Margaret Atwood leads Galway 2020's Wild Atlantic Women programme

European Capital of Culture 2020 Galway joins International Women's Day this weekend with a programme celebrating women's achievements, headlined by author and poet Margaret Atwood.

The Wild Atlantic Women programme begins the day before International Women's Day on Saturday, March 7 with a conversation with Derry Girls star Siobhan McSweeney about her life as an actor and her inspirational views on the world at large.

March 8 will include a unique outdoor sunrise performance by international poet and sound artist Caroline Bergval called RAGADAWN. A multisensory composition for live voices and a chorus of multiple recorded audiences, it's a powerful and moving voice performance that reconnects audiences to time, place and each other.

Recent winner of the EU Prize for Literature, Jan Carson, will later discuss her new novel The Fire Starter, a magical realist take on modern-day Belfast.

Atwood will close the programme on Sunday, March 8 with a reflection on her remarkable career and the inspiration for her new book, The Testaments, the sequel to her widely acclaimed 1985 dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale. The author has remained incredibly involved in discussions surrounding gender and feminist issues throughout her career.