Born in a Dublin tenement in the mid-20th century and for the past three decades a well loved figure in San Francisco’s North Beach bohemia, Renee is widely known for the long-running column she wrote for the Irish Herald called “The Rambling Road.”  And a rambling road she’s certainly traveled since escaping Dublin for Paris at age 17, with the help of a Hollywood actor and a kind stranger.

Somewhere along the way, she met and fell in love with a radical longshoreman aboard a ship traveling through the Panama bound for Egypt with her year-old daugher, Ashling. He became her husband and San Francisco became her base, but she has never stopped wandering the world, and has never lost her “longing for elsewhere.”   At the same time, she’s had a life-long commitment to peace activism and has lent her singing and acting abilities to causes too numerous to mention.

Renee’s vastly entertaining memoir, Longing for Elsewhere: My Irish Voyage through Hunger, History and High Times, explores the themes entangled in her journey:  identity, adventure, creativity, the burden of history and the passion for justice.

Now, it’s available read by Renee as an audio book.  Join us to have a listen, and to chat with Renee over wine & cheese.  It will be a lovely evening in the company of a lovely woman.