Navigation
As we approach yet another Brexit deadline (31 October) the Society has banded-together with the Irish Pages journal to reflect on the Belfast Agreement of 1998 and to consider possible futures for the union, Anglo-Irish relations, power sharing and the border. The current special issue of Irish Pages is given over to reflections on the agreement. The essays and poetry ...
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 ...
THIS EVENT HAS BEEN POSTPONED DUE TO CONCERNS ABOUT THE CORONAVIRUS. WE WILL LOOK TO RESCHEDULE IN THE COMING MONTHS The Society is delighted to partner with the Dublin City Council for a second year to deliver an event on the Dublin One City One Book choice. This year's choice is Tatty by Christine Dwyer Hickey. Dublin One City One ...
THIS EVENT HAS BEEN POSTPONED DUE TO CONCERNS ABOUT THE CORONAVIRUS. THE EVENT WILL RUN IN OUR 2020-21 SEASON. Join the Society to celebrate the 10th birthday of The Moth, one of Ireland’s foremost art and literature magazines. Founded in 2010 by Rebecca O’Connor and Will Govan, The Moth features poetry, short fiction and art by established and up-and-coming writers ...
Professor Richard Kirkland joins in conversation with Roy Foster, the Society's Vice President, on Kirkland’s new book Irish London: A Cultural History 1850–1916 (London: Bloomsbury, 2021). In the years following the Irish Famine (1845–52), London became one of the cities of Ireland. The number of Irish in London swelled to over 100,000 and from this mass migration emerged a distinctive ...
As tension persists over the future of the Protocol and frustration is leading to renewed speculation of the possibility of a United Ireland we engage with four writers whose work is gathered in a landmark new anthology reflecting on the border. The New Frontier: Reflections from the Irish Border (New Island, 2021) is a landmark anthology of fiction, non-fiction ...
To mark the centenary of the birth of Belfast-born writer Brian Moore (1921-1999) Brian Moore at 100 and the Irish Literary Society have partnered to screen The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (7 December) and deliver tonight's talk with Dr Sinéad Moynihan and Lucy Caldwell. Designed to coincide with the centenary of his birth, the Exeter University project has sought ...
Sinéad Gleeson and Emilie Pine join the ILS to discuss their recent books of essays. Pine's winning last year's An Post Irish Book of the Year seemed to mark a reemergence of the essay form in Irish literature. Perhaps the flourishing of literary journals in Ireland has encouraged this, perhaps the renewed appreciation of Hubert Butler's work has been an ...
We're delighted to welcome back Jess Kidd to the Society to discuss her novel, The Night Ship. The novel is based on the extraordinary story of the Batavia, the flagship of the Dutch East India Company that in 1628 was wrecked on Morning Reef, on the Houtman Abrolhos islands off western coast of Australia. Its wrecking was followed by factions ...
New York in the late 1960s: Mae escapes a run-down an apartment, an alcoholic mother and her mother’s occasional boyfriend to a new life as a typist for Andy Warhol, transcribing conversations with his friends and associates to provide the material for an unconventional novel. A mordantly funny investigation of celebrity, obsession, womanhood and sexuality, Nothing Special (Bloomsbury) is itself ...
