Navigation
In light of social and legal changes in Ireland over recent years the ILS is drawing together Irish writers to consider the representation of queer people in Irish literature. Our panel will be reflecting on London as a place of escape, queer representation in Irish writing, homosexuality in the discourse of what constitutes Irishness, and the integration of queer characters ...
Eimear McBride joins the Irish Literary Society to discuss and read from her work. Described by the Times Literary Supplement as ‘a writer of remarkable power and originality,’ McBride's debut A Girl is a Half-formed Thing received the inaugural Goldsmiths Prize, the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year. Her short stories have ...
The Irish Literary Society is engaging with writers and academics to reflect on 'Representations of Jews in Irish Literature'. The innovative research project of the same title was developed out of NUI Galway and Ulster University and forms the centre of tonight's event. The main objective of the project is to analyse representations of Jews in Irish literature from the ...
We are delighted to announce a special members-only visit to the Archive of the Irish in Britain. The Archive consists of collections of documents, audio and video recordings, books, photographs and ephemera cataloguing the history of the Irish in Britain from the late nineteenth century to the present day. Dr Tony Murray, the curator of the archive, will give an ...
Lecture by Cahal Dallat with guests Ciarán Hinds and Anne-Marie Fyfe & launch of the WB Yeats Bedford Park Artwork Project  Nobel-prizewinning poet, WB Yeats, though much inspired by Irish legend, landscape and longing, spent two-thirds of his youth in London, the majority of that time in Chiswick's Bedford Park, the Utopian/aesthetic garden-suburb/artists'-colony whose diverse inhabitants fostered his literary talent and endeavours. Irish poet and literary critic, Cahal Dallat, has ...
The ILS is delighted to start its 2019-20 season with a showcase of second-generation Irish writers in Britain. Not quite British, not quite Irish, through their essays, fiction and poetry about music, family, and history these distinguished writers explore questions of identity and belonging and ask the perennial question: where is home – here or Ireland? When questions of authenticity ...
Polly Devlin joins Joan Bakewell to discuss the latest collection of her work, Writing Home, and to reflect on a rich career as a writer, her working as features editor of Vogue in London in the Swinging Sixties, to encounters with Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Barbara Streisand, John Lennon...In the pieces brought together in Writing Home, Polly Devlin OBE, covers ...
As we approach St Brigid's Day we are delighted to welcome an all-female panel to an event considering the continuing popularity of Irish crime writing, so-called "Emerald Noir". Our guests will read from their work, reflect on their portrayal of female detectives and as all three are UK-based we'll consider their London and Dublin settings. In Maeve Kerrigan (Casey), Bridie ...
In this centenary year of the publication of Ulysses we are delighted to welcome David Collard back to the Society with his new book, Multiple Joyce: One Hundred Short Essays About James Joyce's Cultural Legacy (Sagging Meniscus Press, June 2022). Springing from the essays we'll have discussion, song, readings and music to mark the UK launch of the book and ...
The scholar MeidhbhÃn Nà Úrdail visits the Society to deliver our joint annual Noel O'Connell memorial talk with the Irish Texts Society. Her subject is Thomas O’Connor (alias Tomás Ó Conchubhair, b. 1798), originally from the civil parish of Templemolaga, Co. Cork, he emigrated to London in 1820 where he worked as a tailor until his death around 1870. The ...
