Culture Club: Evanne Ní Chuilinn
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Who is Evanne Ní Chuilinn and what is her new children’s book "Squad Girls" about?
The last word with Life Pharmacy. Over 100 local pharmacies nationwide that are always here to help Life Pharmacy live better together. Ivan
Dequillan is with us, former broadcaster, now Finegale Senator, but also author and a new book for children called Squad Girls. Ivan, thank you very much for joining us. Thanks, Matt. It's my pleasure. Tell us about writing for children.
Uh well first of all I have enjoyed it so much. Uh so much so that book two is in the offing. Um so this book, I mean, it was not my first book. I did a the gate the great Irish book, A Gaelic Games, which is obviously a factual book.
Yeah.
Um, but this is my first piece of fiction. And um It kind of it kind of fell out of my brain as soon as I started writing it. I think I felt like I wanted to read it when I was ten, I would love to have had access to something like this. Um but my daughter is kind of who inspired it for a variety of different reasons. She's a gymnast and she wanted to read about gymnastics, but she was also a bit of a reluctant reader. And so I was trying to encourage her to read and she was eight at the time and a lot of the books for girls in the libraries and bookshops are fairies and princesses and unicorns and she just was never into that stuff. So her friends were reading, you know, lots of the fairy books and stuff, but she couldn't get into it.
So I asked her what she wanted to read and she said gymnastics. So I said, Right, well I'll write something and then you'll read it and I kind of developed the four characters very deliberately around four different sports and you know, a lot of the conversations in the book there's not a lot of messaging in there that I'd love young girls in sports to kind of pick up on something. What sort of
messaging?
Ah well, just, you know, around the the importance of friendship and fun and support and you know, the skills that we learn in sport are so much more than winning medals or anything like that. And it I think it's really important to have those conversations, particularly with the kids who are training maybe, you know, fifteen, twenty hours a week. It's really important. Like if you are going to go and, you know, represent Ireland, um, and I you I you I had you I was listening to Orla Comerford's Culture Club recently and Orla really helped me with the book because there's a power sports storyline in the book and Um, she would tell you you'll have, you know, more bad days than good. And it's really important that kids kind of know that about sport um and that you get so much more from it.
So those kind of messages, but also like practical stuff, like I'd be very strict on on my daughter around food um and making sure that she fuels her body and rest and friendship and making time for things outside of the gym as well. So um all of that. And then conversations that we have, like just generally mat around sport. Like it's really important that we just don't have a narrow definition of what sport is and that's why there's an Irish dancer in the book. You know, we've generations of Irish women who grew up thinking they weren't athletic, but they were doing Irish dancing or they were doing ballet. And I think it's really important that we include those um physical activities in the sporting conversation.
And so that's a very deliberate um kind of nod. You know, the fact that we have Rina in the book, the Irish Dancer, is very deliberate.
At this at a time when there's been a lot of controversy, which I'm sure you're aware of in recent days, coming out of America about an advert been done for a betting company by the actress Sidney Sweeney, in which she uses various bits of sporting equipment to cover up her nudity. And she just keeps saying sports in this video ad. What do you make of that?
Well, first of all, it's not an ad, you know, that's trying to uh depict women in sport. It's an ad that is made for the male gaze. And, you know, there's no point in in feeling ourselves otherwise. But I do think it's It's quite alarming that that somebody said in some boardroom somewhere that that ad was a good idea.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Who is Evanne Ní Chuilinn and what is her new children’s book "Squad Girls" about?
0:00–4:23
2
How did Evanne’s daughter inspire the characters and themes in "Squad Girls"?
4:23–8:32
3
What message does the book aim to convey to young girls in sport?
8:32–11:55
4
What are Evanne’s thoughts on the controversial Sidney Sweeney sports‑betting ad?
11:55–15:36
5
Which songs and artists does Evanne consider her all‑time favourites and why?
15:36–18:41
6
What crime‑fiction series does Evanne recommend and what draws her to it?
18:41–23:08
7
How does Evanne view the evolution of TV‑show watching habits from Friends to streaming?
23:08–26:51
8
What podcast does Evanne recommend for a mix of arts and sport, and why is it a good listen?
26:51–29:30
Speakers
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