"No one in the world, yes, in the world, can tell a story better than Gioia Timpanelli . . . In another day, another country, another gender, Gioia Timpanelli would have been a seanchaia wandering Irish storyteller, earning dinner and a bed with the magic of the word . . ."
There's no better introduction than that - by author Frank McCourt - for one of the guests on tomorrow night's Clifden Community Arts Week programme in Connemara.
Folk Tale to Fiction is the title of Ms Timpanelli's lecture in Foyle's Hotel at 10 p.m., while playwright Donal O'Kelly presents his award-winning play, Bat the Father, Rabbit the Son two hours earlier in the Station House Hotel.
Some two dozen writers and poets are participating in the 23rd annual community arts week, organised by the indefatigable Brendan Flynn and running until Saturday. Carlo Gebler, Tom MacIntyre, John O'Donohue, Bill Long, Paul Durcan, Michael Coady, Anne Henning Jocelyn, Michael Mullen, Padraig Daly, Michael Harding, Mary O'Malley and Theo Dorgan are among the guests and many have been, or will be, reading and giving classes to the fortunate students of Clifden Community School over the next few days.
The governor of Mountjoy prison in Dublin, John Lonergan, will ask "if our obsession with materialism is dehumanising us" on Thursday at 8 p.m. in the Station House Hotel. On Wednesday there will be special evening in celebration of the life and work of the poet and friend of the Clifden arts week, the late Michael Hartnett, in Foyle's Hotel.
There's a lot more on the programme, which is available locally or on the organisers' website at www.clifden-artsweek.com