour north on the coast road. A small city that has been a literary hub since before that was a thing anyone said. Charlie Byrne's Bookshop on Middle Street — a proper secondhand bookshop with the particular smell and the precarious stacks. The Spanish Arch. The long pedestrianised stretch of Shop Street in June, full of music. Lunch somewhere near the water. The drive back through Kinvara as the light goes long and golden.
A village with three pubs that have been the center of traditional Irish music for fifty years. Not tourist-facing trad — the real thing, sessions that start when the musicians feel like it and go until they don't. McGann's or McDermott's on a Tuesday night in June, with a pint, with the group, with five months of reading behind you. This is what the books were made of.
214 meters above the Atlantic, running for eight kilometers along the Clare coast. In June, before the height of summer, the morning crowds are manageable. Walk north along the cliff path away from the visitor center and the numbers drop off fast. Stand at the edge with the Atlantic below and the Aran Islands visible on a clear day and don't try to photograph it properly. Just look.
Dinner in the dining room — the kitchen grows herbs in the walled garden and sources fish from the boats at Doolin. After, in the sitting room or out on the terrace if the evening holds, the group gathers. The light is still going. Someone starts a thread from the current book and it becomes the kind of conversation that's only possible when you've been reading together for five months. The Burren is right there, going pale gold in the last light.
Lady Augusta Gregory's estate, thirty minutes north — now a nature reserve, the house long demolished, but the walled garden still standing and the autograph tree still there: a copper beech where Gregory had her literary guests carve their initials. Yeats. Shaw. O'Casey. Synge. Gregory herself ran the Abbey Theatre from this house, corresponded with every significant writer of her era, and is underread by about ninety percent of people who know her name. That changes on this trip.
In June in the west of Ireland, civil twilight doesn't end until nearly eleven. The long evenings are not a feature — they are the atmosphere of the whole week. There will be an evening when the group is on the terrace at Gregans at nine-thirty, with the Burren still visible and the sky still holding color, and the conversation goes somewhere it couldn't have gone anywhere else. That's the thing you'll remember.
The Reading
The reading list is built around women who wrote Ireland — specifically the west, specifically the parts that were hard to say. Edna O'Brien grew up twenty miles from the Burren; her first novels were banned in Ireland and burned by her own parish priest. Claire Keegan's prose is so spare it feels like the limestone looks. Anne Enright wrote The Green Road about a family on the west coast and it reads like an autopsy and a love letter at the same time.
This is not a survey course. It's five books chosen to reward the attention the arc gives them, to talk about in depth, and to make the landscape make sense when you're standing in it.
What's Included
| Accommodation | 8 nights at Gregans Castle Hotel, The Burren, County Clare. Room types and pricing on inquiry. |
| The book club arc | Five months of reading together, January–June 2028. Two calls per month: one public (open, free), one private (cohort only). Reading list curated around Irish women's fiction. |
| Day trips | Galway — Charlie Byrne's Bookshop, lunch, the Spanish Arch. Cliffs of Moher. Doolin for trad music. Coole Park and the autograph tree. |
| The Burren | Walks on the limestone pavement in peak wildflower season. This is the thing you came for. Time is set aside for it properly. |
| Private group channel | Opens when the arc begins in January — five months of conversation before you arrive in Clare. |
| Your host | Me — Stacy Earl — in residence for the full week. Present, available, and genuinely glad to be there. |
| Group size | Eight women, maximum. |
| Not included | Flights to/from Shannon or Dublin. Meals beyond what's specified (Gregans' dinner is included most evenings — details on inquiry). Personal spending. Travel insurance — required. |
| Price | Inquire for current rates. Pricing covers accommodation, arc, day trips, and Gregans dinners. Details on inquiry. |
| Booking deadline | December 2027 to join the full arc. After January, trip-only spots may be available — but you'll miss five months of reading with this group. |
The book club arc begins January 2028. To get the full experience — five months of reading Irish women's fiction before you arrive — you need to be in by December 2027.
Join the Book Club →Get the reading list for this trip.