BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//Irish Literary Society - ECPv6.15.20//NONSGML v1.0//EN CALSCALE:GREGORIAN METHOD:PUBLISH X-ORIGINAL-URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org X-WR-CALDESC:Events for Irish Literary Society REFRESH-INTERVAL;VALUE=DURATION:PT1H X-Robots-Tag:noindex X-PUBLISHED-TTL:PT1H BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:Europe/London BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:+0000 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 TZNAME:BST DTSTART:20200329T010000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:+0100 TZOFFSETTO:+0000 TZNAME:GMT DTSTART:20201025T010000 END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:+0000 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 TZNAME:BST DTSTART:20210328T010000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:+0100 TZOFFSETTO:+0000 TZNAME:GMT DTSTART:20211031T010000 END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:+0000 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 TZNAME:BST DTSTART:20220327T010000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:+0100 TZOFFSETTO:+0000 TZNAME:GMT DTSTART:20221030T010000 END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:+0000 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 TZNAME:BST DTSTART:20230326T010000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:+0100 TZOFFSETTO:+0000 TZNAME:GMT DTSTART:20231029T010000 END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:+0000 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 TZNAME:BST DTSTART:20240331T010000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:+0100 TZOFFSETTO:+0000 TZNAME:GMT DTSTART:20241027T010000 END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:+0000 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 TZNAME:BST DTSTART:20250330T010000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:+0100 TZOFFSETTO:+0000 TZNAME:GMT DTSTART:20251026T010000 END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:+0000 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 TZNAME:BST DTSTART:20260329T010000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:+0100 TZOFFSETTO:+0000 TZNAME:GMT DTSTART:20261025T010000 END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:UTC BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:+0000 TZOFFSETTO:+0000 TZNAME:UTC DTSTART:20210101T000000 END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20251125T193000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20251125T210000 DTSTAMP:20260501T180312 CREATED:20251104T000950Z LAST-MODIFIED:20251125T161031Z UID:21086-1764099000-1764104400@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:Arlen House 50th - 25 November DESCRIPTION:We are sorry to report that we will not be joined tonight by Nuala O’Connor as planned. Our apologies\, this is due to unforeseen circumstances preventing her travel. We have more than a dozen poets reading their poems and reflecting on the work of the press.\n\n\nWe’re delighted to welcome back to the Society Nuala O’Connor and Alan Hayes representing Arlen House as we celebrate the 50th anniversary of this pioneering press with a group of writers drawn from the latest in the Washing Windows series of poetry collections: Washing Windows V: Women Revolutionise Irish Poetry\, 1975–2025\, the largest anthology of Irish women poets ever published. The night will also feature the London launch of O’Connor’s latest collection\, Menagerie. Washing Windows V is the final volume in the series honouring the groundbreaking work of publishers Catherine Rose and Eavan Boland\, Arlen House’s pioneering editors in the 1970s and 1980s. \n\n\n\nThe first Arlen House book came out in September 1975\, the same month that Virago in London published their first book. The first Virago book was a gentle oral history of women in the Lake District while the first Arlen House was a radical exposé of women’s lives in 20th century Ireland and the controlling power of the Church.Alan Hayes\n\n\n\nCatherine Rose founded Arlen House\, Ireland’s first feminist press\, in Galway during the 1975 International Women’s Year. The press’s early work focused on championing women’s writing in Ireland\, the first publication was Rose’s The Female Experience: The Story of the Woman Movement in Ireland\, the work of Margaret Mac Curtain\, Janet Martin\, and Terry Prone featured and the Press revived the work of neglected writers such as such as Kate O’Brien and Norah Hoult. Since 1999 the extraordinarily prolific editor and publisher Alan Hayes has run the press.\n\n\n\n\n\n \nThe event will be followed by a booksale and signing. Tickets available below or you can purchase membership from the shop page which covers all tickets for the 2025-6 season. \n\n\n Speakers: Nuala O'Connor\n\n\n\n Nuala O’Connor\nNuala O’Connor was born in Dublin\, Ireland\, in 1970. A graduate of Trinity College Dublin\, she is a novelist and short story writer and lives in County Galway with her husband and three children. Nuala has won many prizes for her short fiction including the Short Story Prize in the UK and Ireland’s Francis MacManus Award. She is editor at flash e-zine Splonk. Nora was her fifth novel\, she is also the author of several short story and poetry collections\, Menagerie being the latest.. \n\nAlan Hayes\n Alan Hayes\nAlan Hayes is publisher and editor of Arlen House\, Ireland’s oldest feminist press\, specialising in equality and diversity. \n\n\n\n  URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/arlen-house-50th-25-november/ LOCATION:Irish Cultural Centre\, Hammersmith\, 5 Black’s Road Hammersmith\, W6 9DT\, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:book signing,feminism,history,interview,Irish language,publishing,Reading,special event,women ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/arlen-at-50.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20250522T193000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20250522T203000 DTSTAMP:20260501T180312 CREATED:20250429T211357Z LAST-MODIFIED:20250429T214350Z UID:21030-1747942200-1747945800@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:Foreign Tongues - 22 May DESCRIPTION:The Annual Noel O’Connell Memorial Lecture\, a joint venture of the Irish Literary Society and Irish Texts Society will be delivered by Phyllis Gaffney on her recent book Foreign Tongues\nVictorian Language Learning and the Shaping of Modern Ireland which is the first historical overview of the study of languages in Ireland. \n \nHow history shifts languages and languages in turn shape history is a deep-rooted\, dynamic process manifest in Victorian Ireland. In Foreign Tongues\, Gaffney sheds new light on this period of Irish history\, exploring how continental influences that predated the Penal Laws were reinvigorated in the wake of the French Revolution. An influx of foreign teachers and religious orders created institutions for an emerging élite\, and University education expanded. At the same time\, civil service reforms opened careers across the British Empire to graduates from all religions. The result is that Ireland’s Victorian colleges embraced language study—ancient and modern\, Irish and European—more eagerly than their British counterparts. \n[Prof. Gaffney] dissects for instance the travails\nof the Irish language since independence and partition. Its pride of place as a\nrepository of idealism and its status as the country’s first official language\ncoexist with problems on the ground such as well-documented difficulties in\nteaching it and\, one might add\, disaffection on the part of many of the young\npeople studying it. .Grace Neville\nUniversity College Cork\,\n\n \nAn adaptive\, fast-changing academic landscape laid the groundwork for today’s Ireland—culturally confident\, open to Europe and the world—while the dramatic rise of the Gaelic League forged a bond between language\, education\, and politics with pervasive effects on Irish identities in the twentieth century. Gaffney will outline some profiles of individual professors to reveal pioneering scholarship\, precarious careers\, sudden scandals\, and denunciations and dismissals linked to local conflicts and foreign wars. Her book documents how the advance of women’s education cleared the path for a cohort of notable female professors across modern languages. \n\n \n  \n Speaker: Professor Phyllis Gaffney\n\n\n\n Phyllis Gaffney\nPhyllis Gaffney is a researcher who has taught at Carysfort College of Education and University College Dublin. She is the author of several books\, most recently The Medieval Imagination: Mirabile Dictu. URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/foreign-tongues-22-may/ LOCATION:Irish Cultural Centre\, Hammersmith\, 5 Black’s Road Hammersmith\, W6 9DT\, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:history,Irish language,lecture,Nationalism,Reading ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/foreign-tongues-banner.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20250124T200000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20250124T210000 DTSTAMP:20260501T180312 CREATED:20250104T175925Z LAST-MODIFIED:20250211T051913Z UID:20708-1737748800-1737752400@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:Ó Rathaille - 24 Jan DESCRIPTION:Join us on Friday 24 Jan for our first event of 2025. We are delighted to welcome back Professor Declan Kiberd to the Society to discuss the life and poetry of Aogán Ó Rathaille (c.1670–1729) and to launch a book by long time ILS member Brian O’Connor of a selection of the poems. Conveying Ó Rathaille’s intricate rhythms and rhyme schemes are a challenge for a translator\, even more so in his great laments of dispossession\, O’Connor carries the work into English with admirable simplicity and fluency. \n\nThese translations capture the fragile buoyancy of beautifully extended vowels\, which give each line a magnificent dignified internal patterning\, even as their endings sometimes refuse rhyme\, because the world the poet faces is no longer felt to be regular: Brian O’Connor helps us also to appreciate the sheer range of Ó Rathaille’s acoustic.Declan Kiberd\n\nThe evening will feature Professor Kiberd’s discussion of the work of Ó Rathaille and the closing down of the civilisation that nurtured him. There will be music and readings from the Irish and English. In O’Connor’s new book of translations\, Wave\, the Irish and English are presented in parallel text – this will be available for sale on the night. The parallel text format of the publication is suited to enhancing language acquisition and effectively scaffolding reading proficiency\, as such we have made this event free to encourage all those studying Irish to attend. Reserve tickets below. After the event you can purchase a copy from the publisher\, Eile.\n\n\n\n Speakers: Declan Kiberd\n\n\n\n Declan Kiberd\nDeclan Kiberd teaches in the English Department and Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies as the Donald and Marilyn Keough Professor of Irish Studies and Professor of English. A leading international authority on the literature of Ireland\, both in English and Irish\, Kiberd has authored scores of articles and many books\, including Synge and the Irish Language\, Men and Feminism in Irish Literature\, Irish Classics\, The Irish Writer and the World\, Inventing Ireland\, and\, most recently\, Ulysses and Us: The Art of Everyday Life in Joyce’s Masterpiece (2009). He has co-edited with PJ Mathews Handbook of the Irish Revival 1891-1922\, a five-hundred-page anthology of cultural and political writings with commentaries and introductions\, published by Abbey Theatre Press in June 2015.. \n\nBrian O'Connor\n Brian O’Connor\nBrian O’Connor has been a member of the Irish Literary Society for many years. He was born in Cork\, graduated from UCC and worked as a journalist and researcher. His selection of translations from Ó Rathaille is published by Eile Press and will be available for sale at the event. \n[/content_band]\n\n\n\n  URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/orathaille-24-jan/ LOCATION:Irish Cultural Centre\, Hammersmith\, 5 Black’s Road Hammersmith\, W6 9DT\, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:Irish language,lecture,London-Irish,music,poetry,politics,social history ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/wave-banner1.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20241125T193000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20241125T210000 DTSTAMP:20260501T180312 CREATED:20241111T111157Z LAST-MODIFIED:20241121T082824Z UID:20632-1732563000-1732568400@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:Neil Jordan - 25 Nov DESCRIPTION:Neil Jordan is unique in his success both as a fiction writer and a movie maker. In his new memoir Amnesiac he looks back over his twin careers with a certain amused wonderment – how did he manage all that? The result is a fascinating record of private loves and losses\, of public triumphs and lessons learned\, in a narrative shaped by the hand of an artist. And yes\, there is enough insider Hollywood lore to satisfy the hungriest picturegoer. He is joined in conversation by film and theatre critic Daniel Rosenthal. \nNeil Jordan is the creative mind behind the films Angel\, Mona Lisa\, Michael Collins\, The Crying Game\, and Interview with the Vampire\, and novels such as The Past and Night in Tunisia. Jordan will explore his past and family history: from growing up near an abandoned estate in Dublin\, to his passion for music and early productions with Jim Sheridan. Hear stories of his collaborations with Stephen Rea\, Jaye Davidson\, Bob Hoskins\, and Tom Cruise\, and reflections on loss\, love\, creativity\, and even the supernatural by one of Ireland’s most unusual artists. URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/neil-jordan-25-nov/ LOCATION:Irish Cultural Centre\, Hammersmith\, 5 Black’s Road Hammersmith\, W6 9DT\, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:America,biography,book signing,film,history ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/jordan-banner.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20241111T193000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20241111T210000 DTSTAMP:20260501T180312 CREATED:20241029T121234Z LAST-MODIFIED:20241030T202659Z UID:20566-1731353400-1731358800@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:Charlotte Brontë - 11 November DESCRIPTION:Charlotte Brontë\, who dazzled the world with some of literature’s most vital and richly-drawn characters\, spent her brief but extraordinary life in search of love. She eventually found it with Arthur Bell\, a reserved yet passionate Irishman. After marrying\, the pair honeymooned in Ireland – a glimmer of happiness in a life shadowed by tragedy. \n\nWe’re delighted to welcome Martina Devlin to discuss her enthralling new novel Charlotte . It weaves back and forth through Charlotte’s life\, reflecting on the myths built around her by those who knew her\, those who thought they knew her\, and those who longed to know her. Above all\, this is a story of fiction: who creates it\, who lives it\, who owns it. Martina will be in conversation with Dr. Ailsa Grant Ferguson. The event will reflect on the writing and responsibilities of biographical fiction and consider Martina’s research and wider experience in writing about historical figures. \n\nBrontë died just nine months into her marriage to Bell. Her genius\, and the aura of mystery surrounding her\, meant she’d been mythologised even within her own lifetime – a process which only intensified after her death. Observed through the eyes of Mary Nicholls – who encountered Charlotte on that fateful journey to Ireland\, and who went on to wed her widower Arthur – Charlotte is a story of three lives irrevocably intertwined. Bound by passion and obsession\, friendship and loss\, loyalty and deception – this a story of Brontë’s short but pivotal time in Ireland as never before told. \n\n\n\n Speakers: Martina Devlin\n\n\n\n Martina Devlin\nMartina Devlin is a bestselling author and award-winning journalist\, having published ten books to date. Devlin has won numerous awards for both her writing and journalism\, including the Hennessy Literary Award 1996\, GALA columnist of the year 2010\, National Newspapers of Ireland columnist of the year 2011 and Royal Society of Literature’s V.S. Pritchett short story award 2012. She was also Writer-in-Residence at the Princess Grace Irish Library in Monaco in 2009. She has been shortlisted three times for the Irish Book of the Year awards\, and her non-fiction account of the Irish financial collapse\, Banksters\, co-authored with David Murphy\, topped the best-seller list for eight weeks. A former Fleet Street journalist\, she writes weekly current affairs columns for the Irish Independent and has been named National Newspapers of Ireland columnist of the year. She frequently chairs literary and current affairs events and is a regular commentator on BBC and RTÉ. She was born in Omagh and lives in Dublin. \n\nDr Ailsa Grant Ferguson\n\n\n\n Dr Ailsa Grant Ferguson\nDr Grant Ferguson is Co-Director of the Centre for Memory\, Narrative and Histories and leads the Performance and Communities Research and Enterprise Group. Dr Ailsa Grant Ferguson’s research is interdisciplinary\, focusing across early modern English literature and cultural history and their afterlives in 20th and 21st century contexts. She is an elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a current AHRC Research\, Development and Engagement Fellow. Her work focuses on literary histories\, especially Shakespeare in performance and cultural contexts\, performance and gender\, literary commemoration\, heritage and cultural memory\, and early modern women’s writing and its afterlives and mediation. \n\n\n\n\n  URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/charlotte-bronte-11-november/ LOCATION:Art Workers Guild\, 6 Queen Square\,\, London\, WC1N 3AT\, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:biography,book signing,emigration,feminism,history,women ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/devlin-banner-2.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20241007T193000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20241007T203000 DTSTAMP:20260501T180312 CREATED:20240925T001758Z LAST-MODIFIED:20240928T112120Z UID:20446-1728329400-1728333000@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:Shivaun O'Casey - 7 Oct DESCRIPTION:In the year of the centenary of the inaugural production of Juno and the Paycock we welcome Shivaun O’Casey\, daughter of playwright Sean O’Casey and actress Eileen Carey\, to speak at the Society to give insight into growing up in the O’Casey household\, her father’s work and her own work as a theatre director:”My parents never encouraged me to go into theatre\, because they knew it was spasmodic work and involved a lot of heartbreak.”\n\nShivaun was born in 1939\, by which time O’Casey had become fed up with his treatment by the Irish literary establishment and moved to south-west England. As co-executor with her brother Breon of the O’Casey literary estate\, she was responsible for turning over the huge O’Casey archive to the National Library and continues to manage the Sean O’Casey Estate. Coinciding with a major revival of the work in London the conversation with O’Casey expert Dr Michelle Paull will touch on the production history of Juno and the Paycock\, the writing of the play\, the reaction to the O’Casey’s work and the effect of that on Sean and his relationship to Ireland. The actress Esther O’Casey\, granddaughter to Sean\, will contribute readings from the work. \n\n\n Speakers: Shivaun O'Casey\n\n\n\n Shivaun O’Casey\nShivaun O’Casey began directing and producing in New York City in 1987 with Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days\, followed by Baglady (Frank McGuinness)\, and Purple Dust (Sean O’Casey). In 1991\, she formed The O’Casey Theater Company\, based both in Northern Ireland and New York\, The company produced three international tours: The Shadow of a Gunman\, Three Shouts from a Hill\, The Plough and the Stars – and finally\, for performance in Derry only\, Behind the Green Curtains. She manages the Sean O’Casey Estate and directed and narrated the documentary on her father Under a Coloured Cap (2004) that profiles her father’s life of hardship and triumph\, idealism and disenchantment. \n\nDr Michelle Paull\n\n\n\n Dr Michelle Paull\nDr Michelle Paull of (St Mary’s University\, Twickenham) is a Senior Lecturer in Drama and is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Michelle’s PhD at Goldsmiths’ College\, University of London focused on the theatre of Sean O’Casey and she is currently working on her monograph\, Sean O’Casey: Critical Controversies. Michelle’s research and teaching interests include contemporary theatre\, London theatre\, Irish plays\, Sean O’Casey\, adaptations on stage and screen and contemporary writing in English.. \n\n\n\n\n\nEsther O'Casey\n\n\n\n Esther O’Casey\nA recent graduate of GUILDHALL SCHOOL OF MUSIC & DRAMA\, BA (Hons) Acting. See: Guildhall. \n\n\n\n  URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/shivaun-ocasey-7-oct/ LOCATION:The Bloomsbury Hotel\, The Bloomsbury Hotel\, 16-22 Great Russell Street\, London\, WC1B 3NN \, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:archive,children,emigration,Nationalism,theatre ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Ocasey-banner-1.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20240531T193000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20240531T210000 DTSTAMP:20260501T180312 CREATED:20240428T215357Z LAST-MODIFIED:20240529T020520Z UID:20316-1717183800-1717189200@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:Rónán Hession - 31 May DESCRIPTION:The Society welcomes back Rónán Hession for the London launch of his latest novel. The author will be discussing Ghost Mountain with the author and TLS critic David Collard. There will be an audience Q&A followed by a book signing\, a glass of wine is included in the ticket price. \nGhost Mountain is a mountain that appears suddenly\, changing the lives of the characters in the surrounding community: the town drunk\, the Clerk of Maps (Acting)\, a retired art teacher and her dog\, a young soul and his wife who is an old soul. To them\, Ghost Mountain is unmistakably present but never truly fathomable – it is timeless\, profound\, spiritual even\, and yet resists everything projected onto it. Ghost Mountain is a novel that looks at the uncertain sense of self that we project onto the world and the absences that shadow and shape our lives. \nGod\, what a voice Ronan has. It is spectacular and already feels like a cult classic. I was absolutely hookedDonal Ryan on Leonard and Hungry Paul\n
\n Speakers and performers: \n  \n David Collard\n\n\n\n David Collard\nDavid Collard is a London-based writer\, reviewer\, researcher\, editor and occasional broadcaster\, appearing regularly in the Times Literary Supplement\, Literary Review and elsewhere\, in print and online. Previous titles include About a Girl\, a reader’s guide to Eimear McBride’s A Girl is a Half-formed Thing (C B Editions\, 2016).Find out more on David’s website. \n\nRónán Hession\n\n\n\n Rónán Hession\nRónán Hession is a writer and musician based in Dublin. His debut novel\, Leonard and Hungry Paul\, was published by Bluemoose Books in 2019. The book was shortlisted for numerous awards and chosen by the Sunday Times as one of the 50 great Irish novels of the 21st century. Ronán’s second novel Panenka was widely acclaimed. URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/ronan-hession-31-may/ LOCATION:Fitzrovia Chapel\, Fitzroy Place\, 2 Pearson Square\, London W1T 3BF\, London\, Fitzrovia Chapel\, Fitzroy Place\, 2 PeW1T 3BF\, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:book signing,interview,novel,Reading ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/ghost-mountain.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20240325T193000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20240325T210000 DTSTAMP:20260501T180312 CREATED:20240303T125231Z LAST-MODIFIED:20240309T154923Z UID:20254-1711395000-1711400400@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:Molly Keane - 25 March DESCRIPTION:This event brings together the poets Thomas McCarthy and Virginia Keane Brownlow in conversation with Dorothy Allen to reflect on the life and writing of Molly Keane. Molly Keane was born Molly Skrine in Co Kildare in 1904\, part of what she herself described as “a rather serious hunting\, fishing church going family”. Her mother\, Moira O’Neill was a well known writer\, called the “Poetess of the Glens” and Keane herself published The Knights of Cheerful Countenance in 1926 when she was just seventeen. She used the name of M.J Farrell as a pen name\, reputedly a name she had taken from a pub she spotted one day while out hunting. For Keane\, the male name became a screen for her literary work\, a necessary self protection within the distinctly unliterary anti-intellectual hunting world of the Anglo-Irish in the 1920’s. Comic novels like Young Entry\, (1928)\, Mad Puppetstown\, (1931)\, Devoted Ladies (1934) and Full House\, (1935) established her reputation\, as did her most dramatic novel of the Irish war of Independence\, Two Days in Aragon\, published in 1941. At the same time\, Molly Keane was also a successful dramatist in London’s West End\, working with John Gielgud between 1938 and 1961 to produce a series of commercial hits. After the death of her husband and the failure of a play in 1961\, Molly Keane moved back to Ardmore\, Co Waterford with her two daughters and gave up writing as M.J. Farrell. Finally\, in 1981\, she published\, under her own name\, the novel that is considered her masterpiece\, Good Behaviour and found new inspiration as a novelist in her old age with later novels such as Time After Time\, (1983) and Loving and Giving (1988). Molly Keane died in 1996. \n\nIMAGE: MOLLY KEANE AT VARDMORE IN 1945\, PAINTED BY NORAH MCGUINNESS\nTicket £8 >\n Speakers: Thomas McCarthy\n\n\n\n Tom McCarthy\nThomas McCarthy was educated at University College Cork and worked for many years at Cork City Libraries. His published collections include The First Convention\, The Sorrow Garden\, Lost Province\, Merchant Prince and The Last Geraldine Officer. His Pandemonium\, 2016\, was short-listed for the Irish Times/Poetry Now Award and his new collection\, Prophecy\, was published by Carcanet Press UK in April 2019. Awards include The Patrick Kavanagh Award\, The Alice Hunt Bartlett Prize\, The Lawrence O’Shaughnessy Award for Poetry and the Annual Literary Award of the Ireland Funds. His prose-book\, Poetry\, Memory and the Party\, was published by Gallery Press in 2021. McCarthy was a friend of Molly Keane and remains a great champion of her work. He is a member of Aosdána. \n\nVirginia Keane Brownlow\n\n\n\n Virginia Keane Brownlow\nVirginia Keane Brownlow is a poet\, daughter of Molly Keane and grand-daughter of Moira O’Neill the Celtic Revival poet. In 2009 Virginia created The Molly Keane Writers’ Retreat with the writers Lani O’Hanlon and Thomas McCarthy. \n\n\nDorothy Allen\n\n\n\n Dorothy Allen\nDorothy Allen is an award winning journalist\, currently the London correspondent of Swiss magazine Tierwelt. She is a former BBC reporter\, working in documentary programmes for television (Brass Tacks; Panorama) and radio (File on Four). As a print journalist\, she won a Feature Writer of the Year award while reporting for the Burton Daily Mail. She has also written a weekly television review column for The Tablet magazine. Dorothy is a former Vice Chair of the Irish Literary Society. \n\n\n\n  URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/molly-keane-25-march/ LOCATION:The Bloomsbury Hotel\, The Bloomsbury Hotel\, 16-22 Great Russell Street\, London\, WC1B 3NN \, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:biography,feminism,social history,women ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Molly-Keane.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20240126T200000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20240126T210000 DTSTAMP:20260501T180312 CREATED:20240113T192626Z LAST-MODIFIED:20240120T134525Z UID:20173-1706299200-1706302800@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:Martin Doyle\, Dirty Linen - 26 Jan DESCRIPTION:We are delighted to kick off 2024 with a collaboration with our friends at the Irish Cultural Centre\, Hammersmith\, home to many of our events over recent years. Martin Doyle will be joining us not in his more familiar capacity as the Literary Editor of the Irish Times but as an author in his own right. His Dirty Linen – The Troubles in My Home Place is a personal and profound exploration of the impact of the Troubles seen through the microcosm of a single rural parish in County Down\, Tullylish – part of both the Linen Triangle\, heartland of the North’s defining industry\, and the Murder Triangle\, an area devastated by paramilitary violence. Martin Doyle\, who grew up there\, lifts the veil of silence drawn over the horrors of the past\, recording in heartrending detail the toll the conflict took and the long tail of trauma it has left behind. \n\nDoyle skilfully weaves together the two strands of history\, with the decline of the local linen industry serving as a metaphor for the descent into communal violence\, but also for the solidarity that transcended the sectarian divide. Neighbours and classmates who lost loved ones in the conflict\, survivors maimed in bomb attacks and victims of sectarianism\, both Catholic and Protestant\, entrust him with their poignant stories. This unforgettable chorus of victims’ voices tells a terrible truth\, but the survivors’ stories of endurance and love will also inspire and restore one’s faith in humanity. \n \n \nAll paid up ILS members can claim a code to redeem a free ticket\, just contact the Secretary for the code: irishlitsoc@gmail.com.\n \n\nICC Ticket optionILS Ticket option Tickets are available online and at the venue from the Irish Cultural Centre\, Hammersmith: TICKET LINK > The ILS 6 month membership option is now open covering all events January to July 2024: MEMBERSHIP SUBS LINK >\n\n\n \n\n\nSuperb\, really important and moving work that brings the reality of the Troubles to life and restores the human tragedy to its proper place in public memory… a vital\, potent and moving piece of work. — Fintan O’Toole. \n\n\nDirty Linen (Merrion Press\, 2023) \n  \n\n\n\n \n  \n Speakers: Martin Doyle\n\n\n\n Martin Doyle\nMartin Doyle is Books Editor of The Irish Times\, which he joined in 2007.He started his career in London in 1990 with The Irish World\, joined The Irish Post in 1992 and became its editor before moving in 2001 to The Irish Times. He edited A History of The Irish Post\, which was published in 2000 to mark the newspaper’s thirtieth anniversary. A native of Banbridge\, County Down\, he is a graduate of the University of St Andrews\, where he studied French and German. He contributed an essay to The 32: An Anthology of Irish Working Class Voices (Unbound\, 2021) and to The Routledge Handbook of the Northern Ireland Conflict and Peace (forthcoming) \n\nAnne Flaherty\n\n\n\n Anne Flaherty\nAnne Flaherty is a journalist who was born in London and grew up in County Clare. Anne has worked for the Irish Press in Dublin and The Irish Times in Belfast as well as reporting from Africa and Asia. She is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin\, holds an MA in Anglo-Irish Writing from Queen’s University Belfast and an MA in Children’s Literature from the University of Surrey. Anne is a Trustee of the ICC key and a member of its literature programming team. URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/martin-doyle-dirty-linen-26-jan/ LOCATION:Irish Cultural Centre\, Hammersmith\, 5 Black’s Road Hammersmith\, W6 9DT\, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:book signing,Border,crime,documentary,London-Irish,Nationalism,politics,Reading,social history ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/dirty-linen-banner.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20231127T193000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20231127T210000 DTSTAMP:20260501T180312 CREATED:20231008T180552Z LAST-MODIFIED:20231121T133218Z UID:20028-1701113400-1701118800@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:Resting Places - 27 Nov DESCRIPTION:Join us for the London launch of a fascinating new work by Dr Ellen McWilliams. Resting Places: On Wounds\, War and the Irish Revolution could be read as a memoir or a collection of personal essays\, but it is neither – literary scholar Lucy McDiarmid describes it as ‘the creation of a new literary form’. Resting Places offers up an Irishwoman’s elegy for two revolutionists\, Oliver Cromwell and Terence James MacSwiney\, a meditation on the unexpected correspondences between the English Civil War of the seventeenth century and the Irish Civil War of the 1920s\, a prayer to John Milton and William Shakespeare\, and a keen for a Famine Road and for the troubled history of the plantation town of Bandon in Co. Cork. The book emerged from an article in the Irish Times. \nAt the centre of McWilliams’s threnody is a massacre that took place a century ago in West Cork but might as well have been yesterday. It is unforgotten and will continue to be so as her son learns about that “exquisitely painful” time and finds the solace she found in taut prose which is a balm even though it treats of colonial crimes\, republican crimes\, the contagion of faith\, the weight of history and fractured families.’Jonathan Meades\n\nMcWilliams reflects on her Catholic upbringing in West Cork in the 1980s and 1990s\, and on relations with her Protestant neighbours. She is haunted by the killings in the period of Ireland’s War of Independence and Civil War\, and in particular by the ‘Dunmanway massacre’ of April 1922 which marked the area where she grew up. Her great grandmother was active in Cumann na mBan and her granduncle fought for independence as well as in the anti-Treaty IRA. The book reveals why the events of those days remain deeply personal and how they shape her adult life as she moves to England\, marries an expert on Cromwell and the English Civil War\, teaches Irish literature at an English university\, experiences pregnancy and childbirth\, and nurtures her son in his early years. \nImage: Crowds of onlookers throng St Patrick St on the day following the burning of Cork City centre by crown forces. \n The event will be followed by a signing. \n\n\n \n  \n Speakers: Dr Ellen McWilliams\n\n\n\n Dr Ellen McWilliams\nDr Williams’ interests are in the fields of twentieth-century women’s fiction\, anti-colonial history and the aftershocks of colonial violence\, intergenerational memory/postmemory\, literary responses to the pain of revolution and civil war\, political violence and literary form\, and migration and diasporic identity. She is a member of the Routes: Migraton\, Mobility\, Displacement Network and the Centre for Histories of Violence and Conflict. She has written three academic books\, Margaret Atwood and the Female Bildungsroman (2009)\, Women and Exile in Contemporary Irish Fiction (2013)\, and Irishness in North American Women’s Writing: Transatlantic Affinities (2021). She is a member of the University’s research network\, Routes: Migration\, Mobility\, Displacement. She also has a special interest in New York magazine culture and has published four essays on Maeve Brennan’s writing for The New Yorker\, including ‘”A Sort of Rathmines Version of a Dior Design”: Maeve Brennan\, Self-Fashioning\, and the Uses of Style’ for Women: A Cultural Review and an article on Brennan’s years at Harper’s Bazaar\, ‘Maeve Brennan\, Celebrity\, and Harper’s Bazaar in the 1940s’. URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/resting-places-27-november/ LOCATION:The Bloomsbury Hotel\, The Bloomsbury Hotel\, 16-22 Great Russell Street\, London\, WC1B 3NN \, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:anniversary,book signing,feminism,interview,Nationalism,Reading,research,social history,violence,women ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/resting-places-redo.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20231027T190000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20231027T190000 DTSTAMP:20260501T180312 CREATED:20231008T154152Z LAST-MODIFIED:20231008T163202Z UID:20012-1698433200-1698433200@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:Poetry as Commemoration showcase DESCRIPTION:Last year we engaged with Poetry Ireland and the Poetry as Commemoration project in UCD to develop workshops which used poetry as a means to deepen our collective understanding of Ireland’s past and to explore a challenging period of history relating to the War of Independence and Civil War. The three workshops were delivered by Roisin Tierney and Ian Duhig who developed the work of poet members of the Society\, this event provides a stage for those poets to deliver their work. \nWe hope we’ll have a good showing from members to support our poets in the beautiful setting of the Fitzrovia Chapel. This is a free event open to all. c70 mins running time\, a drinks reception will follow. \nThe workshops to develop our poets’ work were sponsored by: URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/poetry-as-commemoration-showcase/ LOCATION:Fitzrovia Chapel\, Fitzroy Place\, 2 Pearson Square\, London W1T 3BF\, London\, Fitzrovia Chapel\, Fitzroy Place\, 2 PeW1T 3BF\, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:anniversary,history,London-Irish,Nationalism,poetry,politics,Reading,social history,violence ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/POETRY-COMM-2.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20231023T193000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20231023T210000 DTSTAMP:20260501T180312 CREATED:20231008T095914Z LAST-MODIFIED:20231008T172632Z UID:19990-1698089400-1698094800@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:ILS/ITS Joint Lecture - 23 Oct DESCRIPTION:The Annual Noel O’Connell Memorial Lecture\, a joint venture of the Irish Literary Society and Irish Texts Society will be delivered by Dr. Mary MacDiarmada on ‘Art O’Brien and Irish Nationalism in London\, 1900-25’. \n\nLondon-born and reared\, Art O’Brien’s journey from wealthy electrical engineer to leader of Irish militant nationalism in London was\, by any measure\, quite extraordinary. In her talk and in the book on which it is based MacDiarmada uses the life of O’Brien (1872–1949) as a central axis on which to construct an analysis of Irish nationalism in London from 1900 to 1925. \nShedding light on the work of the ‘presiding genius’ of the Irish movement in London [this] publication of Art O’Brien and Irish Nationalism in London 1900-25 by Dr Mary MacDiarmada is a long overdue biography of one of the most fascinating characters of the Irish revolution …Ronan McGreevy (Irish Times\, October 2020)\nO’Brien was a member of the Gaelic League\, Sinn Féin\, the Irish Volunteers\, the Irish Republican Brotherhood and the Irish Self-Determination League of Great Britain. He also established a prisoner relief organization and had significant involvement in gun-running for the 1916 Rising and the War of Independence. Appointed London envoy of Dáil Éireann in 1919\, he was a close confidant of Michael Collins\, Arthur Griffith and Éamon de Valera and was a mediator in various peace initiatives between the British and Sinn Féin during 1920 and 1921. Yet\, despite his extensive contribution to the Irish revolution\, little is known of O’Brien’s activities. \n\nBased on rigorous research in British and Irish archives\, MacDiarmada recounts the vital contribution O’Brien made to the prosecution of the Irish revolution. The talk will also recount the hitherto little-known story of Irish cultural\, political and militant nationalism in London between 1900 and 1925. \n\nImage credit: Lord Mayor of Cork Terence MacSwiney (left) and Art O’Brien (right) congratulating JJ O’Kelly (centre) on his re-election as President of the Gaelic League at the Mansion House in Dublin in August 1920. Photo: National Library of Ireland\, NPA POLF 170 \n\n \n  \n Speaker: Dr Mary MacDiarmada\n\n\n\n Dr Mary MacDiarmada\nDr Mary MacDiarmada is a Research Fellow in the School of History and Geography\, Dublin City University (DCU). URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/ils-its-joint-lecture-23-oct/ LOCATION:Irish Cultural Centre\, Hammersmith\, 5 Black’s Road Hammersmith\, W6 9DT\, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:emigration,history,Irish language,lecture,London-Irish,Nationalism,research ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/art-obrien.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20231003T193000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20231003T210000 DTSTAMP:20260501T180312 CREATED:20230905T115055Z LAST-MODIFIED:20230907T214421Z UID:19739-1696361400-1696366800@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:Heaney and the Classics DESCRIPTION:Ten years ago in September 2013\, Michael Parker led an event for the Irish Literary Society to celebrate the life and work of Seamus Heaney\, our then President\, whose passing on 30 August 2013 was such a loss to family\, friends and his many admirers. We now mark the 10th anniversary of his passing with an event to reflect on Heaney’s engagement with classical literature. Heaney explained the role of the classical world in his work by observing that ‘consciousness needs coordinates\, we need ways of locating ourselves in cultural as well as geographical space’. We are delighted to welcome Esther Armstrong\, Stephen Harrison\, Catherine Heaney\, Bernard O’Donoghue\, and Michael Parker to speak on this theme. \nA major factor in Heaney’s turn towards classical texts from around 1983 onwards was his friendship with one of Harvard’s great classicists\, Robert Fitzgerald. Three years before Heaney’s initial Harvard appointment\, Fitzgerald published ‘Seamus Heaney: An Appreciation’\, to accompany a selection of his poetry in an issue of The New Republic (174:13\, 27 March 1976). A high proportion of the material you will be presented with tonight is hard-hitting\, not surprisingly given the appalling nature of the violence that had dominated his life and that of the people of Northern Ireland over three decades. \nVirgil had his River Mincius\, I have my River Moyola. Virgil moved from his father’s farm in the North to a poet’s retreat outside Naples in the South\, I made [a] similar move from Ulster to Wicklow to Dublin. Virgil lived through civil war in the aftermath of Julius Caesar’s assassination. I have experienced not only the civic violence of Ulster\, but thanks to the age of technology\, I have witnessed civil wars and ethnic conflicts all over the globe\, blanket bombing and terrorist attacks.Seamus Heaney\, ‘Towers\, Trees\, Terrors: A reverie in Urbino’\, in Gabriella Morisco (ed)\, URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/heaney-and-the-classics/ LOCATION:Irish Cultural Centre\, Hammersmith\, 5 Black’s Road Hammersmith\, W6 9DT\, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:Classics,folklore,Latin,poetry ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/heaney-and-the-classics-1.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20230925T193000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20230925T210000 DTSTAMP:20260501T180312 CREATED:20230905T161850Z LAST-MODIFIED:20230907T231545Z UID:19758-1695670200-1695675600@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:A Thread of Violence - 25 Sept DESCRIPTION:Mark O’Connell’s latest book\, A Thread of Violence\, concerns the murders committed by Malcolm Macarthur in 1982 of a nurse\, Bridie Gargan\, and a farmer\, Dónal Dunne. It is both an utterly compelling account of one of Ireland’s most notorious crimes and an interrogation of the nature of true crime writing itself. When Macarthur\, the heir to a small fortune\, found himself suddenly without money\, he decided to rob a bank. To do this\, he would need a gun and a car. In the process of procuring them\, he killed two people\, and the circumstances of his eventual arrest nearly brought down the Irish government. When Mark O’Connell set out to unravel the mysteries still surrounding these horrific and inexplicable crimes\, he tracked down Macarthur himself\, living out his days in Dublin. O’Connell will be in conversation with Brian Dillon. In A Thread of Violence Mark O’Connell has investigated\, with immense skill and insight\, the mind of a double murderer\, and in the process has shown the essential mysteriousness of such a mind-perhaps of any mind. The result is a beautifully wrought narrative that is at once frightening and thrilling. A masterly workJohn Banville\n\nThis event will be followed by a signing and a book sale. \n \n  \n Speakers: Mark O'Connell\n\n\n\n Mark O’Connell\nMark O’Connell is an award-winning Irish writer. He previously visited the ILS to discuss his first book\, To Be a Machine\, which won the 2018 Wellcome Book Prize and was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize. In 2019\, he became the first ever non-fiction writer to win the prestigious Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. His second book\, Notes From an Apocalypse was longlisted for the Wainwright Prize. He is a contributor to the New York Review of Books\, and his work has appeared in the New Yorker. \n\nBrian Dillon\n\n\n\n Brian Dillon Name\nProf Dillon studied English and Philosophy at University College Dublin\, and completed a Ph.D. (on concepts of time in twentieth-century criticism and theory) at the University of Kent in 1999. Before joining Queen Mary in 2019\, he was head of the Writing programme at the Royal College of Art. His first book\, a memoir titled In the Dark Room\, was published in 2005. His creative and critical writing has appeared in publications such as the Guardian\, The London Review of Books\, Artforum\, The New York Times\, The New Yorker\, Granta and The White Review. Dillon has curated exhibitions for Tate and Hayward galleries\, and is an editor at Cabinet\, an arts and culture magazine based in New York. \n\n\n\n\nTickets at our Shop page. URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/a-thread-of-violence-25-sept/ LOCATION:The Bloomsbury Hotel\, 16-22 Great Russell St\, London\, WC1B 3NN\, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:crime,history,interview,research,social history ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/thread-of-violence.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20230412T193000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20230412T210000 DTSTAMP:20260501T180312 CREATED:20230406T091829Z LAST-MODIFIED:20230406T101506Z UID:19676-1681327800-1681333200@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:Nicole Flattery - 12 April 2023 DESCRIPTION: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 an unconventional debut novel\, following on from Flattery’s acclaimed short story collection Show Them a Good Time. Nicole will join with James Conor Patterson in conversation on her writing and Nothing Special. \n\n …the thrilling sense of Flattery’s aesthetic and intellectual stringency is what comes to define her seemingly low-key enterprise here. You could almost imagine someone reading Nothing Special and not even noticing Warhol at its heart\, which may be the point of a novel that pictures the lives of his unseen instruments.Anthony Cummins\, The Guardian\n\n\n\n  \n Speakers and performers: Nicole Flattery\n\n\n\n Nicole Flattery\nNicole Flattery is the author of the story collection Show Them A Good Time. She is the winner of An Post Irish Book Award\, the Kate O’Brien Prize\, the London Magazine Prize for Debut Fiction\, and the White Review Short Story Prize. Her work has appeared in the Stinging Fly\, the Guardian\, the White Review\, and the London Review of Books. A graduate of the master’s program in creative writing at Trinity College\, Dublin\, she lives in Galway\, Ireland. \n\nJames Conor Patterson\n\n\n\n James Conor Patterson\nJames is the author of the poetry collection ‘Bandit Country’ just released by Picador. He is also the editor of the anthology The New Frontier: Reflections from the Irish Border (New Island Books\, 2021). His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The Guardian\, i-D\, The Irish Times\, Magma\, The Moth\, Morning Star\, New Statesman\, Poetry Ireland Review\, Poetry London\, Poetry Review\, RTÉ Culture\, The Stinging Fly and The Tangerine\, among others. \n\n\n\n\n\nThe event will be followed by a sale and signing. URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/nicole-flattery-12-april-2023/ LOCATION:Irish Cultural Centre\, Hammersmith\, 5 Black’s Road Hammersmith\, W6 9DT\, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:America,book signing,emigration,interview,music,politics,Reading,social history,women ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Nothing-Special.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20230327T193000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20230327T210000 DTSTAMP:20260501T180312 CREATED:20221205T175715Z LAST-MODIFIED:20230316T092321Z UID:19577-1679945400-1679950800@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:Jess Kidd and Mike Dash on the Batavia - 27 March DESCRIPTION: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 in the crew instigating a massacre of most of the survivors. This was amongst the first contacts of europeans with the continent of Australia and provides a brutal alternative to the myth of Cook’s arrival bringing Enlightenment values.\n\nJess will be joined by the historian Mike Dash whose fascinating account of the Batavia story\, Batavia’s Graveyard (2002) opens up a wider history of the Dutch Republic\, seventeenth century trade and exploration. In both Dash’s history and Kidd’s novel the later discovery of the Batavia and its archeological recovery feature. Kidd establishes a connection over the span of centuries via the lives of two young characters: in 1628 a girl shipwrecked on an island off Western Australia and\, in the 1980s\, a boy finding a home with his grandfather on the very same island. Dash’s book was the invaluable starting point to Kidd’s research which led her from Haarlem and Amsterdam to Australia. The wreck was discovered in 1963\, over the next two decades\, archaeological excavations of the ship and various campsites evidenced the extent of the savage campaign. Find out more about Kidd’s research trip on her site: jesskidd.com \n\nLyrical\, haunting\, a beautiful and elegant fictional interpretation of history\, I loved it.Kate Mosse on Kidd's The Night Ship\nScholarly and exhilarating. Not only history\, but an enthralling sea yarn and true-crime thriller.Associated Press on Dash's Batavia's Graveyard\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThis event will be followed by a signing and a book sale. \n\n Speakers: Jess Kidd\n\n\n\n Jess Kidd\nJess Kidd is the author of three novels and is the winner of the 2016 Costa Short Story Award. Jess’ debut novel\, Himself\, was published by Canongate in October 2016. The Hoarder\, her second novel\, hit the shelves in February 2018. Jess’s third book the marvellous Victorian\, supernatural thriller\, Things in Jars came out in 2019 featuring the intrepid detective Bridie Devine. She is also currently developing her own original TV projects with leading UK and international TV producers\, her children’s book Everyday Magic was published in 2020. Find out more on her website: jesskidd.com \n\nMike Dash\n\n\n\n Mike Dash\nDash read history at Cambridge and went on to complete a PhD back in 1990. Since then he has enjoyed an eclectic career as a journalist\, magazine publisher and author\, in the course of which he has written five heavily-researched and acclaimed books: Tulipomania\, Batavia’s Graveyard\, Thug\, Satan’s Circus and The First Family. He has also run the Smithsonian Museum’s history blog. Find out more on his website: mikedash.com URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/jess-kidd-and-mike-dash-on-the-batavia-27-march/ LOCATION:The Bloomsbury Hotel\, The Bloomsbury Hotel\, 16-22 Great Russell Street\, London\, WC1B 3NN \, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:Australia,book signing,history,interview,Mutiny,naval history,novel,politics,religion,research,social history,violence ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Batavia-night-ship-date-2.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20221121T193000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20221121T210000 DTSTAMP:20260501T180312 CREATED:20221024T223654Z LAST-MODIFIED:20240925T015256Z UID:19474-1669059000-1669064400@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:David Ireland - 21 November 2022 DESCRIPTION:The award-winning playwright\, David Ireland\, known for his wickedly dark humour and biting satire\, will be joining Dr Michelle Paull for a discussion on his work. The evening will also feature a live performance from the cast of Not Now\, Ireland’s play running in November at The Finborough Theatre.   \n\n“Cyprus Avenue was commissioned by the Abbey Theatre Dublin. I was aware I was being commissioned as an Irish writer – but I’ve always felt British. I’ve always identified as British. And yet\, I’m undeniably influenced by so much of the Irish canon – especially O’Casey\, Wilde\, Beckett and Joyce. In some ways\, I was trying to write a traditionally Irish play from an Ulster loyalist perspective. To try to encapsulate all the rage and frustration\, fear and defiance of the Planter experience in Ireland- but with the epic sweep of O’Casey and the existentialist absurdism of Beckett. I didn’t quite get to that level of genius but I did ok with my limited talent.” \n\n Speakers and performers: David Ireland \n\n\n\n David Ireland David Ireland is from Belfast and trained as an actor at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. His first play\, WHAT THE ANIMALS SAY\, was produced at Oran Mor\, Glasgow in 2009. His other plays include EVERYTHING BETWEEN US (Tinderbox\, Belfast) which won the Stewart Parker Award and the Meyer-Whitworth Award\, THE END OF HOPE (Oran Mor)\, HALF A GLASS OF WATER (Field Day)\, YES SO I SAID YES (Ransom Productions\, Belfast)\, CAN’T FORGET ABOUT YOU (Lyric\, Belfast) and I PROMISE YOU SEX AND VIOLENCE (Northern Stage\, Newcastle). In 2015\, he adapted Lorca’s BLOOD WEDDING for Dundee Rep and Graeae. He has also written extensively for television and radio.. His 2016 play CYPRUS AVENUE (Royal Court London/Abbey Theatre Dublin/Public Theatre NYC) won the Irish Times Award for Best New Play and the James Tait Black Award for Drama and in 2018 ULSTER AMERICAN (Traverse\, Edinburgh) won a Scotsman Fringe First\, the Carol Tambor Best of Edinburgh award and the Critics Award for Theatre in Scotland Award for Best New Play. Dr Michelle Paull \n\n\n\n Dr Michelle Paull Dr Michelle Paull is a Senior Lecturer in Drama and is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Michelle’s PhD at Goldsmiths’ College\, University of London focused on the theatre of Sean O’Casey and she is currently working on her monograph\, Sean O’Casey: Critical Controversies. Michelle’s research and teaching interests include contemporary theatre\, London theatre\, Irish plays\, Sean O’Casey\, adaptations on stage and screen and contemporary writing in English. \n  \n \n  URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/david-ireland-21-november-2022/ LOCATION:The Bloomsbury Hotel\, The Bloomsbury Hotel\, 16-22 Great Russell Street\, London\, WC1B 3NN \, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:Belfast,Border,emigration,theatre,tradition ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Ireland-slider-2.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20221017T193000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20221017T210000 DTSTAMP:20260501T180312 CREATED:20220903T182915Z LAST-MODIFIED:20230406T162309Z UID:19328-1666035000-1666040400@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:Bandit Country\, James Conor Patterson - 17 October DESCRIPTION:​Joining us at the start of the ILS 2022-23 season are the poet James Conor Patterson and writer Darran Anderson to launch Patterson’s book bandit country. \n\n\nbandit country is the much-anticipated debut collection from James Conor Patterson\, who will be familiar to ILS regulars from our event last year launching his anthology of essays on the Irish border: The New Frontier: Reflections from the Irish Border. \nbandit country is a rollicking\, hyper-literate and at times deeply troubling account of a young man’s navigation of the semi-lawless borderlands between the north of Ireland and the Republic – the ‘bandit country’ of the Troubles – and the criss-crossed sea border to England and beyond. Patterson shows us how the militarised boundary line of old has morphed into an invisible and semi-wild frontier\, where the ghosts of a thirty-year war continue to haunt the ‘ceasefire generation’.Patterson writes in a hybrid dialect of Newry street and Scots and Irish-inflected English – and in a virtuosic variety of forms: these poems crackle with vernacular wit and the rhythms of everyday speech\, absorbing the influence of the poet’s Belfast mentor\, Ciaran Carson\, and the radical poetics of Tom Leonard. Already a rising star and Eric Gregory award-winner\, James Conor Patterson is an extraordinary talent at the forefront of a new wave of poets exploring the linguistic inheritance of region and community. Pattterson will be reading from his work and joined in conversation by the writer Darran Anderson. \n\n\nFor this Newry to be believable\, it had to be rendered in language native to it. Not the received pronunciation of the Coloniser\, nor the Gaelic tongue stolen from our ancestors\, but a dialect specific to the borderlands of South Down\, South Armagh and North Louth. A language that self-consciously aped the history of the area in a dirty mélange of English\, Irish\, Ulster Scots and Shelta. Newry is a place where people drop their g’s\, where you’re more likely to be bitten by a cleg than a horsefly\, and where swear words punctuate even the friendliest of sentences. Writing about it wouldn’t be hard—it was the way I’d heard people speak all my life—but what I learned from the likes of Tom Leonard and James Kelman was the dignity in it. A kind of punchy survivalism that even the most ‘civilising’ aspect of colonialism couldn’t squash. — James Conor Patterson\, article for RTE. \n\n\n  \n  \nBandit Country by James Conor Patterson. Published by Picador (September\, 2022) \n\n\n\n  \n  \n  \n Speakers and performers: James Conor Patterson\n\n\n\n James Conor Patterson\nJames is the author of the poetry collection ‘Bandit Country’ just released by Picador. He is also the editor of the anthology The New Frontier: Reflections from the Irish Border (New Island Books\, 2021). His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The Guardian\, i-D\, The Irish Times\, Magma\, The Moth\, Morning Star\, New Statesman\, Poetry Ireland Review\, Poetry London\, Poetry Review\, RTÉ Culture\, The Stinging Fly and The Tangerine\, among others. \n\nDarran Anderson\n\n\n\n Darran Anderson\nDarran Anderson is the author of Imaginary Cities (2015)\, chosen as a ‘Book of the Year’ by the Financial Times\, the Guardian\, the A.V. Club and others\, and described by the Guardian as ‘a dizzying and brilliant piece of creative non-fiction’. He has co-edited The Honest Ulsterman\, 3:AM Magazine\, Dogmatika and White Noise. He writes for the likes of the Atlantic\, frieze magazine\, and Magnum\, and has given talks at the V&A\, the LSE\, the Robin Boyd Foundation and the Venice Biennale. URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/bandit-country-james-conor-patterson-17-october/ LOCATION:The Bloomsbury Hotel\, The Bloomsbury Hotel\, 16-22 Great Russell Street\, London\, WC1B 3NN \, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:book signing,London-Irish,poetry,politics,Reading,social history ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/bandit-country.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20220929T193000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20220929T203000 DTSTAMP:20260501T180312 CREATED:20220707T112204Z LAST-MODIFIED:20220911T144959Z UID:19287-1664479800-1664483400@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:Irish Texts Society / ILS Annual Lecture - 29 September DESCRIPTION:The scholar Meidhbhín Ní 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. \nThe evidence in extant Irish manuscripts suggests that he had already begun working as a scribe in his native home place\, but that this role progressed significantly during his years in the Victorian city. His scribal material (in Irish and in English) provides an intriguing insight into a native man of letters who appears to have integrated himself into his host society\, while at the same time preserving a distinctive Irish identity. Moreover\, his fascinating collection of correspondence in English reveals a man with informed views about the language and literature of his native country. And\, in his thirty or so poetic compositions\, personal vignettes come to the fore as well as a great admiration for the Young Ireland movement and\, in particular\, for William Smith O’Brien\, the fair-haired boy (an buachaill bán). \nNí Úrdail first discovered O’Connor while conducting research some years ago on a text known in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Irish manuscripts as Leabhar Oiris (Book of History)\, which is essentially an encomium of the O’Briens of Thomond and this dynasty’s battles for supremacy in Ireland in the tenth and eleventh centuries. She was intrigued to discover that of this work’s twenty-six sources\, one was completed outside Ireland in 1848 by O’Connor “in the city of London” (a ccathair Londoine). Subsequent findings have uncovered eighteen extant manuscripts written entirely or in part by this Cork scribe when he was living in London\, and these are preserved today in the National Library of Ireland\, the Royal Irish Academy\, University College Cork\, NUI Galway and St. Malachy’s College\, Belfast. A further source containing O’Connor’s Irish translation of the first book of Milton’s Paradise Lost (written about the year 1860) is now lost\, but a copy may be consulted on microfilm. In looking through old MSS\, which I purchased in Dublin a good number of years ago\, I find a translation into Irish of the 1st Book of Paradise Lost. It is by one Thomas O’Connor\, who\, from letters accompanying it\, seems to have been a tailor\, resident for many years in London…Letter 23 December 1893\, from Monsignor James O’Laverty to Fr Eugene O’Growney \n  \nPresented in association with the Irish Texts Society: \n  \n  \n  \n  \n  \n\nSpeaker: \nProfessor Meidhbhín Ní Úrdail\n\nMeidhbhín Ní Úrdail is Professor in\, and Head of Modern Irish at University College Dublin. Ní Úrdail’s areas of research include the Irish manuscript tradition; Ireland’s vernacular written tradition from medieval times to the nineteenth century; narrative discourse and historical representation; the complementary relationship between script and print in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Ireland; and contemporary Irish writing and its heritage. Her most recent monograph\, Pádraig Ó Laoghaire (1870–1896): an Irish scholar from the Béarra Peninsula\, was published by Beara Historical Society (2021). URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/irish-texts-society-ils-annual-lecture-29-september/ LOCATION:Irish Cultural Centre\, Hammersmith\, 5 Black’s Road Hammersmith\, W6 9DT\, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:biography,emigration,exile,Irish language,lecture,London-Irish ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/its_ils_2022.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20220909T193000 DTEND;TZID=UTC:20220909T210000 DTSTAMP:20260501T180312 CREATED:20190413T191332Z LAST-MODIFIED:20220909T220842Z UID:11596-1662751800-1662757200@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:Essaying the Body\, Sinéad Gleeson and Emilie Pine - 5 June DESCRIPTION: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 influence\, certainly his cosmopolitan sensibility is present in the recent creative non-fiction of Brian Dillon\, Kevin Breathnach\, Ian Maleney… I’ve never read anything quite like these essays. Pine’s fluent intelligence flows through each question\, each dilemma\, in its own inimitable way. It’s the kind of book you want to give to everyone\, especially young women and men\, so that we can learn together to take ourselves and each other more seriously.Martina Evans in the Irish Times on Notes to Self\n  \nThe personal essays of Pine and Gleeson share the ambition of those authors\, yet move inward reflecting on their own bodily traumas and the politics of the female body in Ireland in the last 50 years. In its variously raw\, funny\, acute manner Pine’s vivid collection addresses addiction\, fertility\, feminism\, sexual violence and depression. The formal experimentation of Gleeson’s Constellations is startling\, throughout this intimate account of pain is illuminating of art and the wider world. \n \n  \nSpeaker: Sinéad Gleeson\n\n\n \nSinéad Gleeson is a writer of essays\, criticism and fiction. Her writing has appeared in Granta\, Winter Papers and Gorse\, and a story of hers will appear in Being Various: New Irish Short Stories published by Faber in May 2018. She is the editor of three short story anthologies\, including The Long Gaze Back: an Anthology of Irish Women Writers and The Glass Shore: Short Stories by Women Writers from the North of Ireland\, both of which won Best Irish Published Book at the Irish Book Awards. Sinéad has worked as an arts critic and broadcaster and has presented The Book Show on RTÉ Radio 1. She is working on a novel. \n  \n  \n  \nSpeaker: Dr Emilie Pine\n\n\n \nEmilie Pine is Associate Professor of Modern Drama at University College Dublin. Emilie is Editor of the Irish University Review and Director of the Irish Memory Studies Network (www.irishmemorystudies.com). She is PI of the Irish Research Council New Horizons project Industrial Memories a digital humanities re-reading of the Ryan Report on institutional child abuse (https://industrialmemories.ucd.ie). Emilie has published widely in the field of Irish studies and memory studies\, including The Politics of Irish Memory: Performing Remembrance in Contemporary Irish Culture (Palgrave\, 2011) and The Memory Marketplace: Performance\, Testimony and Witnessing in Contemporary Theatre (forthcoming Indiana University Press\, 2019). Her first collection of personal essays\, Notes to Self\, was published by Tramp Press (2018). \n  URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/essaying_the_body/ LOCATION:The Bloomsbury Hotel\, The Bloomsbury Hotel\, 16-22 Great Russell Street\, London\, WC1B 3NN \, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:biography,book signing,feminism,history,interview,lecture,medical,nature,Reading,research,social history,women ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/essaying-the-body.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20220627T193000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20220627T210000 DTSTAMP:20260501T180312 CREATED:20220510T134754Z LAST-MODIFIED:20220621T183242Z UID:19066-1656358200-1656363600@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:Multiple Joyce - 27 June 2022 DESCRIPTION: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 to bring our season to a close. \n The story goes that a man in  Zürich once asked James Joyce if he could kiss the hand that wrote Ulysses. Joyce declined\, saying that it had done many other things as well. Multiple Joyce is a book inspired by those other things – it fizzes and astonishes at every turn\, springing Joyce’s masterpiece free from the idolatry of academe and reminding us how strange and hip it must have seemed in 1922. John Mitchinson\, co-host of Backlisted Podcast\nHolding up a funhouse mirror to our times\, Collard finds a multitude of Joyces\, in often ludicrous disguises\, wherever he looks—whether at Anthony Burgess\, Cher\, first editions\, Flann O’Brien\, Guinness\, Hattie Jacques\, John Cage\, Kim Kardashian\, Lego\, Moby-Dick\, numismatics\, perfume\, pianos\, Princess Grace\, puns\, The Ramones\, Sally Rooney\, Stanley Unwin\, Star Wars\, waxworks or Zylo spectacles. Endlessly reinvented and exploited\, Joyce emerges as a ubiquitous\, indispensable and ruthlessly commodified Everyman. An excerpt riffing on Timon of Athens\, Walter Benjamin and Ironman can be read on the RTÉ site. As Rónán Hession puts it in his foreword\, Collard is above all “good company” and “I wish that the first time anyone heard about Joyce was from David Collard.” We’re delighted that Hession\, author of Leonard and Hungry Paul and Panenka will be joining Collard in discussion. \n Collard’s Joyce nerdiness excels! Eimear McBride\nThe event will be followed by a sale of Multiple Joyce and a signing by the author. There will also be a grand giveaway of Joyce titles. \n Speakers and performers: \n  \n David Collard\n\n\n\n David Collard\nDavid Collard is a London-based writer\, reviewer\, researcher\, editor and occasional broadcaster\, appearing regularly in the Times Literary Supplement\, Literary Review and elsewhere\, in print and online. Previous titles include About a Girl\, a reader’s guide to Eimear McBride’s A Girl is a Half-formed Thing (C B Editions\, 2016).Find out more on David’s website. \n\nRónán Hession\n\n\n\n Rónán Hession\nRónán Hession is a writer and musician based in Dublin. His debut novel\, Leonard and Hungry Paul\, was published by Bluemoose Books in 2019. The book was shortlisted for numerous awards and chosen by the Sunday Times as one of the 50 great Irish novels of the 21st century. Ronán’s second novel. \n\n Melanie Pappenheim\n\n\n\n Melanie Pappenheim\nMelanie Pappenheim is a singer\, performer and composer. Her versatility has allowed her to explore several different genres. She has worked with with many leading contemporary composers including Jocelyn Pook\, Orlando Gough\, Gavin Bryars and Graham Fitkin and performed in a huge variety of venues ranging from The Royal Opera House\, the ENO\, The Royal Albert Hall\, the National Theatre\, Glyndebourne\, a barge on the Thames\, a tent in Sussex\, a tower in Wells\, in clubs\, in lighthouses\, hillsides\, halls and basements everywhere. Find out more on Melanie’s website. \n Sarah Angliss\n\n\n\n Sarah Angliss\nSarah Angliss’ music explores the sonorities of voices and ancient instruments\, revealing and augmenting them with her distinctive electronic techniques. In 2021 she received a Visionary Award from the Ivors Academy for her body of work. Sarah draws on her lifelong interest in European folksong\, cybernetics and esoteric sound culture. These inspire her progressive and strikingly original music for film\, theatre and the live music stage.Find out more on Sarah’s website \n Frank Grimes\n\n\n\n Frank Grimes\nFrank Grimes was born in Dublin and trained at the Abbey Theatre School of Acting. He was a member of the Abbey Players for seven years and performed in O’Casey\, Synge\, Yeats\, Lady Gregory\, Joyce and O’Connor. He scored an early success as the young Brendan Behan in Borstal Boy. rank has worked extensively in the theatre in London; at the National Theatre\, Royal Shakespeare Company\, the Royal Court and in London’s West End\, as well as in Dublin and New York. Amongst his many Joyce related credits he performed in Anthony Burgess’s Joyce musical Blooms of Dublin and has previously performed his hit one-man show on James Joyce\, “…the he and the she of it…” in Dublin\, London and Paris.Find out more on Frank’s website \n\nStephanie Ellyne\n\n\n\n Stephanie Ellyne\nStephanie Ellyne is an American actress based in London and Dublin. She recorded the 45-hour audio book of Booker nominee Lucy Ellmann’s Ducks\, Newburyport (Whole Story/W.F. Howes) in 2020\, and plays Amy Jennings in on-going British/American audio drama Dark Shadows with Big Finish\, nominated for the BBC Audio Drama Awards. Other work includes The Confessions of Dorian Gray (Big Finish; Open Book (BBC Radio 4); and The Man Behind The Prophet (BBC World Service). Stephanie records stories for the annual Costa Short Story Award\, and is a frequent narrator for RNIB Talking Books. Her most recent audio book is Things Are Against Us by Lucy Ellmann (W.F. Howes).   \n\n\n\n  \n  URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/multiple-joyce/ LOCATION:The Bloomsbury Hotel\, The Bloomsbury Hotel\, 16-22 Great Russell Street\, London\, WC1B 3NN \, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:book signing,emigration,exile,history,Joyce,music,Reading,research,Ulysses ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Multiple-Joyce-slider8.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20220328T193000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20220328T210000 DTSTAMP:20260501T180312 CREATED:20220215T121744Z LAST-MODIFIED:20220323T131047Z UID:18834-1648495800-1648501200@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:'Nora' with Nuala O'Connor - 28 March DESCRIPTION:In this centenary year of the publication of Ulysses we are delighted to welcome Nuala O’Connor to the Society to discuss her novel Nora. When Nora Barnacle\, a twenty-year-old from Galway working as a maid at Finn’s Hotel\, meets young James Joyce on a summer’s day in Dublin\, she is instantly attracted to him\, natural and daring in his company. But she cannot yet imagine the extraordinary life they will share together. All Nora knows is that she likes her Jim enough to leave behind family and home\, in search of more. Nora is a tour de force\, an earthy and authentic love letter to Irish literature’s greatest muse. The novel conjures up a portrait of Nora Barnacle from her first meeting with James Joyce\, through her years in Dublin and later across Europe. It thus follows the Joyces as Nora is increasingly torn between their intense and unwavering desire for each other\, and the constant anxiety of living hand to mouth\, often made worse by her husband’s compulsion for company and attention A lively and loving paean to the indomitable Nora Barnacle.Edna O'Brien Nuala O’Connor will be in conversation with David Collard whose own Joycean musings ‘Multiple Joyce‘ will be published in June and feature as part of our Bloomsday celebrations. Joining them will be soprano Angela Hicks and guitarist Tom Gamble with songs of the period.An exceptional novel by one of the most brilliant contemporary Irish writers\, this is a story of love in all its many seasons\, from ardent sexuality to companionable tenderness\, through strength\, challenge and courage.Joseph O'Connor The ILS is partnering again with One Dublin One Book\, the excellent Dublin City Council initiative\, led by Dublin City Libraries\, which encourages everyone to read a book connected with the capital city during the month of April every year. We are delighted to extend the reach of the project to London. The event will be followed by a booksale and signing. \n  \n\nSpeaker: Nuala O’Connor\n\n\n \nNuala O’Connor was born in Dublin\, Ireland\, in 1970. A graduate of Trinity College Dublin\, she is a novelist and short story writer and lives in County Galway with her husband and three children. Nuala has won many prizes for her short fiction including the Short Story Prize in the UK and Ireland’s Francis MacManus Award. She is editor at flash e-zine Splonk. Nora is her fifth novel\, she is also the author of several short story and poetry collections. \n\n\n\nSpeaker: David Collard David Collard is a London-based writer\, reviewer\, researcher\, editor and occasional broadcaster\, appearing regularly in the Times Literary Supplement\, Literary Review and elsewhere\, in print and online. His forthcoming book is Multiple Joyce: 100 short essays about James Joyce’s cultural legacy (Sagging Meniscus Press\, June 2022) Read an excerpt on RTÉ. \n\n\n\nGuitar: Tom Gamble A keen advocate for collaboration\, Tom has worked and performed with musicians as diverse as Duke Alexander\, David Knopfler\, Angela Hicks\, The Boston Sinfonia and The London Philharmonic. Tom has released three solo albums\, each to their own critical acclaim\, and has been featured numerous times on BBC Radio 3. As a live performer\, Tom is known not only for his genre-bending shows\, but also for his friendly spoken introductions to the music. \n\n\n\nSoprano: Angela Hicks Lancastrian soprano ANGELA HICKS is a versatile singer\, experienced in opera\, oratorio\, theatre\, medieval\, renaissance\, chamber music and recitals with organ\, piano and lute. Since embarking on her musical career\, she has performed internationally\, and has established herself as a specialist in the baroque repertoire.  URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/nora-with-nuala-oconnor-28-march/ LOCATION:The Bloomsbury Hotel\, The Bloomsbury Hotel\, 16-22 Great Russell Street\, London\, WC1B 3NN \, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:book signing,feminism,novel,Reading,women ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/nora-slider.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20220228T193000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20220228T210000 DTSTAMP:20260501T180312 CREATED:20220128T200452Z LAST-MODIFIED:20220222T151730Z UID:18798-1646076600-1646082000@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:Kinsella\, a celebration - 28 Feb DESCRIPTION:2021 saw the passing of the brothers Thomas (1928-2021) and John Kinsella (1932-2021). Our event will look back over their careers as poet and composer and include music and readings. \nThomas is credited with bringing the techniques of international modernism to Irish verse. He published his first collection\, The Starlight Eye (1952)\, with Dolmen Press\, helping to set the type himself. He translated extensively from Irish\, most notably the Old Irish epic An Táin Bó Cuailgne\, published as An Táin (1969) and An Duanaire—Poems of the Dispossessed (1981). In 1972\, he founded the Peppercanister Press to publish Butcher’s Dozen. The pamphlet poem was written in the immediate aftermath of Bloody Sunday\, following the Widgery report which whitewashed the atrocities\, and published on 26 April 1972.His awards include two Guggenheim Fellowships and the Denis Devlin Memorial Award (1966\, 1969\, 1992). He taught in the US for many years and initiated and administered the Irish Tradition study program in Dublin until 1992. He long lived in County Wicklow\, Ireland\, but spent recent years living in Philadelphia. He passed away in Dublin in December of 2021. \nJohn composed both choral and vocal works\, his primary interest was in instrumental music\, and his most distinguished work is to be found in his string quartets\, concertos and particularly his symphonies. He was Ireland’s most prolific symphonist during the twentieth century. \nJoining us to read and discuss the poetry of Thomas Kinsella are Bernard O’Donoghue\, Martina Evans\, John Mcauliffe\, James Conor Patterson\, Derval Turbidy – further speakers to be announced. David Daly will play from John Kinsella’s compositions for Double Bass and talk about working with John and his place in the life of classical music in Ireland. The evening will also comprise a full reading of Thomas Kinsella’s 1972 poem ‘Butcher’s Dozen’ – the reissue by Carcanet will be launched on the night.\n\nPlaces are reserved for paid-up members of the Society\, tickets are available to purchase for £10 below for all others.\nIMAGE CREDIT: Image from The Táin. ‘Army massing’ by Louis le Brocquy. URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/kinsella-a-celebration-28-feb/ LOCATION:The Bloomsbury Hotel\, The Bloomsbury Hotel\, 16-22 Great Russell Street\, London\, WC1B 3NN \, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:anniversary,biography,Border,history,Irish language,music,musicology,poetry ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Kinsella_slider.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20211208T193000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20211208T210000 DTSTAMP:20260501T180312 CREATED:20211124T131829Z LAST-MODIFIED:20211129T132341Z UID:18732-1638991800-1638997200@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:Brian Moore at 100 - 8 Dec DESCRIPTION: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. \n\nDesigned to coincide with the centenary of his birth\, the Exeter University project has sought to critically appraise\, and thus revive scholarly and public interest in\, the work of neglected and important Belfast-born writer\, Brian Moore (1921- 1999). Moore was the author of twenty-six novels in diverse genres and a transnational subject who lived most of his adult life in Canada and the U.S. Our talk and the project more generally invite and stimulate a fresh look at Moore’s multi-genre literary career.\n\nSpeaker: Lucy Caldwell\n\n\n \nCaldwell was born in Belfast in 1981. She is the author of three novels and several stage plays and radio dramas. Awards include the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature\, the Dylan Thomas Prize\, the George Devine Award for Most Promising Playwright\, the BBC Stewart Parker Award\, a Fiction Uncovered Award and a Major Individual Artist Award from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. Her debut collection of short stories\, Multitudes\, was published by Faber in 2016\, of it she has written ‘…the music of Van Morrison in general and of Astral Weeks in particular is something of a guiding spirit to my stories.’ Lucy is the editor of Being Various: New Irish Short Stories (Faber\, 2019); she is the 2021 winner of the BBC National Short Story Award for her story ‘All the People Were Mean and Bad‘.Lucy Caldwell will publish her long-awaited fourth novel These Days in March 2022. \n\nSpeaker: Professor Sinéad Moynihan\n\n\n\nProfessor Sinéad Moynihan is an American Studies specialist her research interests include Transatlantic Literary Studies and\, particularly\, the Irish Atlantic. Her third monograph\, Ireland\, Migration and Return Migration: The “Returned Yank” in the Cultural Imagination\, 1952 to Present was published by Liverpool UP in March 2019 and was awarded the Michael J. Durkan Prize for Books on Language and Culture by the American Conference for Irish Studies. She is the co-investigator on the British Academy / Leverhulme funded project\, Brian Moore at 100.\n\n\n\n  URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/brian-moore-at-100/ LOCATION:Irish Cultural Centre\, Hammersmith\, 5 Black’s Road Hammersmith\, W6 9DT\, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:adaptation,America,anniversary,Belfast,biography,documentary,interview,social history,women ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/moore-conversation-slider-1.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20211207T190000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20211207T210000 DTSTAMP:20260501T180312 CREATED:20211124T124649Z LAST-MODIFIED:20211129T172417Z UID:18725-1638903600-1638910800@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:The Lonely Passion Of Judith Hearne - 7 Dec DESCRIPTION:The Brian Moore at 100 Project and the Irish Literary Society present a free screening of The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne\, an adaptation of Moore’s anti-church novel that features an astonishing Maggie Smith in a role regarded as one of her finest. \nJudith Hearne (Smith) is a middle-aged spinster who’s dedicated her life to the church and caring for her cantankerous aunt\, scraping a meagre living giving piano lessons. Believing she’s finally found companionship in the form of her landlady’s brother Madden (Bob Hoskins)\, a New York-based entrepreneur\, Judith begins to exhume her emotions\, unaware that she may be misinterpreting his intentions. \nTo mark the centenary of the birth of Belfast-born writer Brian Moore (1921-1999) the ILS have partnered with the Exeter University project Brian Moore at 100. Designed to coincide with the centenary of his birth\, this project seeks to critically appraise\, and thus revive scholarly and public interest in\, the work of neglected and important Belfast-born writer\, Brian Moore (1921- 1999). If you attend the screening you may also be interested in a talk on 8 December with the academic Dr Sinéad Moynihan and writer Lucy Caldwell on Moore’s work and legacy. URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/brian-moore-at-100-the-lonely-passion-of-judith-hearne/ LOCATION:Irish Cultural Centre\, Hammersmith\, 5 Black’s Road Hammersmith\, W6 9DT\, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:adaptation,feminism,film,novel,women ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/judith-screening-2.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20211115T193000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20211115T210000 DTSTAMP:20260501T180312 CREATED:20211015T053505Z LAST-MODIFIED:20211028T094614Z UID:18465-1637004600-1637010000@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:Reflections from the Border - 15 November DESCRIPTION:  \n\nAs 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 and poetry. Amid renewed international focus on the border in Ireland the anthology contributors Darran Anderson\, Jill Crawford\, Michael Hughes\, Séamus O’Reilly and editor James Conor Patterson join us to read from their work and discuss the meaning of partition in the 21st century for those people that inhabit the divide. \n\n\nThe idea for the book has been on my mind for some time now\, probably since the Brexit vote when it became apparent that there would be consequences for freedom of movement across the Irish border. I quickly found that for all the news reports\, vox pops and column inches being filled\, very often the voices which were left out of the conversation were the ones most affected by it\, and I wanted to redress that balance by giving border writers the opportunity to speak their truths. Working with New Island on this book has been an absolute dream\, and given that they are behind some of the most important anthologies of Irish writing to date\, I can’t wait to share this latest project with the world. — James Conor Patterson\, Anthology Editor. \n\n\nThe New Frontier: Reflections from the Irish Border (New Island Books\, 2021) \n  \n\n  \n The event will be followed by a sale and signing of books. \n\nSpeaker: Darran Anderson\n\n\n \nDarran Anderson is the author of Imaginary Cities (2015)\, chosen as a ‘Book of the Year’ by the Financial Times\, the Guardian\, the A.V. Club and others\, and described by the Guardian as ‘a dizzying and brilliant piece of creative non-fiction’. He has co-edited The Honest Ulsterman\, 3:AM Magazine\, Dogmatika and White Noise. He writes for the likes of the Atlantic\, frieze magazine\, and Magnum\, and has given talks at the V&A\, the LSE\, the Robin Boyd Foundation and the Venice Biennale. \n  \nSpeaker: Jill Crawford\n\n\n \nJill is a rural Northern Irish writer\, based in London. Fiction at Stinging Fly\, n+1\, Winter Papers\, Stranger’s Guide\, and Faber’s ‘Being Various’: New Irish Short Stories. \n  \n \nSpeaker: Michael Hughes\n\n\n \nMichael Hughes grew up in Keady\, Co. Armagh\, and now lives in London. He attended St Patrick’s Grammar School in Armagh and read English at Corpus Christi College\, Oxford before training in theatre at the Jacques Lecoq School in Paris. He has worked for many years as an actor under the professional name Michael Colgan\, and he also teaches creative writing. His first novel\, The Countenance Divine\, was published by John Murray in 2016. He previously spoke at the ILS on his widely praised second novel Country (Hodder & Stoughton\, 2018). \n  \n  \n \nSpeaker: Séamas O’Reilly\n\n\n \nSéamas O’Reilly is a columnist for the Observer and writes about media and politics for the Irish Times\, New Statesman\, Guts and VICE. He shot to a kind-of prominence with a range of online endeavours including ‘Remembering Ireland’\, a parody of Irish nostalgia sites\, which featured entirely invented moments from Irish history. In 2016\, he posted a long Twitter thread about the effects Brexit would have on Northern Ireland\, which led to his first political writing for the New Statesman. Later on that year\, his exasperated reviews of the novels of erstwhile footballer and manager Steve Bruce led to his participation in events with Guardian Football Weekly and various others. Séamas lives in Hackney with his family. \n  \n\nSpeaker: James Conor Patterson\n\n\n \nJames is the editor of the anthology in discussion The New Frontier: Reflections from the Irish Border (New Island Books\, 2021). He is also author of the poetry collection ‘Bandit Country’ forthcoming from Picador in Autumn 2022. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The Guardian\, i-D\, The Irish Times\, Magma\, The Moth\, Morning Star\, New Statesman\, Poetry Ireland Review\, Poetry London\, Poetry Review\, RTÉ Culture\, The Stinging Fly and The Tangerine\, among others. URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/reflections-from-the-border-15-november/ LOCATION:The Bloomsbury Hotel\, The Bloomsbury Hotel\, 16-22 Great Russell Street\, London\, WC1B 3NN \, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:book signing,documentary,history,interview,politics,publishing,Reading,social history ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/new-frontier-1.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20211108T193000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20211108T210000 DTSTAMP:20260501T180312 CREATED:20211015T034805Z LAST-MODIFIED:20211015T090439Z UID:18449-1636399800-1636405200@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:Irish-London - 8 November DESCRIPTION: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 and vibrant culture based on a shared sense of history\, identity and experience. In this book\, Richard Kirkland brings together elements in Irish London’s culture and history that had previously only been understood separately or indeed largely overlooked (as in the case of women’s’ contributions to London Irish politics and culture). In particular\, Kirkland makes resonant cultural connections between Irish and cockney performers in the music halls\, Irish trade fairs\, temperance marches\, the Fenian dynamite war of the 1880s\, St Patrick’s Day events\, and the later cultural agitation of revivalists such as W.B. Yeats and Katharine Tynan. \n  \n\nSpeaker: Professor Richard Kirkland\n\n\n \nRichard Kirkland is Professor of Irish Literature & Cultural Theory at King’s College London. Professor Kirkland’s research is focused on the literature\, culture\, and politics of Ireland in the modern period of contemporary Northern Ireland\, during the Irish Literary Revival of the early twentieth century\, and in the context of the Irish in London. He has written four monographs and co-edited two collections of essays grouped around these areas. \n  \nSpeaker: Professor Roy Foster Roy Foster recently retired as Carroll Professor of Irish history at Oxford\, he is a fellow of Hertford College. He has written widely on Irish history\, society and politics in the modern period\, as well as on Victorian high politics and culture. Foster produced a widely acclaimed biography of William Butler Yeats which was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. In Words Alone: Yeats and his inheritances (2011)\, he presents a re-reading of Irish literary history throughout the nineteenth century and places Yeats and his inspirations in apposition to a much wider range of literary and political precursors than is usually the case. His Vivid Faces: the revolutionary generation in Ireland 1890-1914 came out in 2014 and his most recent work On Seamus Heaney (Princeton\, 2020) came out last year and is the subject of an ILS film with Roy and Catherine Heaney.\n  \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n \n\n  URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/irish-london-8-november/ LOCATION:Irish Cultural Centre\, Hammersmith\, 5 Black’s Road Hammersmith\, W6 9DT\, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:emigration,history,interview,London-Irish,politics,Reading,social history ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/IRISH-LONDON-SS.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20211025T193000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20211025T210000 DTSTAMP:20260501T180312 CREATED:20211014T104732Z LAST-MODIFIED:20211018T120253Z UID:18417-1635190200-1635195600@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:Gail McConnell and Stephen Sexton - 25 October DESCRIPTION:  \n\n\n\nTo kick off the 2021 ILS season and welcome everyone back to physically present meetings we are delighted to be at the Irish Cultural Centre\, Hammersmith to give a London launch to two new poetry volumes from Stephen Sexton and Gail McConnell. We’ll also be featuring the Irish Poets in the UK edition of the Agenda poetry magazine with a reading from John O’Donoghue. \nGail McConnell joins us to read from her new collection The Sun is Open (Penned in the Margins\, 2021). Her book pieces through a boxed archive of public and private materials related to the life and death of her father\, who was murdered by the IRA outside their Belfast home in 1984. Flitting between a child and adult self\, this startling\, innovative debut charts the experience of going through the box\, as the poems attempt to decode the past and present\, and piece together a history\, and a life. Our President\, Bernard O’Donoghue\, comments: ‘She is now one of the crucial public writers.’  \n\n‘The Sun is Open employs a grammar in which everything is significant\, from Wendy Houses\, to the very hairs of your head\, to the poetry of First Aid instructions\, to slaters. This is meticulous and painstaking — sometimes pain-making work — making the words fit the columns\, be they inches of newsprint or entries in an Account Book\, negotiating or nudging the meanings into alternative senses.’ CIARAN CARSON \n\n   \n\nHis pen is fantastical. Cheryl (of the title)\, tarot card clairvoyant\, is conjured out of thin air. She flourishes alongside many other sleights of hand and vanishing acts: there is no knot Sexton cannot slip… many of his phrases are so good I wanted to steal them…Sexton makes the world bearable with poetry as his intercessor. KATE KELLAWAY\, The Observer. \n\n\nStephen Sexton joins us to read from his new collection Cheryl’s Destinies (Penguin\, 2021). It is the decade of centuries\, and Cheryl tells us our fortune. Radicals liberate a zoo\, teenagers flirt in a bowling alley\, and the dead are cherished. In these inventive\, playful\, dream-like poems\, Stephen Sexton takes us on a journey through the past and the present\, while Cheryl translates from the future\, showing us how we exist in all three at once. Reckoning with both public and private tragedies\, the book is divided into three parts. In Part One\, the poems range across old Europe: ‘Edelweiss’ and Titanic setting sail\, to a transatlantic\, cross-century symposium in Part Two\, where two giants perfect their arts in collaboration. In Part Three we are back in the land where the past keeps breaking through\, it’s practically always the anniversary of something terrible\, but there’s always Cheryl in the moonlight and her deck of tarot cards. A thrillingly strange exploration of the comfort of the fantastical when the real is hard to bear\, Cheryl’s Destinies is the enchanting follow-up to the Forward Prize for Best First Collection-winning If All the World and Love Were Young\, by one of the most exciting young poets writing today. \n\n The event will be followed by a sale and signing of books. \n\nSpeaker: Gail McConnell\n\n\n \nGail McConnell is a writer and critic from Belfast. She is the author of two poetry pamphlets: Fothermather (Ink Sweat & Tears\, 2019) and Fourteen (Green Bottle Press\, 2018). A programme based on Fothermather was produced by Conor Garrett for Radio 4 in 2020 and made available as a Seriously… podcast. Gail’s poems have appeared in Poetry Review\, PN Review\, Virginia Quarterly Review\, Blackbox Manifold and Stand\, and she is the recipient of two awards from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. She is Senior Lecturer in English at Queen’s University Belfast and the author of Northern Irish Poetry and Theology (Palgrave\, 2014). Gail’s writing interests include violence\, creatureliness\, queerness and the possibilities and politics of language and form. \nSpeaker: Stephen Sexton\n\n\n \nStephen Sexton’s first book\, If All the World and Love Were Young was the winner of the Forward Prize for Best First Collection in 2019 and the Shine / Strong Award for Best First Collection. He was awarded the E.M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature in 2020. He was the winner of the National Poetry Competition in 2016 and the recipient of an Eric Gregory Award in 2018. He teaches at the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s University\, Belfast. \n \nSpeaker: John O’Donoghue\n\n\n \nJohn O’Donoghue is the author of a memoir Sectioned: A Life Interrupted (John Murray 2009) which was awarded Mind Book Of The Year in 2010. His poetry collections include Letter To Lord Rochester (Waterloo Press\, 2004); The Beach Generation (Pighog Press\, 2007); and Brunch Poems (Waterloo Press\, 2009). John lives in Brighton and teaches Creative Writing. He will be reading from his work in the ‘Irish Poets in the UK’ edition of Agenda. \nChair: James Conor Patterson\n\n\n \nJames Conor Patterson is the editor of the upcoming anthology The New Frontier: Reflections from the Irish Border (New Island Books\, 2021) which will be the focus of our 15 November event. He is also author of the poetry collection ‘Bandit Country’ forthcoming from Picador in Autumn 2022. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The Guardian\, i-D\, The Irish Times\, Magma\, The Moth\, Morning Star\, New Statesman\, Poetry Ireland Review\, Poetry London\, Poetry Review\, RTÉ Culture\, The Stinging Fly and The Tangerine\, among others. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n  URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/gail-mcconnell-and-stephen-sexton-25-october/ LOCATION:Irish Cultural Centre\, Hammersmith\, 5 Black’s Road Hammersmith\, W6 9DT\, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:Belfast,biography,book signing,crime,documentary,poetry,politics,Reading ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/mcconnel-sexton-slider.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20210624T193000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20210624T193000 DTSTAMP:20260501T180312 CREATED:20210616T215934Z LAST-MODIFIED:20210616T233735Z UID:18272-1624563000-1624563000@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:A History of Irish Women's Poetry - 24 June DESCRIPTION:Join us to celebrate the launch of a new collection of essays reflecting on the history of Irish women’s poetry with the editors Ailbhe Darcy and David Wheatley. The new Cambridge University Press volume offers a ground-breaking and comprehensive account of Irish women’s poetry from earliest times to the present day. Joining the editors will be the poet Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin\, one of the major Irish poets writing over the past 50 years\, and the author of the chapter on her work\, the academic Maria Johnston. \n\nThe editors\, both literary scholars and award-winning poets in their own right\, will discuss their shaping the volume and its reading of Irish women’s poetry through many prisms – mythology\, gender\, history\, the nation – and most importantly\, close readings of the poetry itself. It covers major figures\, such as Maire Mhac an tSaoi\, Eavan Boland\, Eilean Ni Chuilleanain\, as well as neglected figures from the past. Writing in both English and Irish is considered\, and close attention paid to the many different contexts in which Irish women’s poetry has been produced and received\, from the anonymous work of the early modern period\, through the bardic age\, the coterie poets of Anglo-Ireland\, the nationalist balladeers of Young Ireland\, the Irish Literary Revival\, and the advent of modernity. The volume and our event seeks to give an answer to the question posed by Ní Chuilleanáin in an essay on Speranza from 2000: ‘what use our female predecessors are to us as writers\, what is the function of model\, teacher\, exemplar?’ \n\n\n\nSpeaker: Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin\n\n\nBorn 1942 in Cork\, she is an Emeritus Fellow of Trinity College\, Dublin\, where she has taught\, researched and written on Renaissance literature and translation\, since 1966; with her husband Macdara Woods\, Leland Bardwell and Pearse Hutchinson\, she was a founder and (since 1975) co-editor of the Irish poetry journal Cyphers. Her seventh collection of poetry\, The Sun-Fish\, was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize and won the Griffin International Prize for poetry in 2010; The Boys of Bluehill was published in 2015 by Gallery Press\, and was shortlisted for the Forward Prize\, the Irish Times Poetry Now Award and the Pigott Prize at the Listowel Writers’ Week. \n\nSpeaker: Ailbhe Darcy\n\n\n \nDr Ailbhe Darcy’s most recent collection of poetry is Insistence\, published in June 2018 with Bloodaxe Books\, which won Wales Book of the Year and the Piggott Prize for Poetry in association with Listowel Writers’ Week. Her previous collection with Bloodaxe are Imaginary Menagerie (2011). A poetic text in collaboration with S.J. Fowler\, Subcritical Tests (2017)\, published by Gorse Editions\, and a chapbook\, A Fictional Dress (2009)\, published by Tall Lighthouse. In February 2020 she presented Alphabet on BBC Radio 4\, a programme about Inger Christensen’s extraordinary poem alfabet and its resonance in the age of climate change\, produced by Megan Jones. Darcy is a Senior Lecturer at Cardiff University. \n\nSpeaker: Maria Johnston\n\n\n \nDr. Maria Johnston received her Doctorate in English Literature in 2007 and has since worked as a Lecturer at Trinity College Dublin\, the Mater Dei Institute (DCU) and Oxford University. She is a well-known poetry critic and her reviews and essays have appeared in a range of publications including the Guardian\, Poetry Ireland Review\, Edinburgh Review\, The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Poetry and The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary British and Irish Poetry. She is the co-editor of Reading Pearse Hutchinson (Irish Academic Press\, 2011) and is currently working on a book on contemporary Irish poetry. Her recent archival discoveries on the poet Ethna McCarthy were featured in the Irish Times.\n\n\nSpeaker: David Wheatley\n Wheatley is a poet and critic whose most recent poetry collection is The President of Planet Earth (Carcanet/Wake Forest UP\, 2017). He has published four previous collections with Gallery Press: Thirst (1997; Rooney Prize for Irish Literature)\, Misery Hill (2000)\, Mocker (2006)\, and A Nest on the Waves (2010). Wheatley’s critical work has appeared in numerous edited collections\, including The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Poetry (2012)\, The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Poetry (2013)\, The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary British and Irish Poetry (2013). He was a founding editor of the poetry journal Metre\, and has written on poetry for a variety of other journals. URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/a-history-of-irish-womens-poetry-24-june/ CATEGORIES:biography,feminism,Irish language,poetry,publishing,Reading,women ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/banner-crowdcast-Irish-women.png LOCATION:https://www.crowdcast.io/e/a-history-of-irish-womens-poetry END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20210201T210000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20210201T210000 DTSTAMP:20260501T180312 CREATED:20210201T203041Z LAST-MODIFIED:20210201T224044Z UID:18124-1612213200-1612213200@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:Days of Clear Light - 1 Feb 2021 DESCRIPTION:We are delighted to join with our friends to mark the occasion of 40 years of Salmon Poetry and to celebrate the work of Jessie Lendennie. To mark that achievement 100 writers have come together in contributing to a special Festschrift presented as a complete surprise to Jessie at Christmas 2020. Editor Nessa O’Mahony interviews Jessie for the ILS and a number of the poets have contributed recordings of their poems for this online celebration. \n\nThe marvellous Festschrift\, so assiduously shaped in secret by our friends the editors Alan Hayes and Nessa O’Mahony\, gathers together poetry\, prose and memoir\, full of love\, gratitude and acknowledgement of the central role Jessie and Salmon have played in Irish literature. The President of Ireland Michael D Higgins writes in the foreward of Salmon publishing his first volume of poetry\, The Betrayal back in 1990 and notes of Jessie’s grá for experimentalism: ‘For Jessie\, the world of publishing has always been a space of offering new possibilities and exciting opportunities. In exercising choice on what to publish she has been unafraid to take a risk\, to follow her heart and her instinct down roads untravelled. In doing so she has also brought many readers down new pathways\, introducing them to remarkable writers who may have remained undiscovered or ‘off the beaten track’ if it were not for Jessie.’ Alan Hayes in his introduction writes of the transformative effect of Salmon’s redress of the gender imbalance in Irish publishing\, his work at Arlen House also deserves great credit in publishing and reviving Irish women poets. The quality of the collections which stream from Salmon today stand up to the great work of Eva Bourke and Rita Ann Higgins on which the Press was founded. Alan quotes the late Eavan Boland writing of Salmon as “one of the most innovative\, perceptive and important publishing houses in the UK and Ireland. It has fostered and supported the work of new writers and has established them in the public consciousness.” The book is available from Salmon.\n\nEiléan Ní Chuilleanáin is first up and reads for us from her poem In Ostia\, then Nessa O’Mahony joins Jessie in conversation and some of the poets from the volume have recorded their readings to share with us\, we’re delighted to have Gerry Dawe\, Martina Evans\, Jane Clarke and Nessa reading their work. Brava Jessie\, happy anniversary Salmon!\n\n\nSpeaker:\n\nEiléan Ní Chuilleanáin\nBorn 1942 in Cork\, she is an Emeritus Fellow of Trinity College\, Dublin\, where she has taught\, researched and written on Renaissance literature and translation\, since 1966; with her husband Macdara Woods\, Leland Bardwell and Pearse Hutchinson\, she was a founder and (since 1975) co-editor of the Irish poetry journal Cyphers. Her seventh collection of poetry\, The Sun-Fish\, was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize and won the Griffin International Prize for poetry in 2010; The Boys of Bluehill was published in 2015 by Gallery Press\, and was shortlisted for the Forward Prize\, the Irish Times Poetry Now Award and the Pigott Prize at the Listowel Writers’ Week.\n\nSpeaker: Jane Clarke\n\n\n \nJane Clarke is the author of two poetry collections\, The River and When the Tree Falls (Bloodaxe Books 2015 & 2019)\, and an illustrated chapbook\, All the Way Home\, (Smith|Doorstop 2019). She grew up on a farm in Co. Roscommon and her work explores enduring connections to people\, place and nature. Jane’s awards include the 2016 Hennessy Literary Award for Poetry and the 2016 Listowel Writers’ Week Poem of the Year. She now lives in Glenmalure\, Co. Wicklow where she combines writing with teaching & mentoring creative writing. www.janeclarkepoetry.ie \n\nSpeaker: Gerald Dawe\n\n\n\nGerald Dawe is a retired Professor of English and Fellow of Trinity College\, Dublin. He has published eight collections of poetry and several volumes of essays\, and he is the recipient of numerous awards and honours\, including the Macaulay Fellowship in Literature. His latest poetry collection Mickey Finn’s Air\, was published in 2014; Of War and War’s Alarms: Reflections on Modern Irish Writing appeared in 2015. In Another World is available from online retailers and the Irish Academic Press. \n\n\nSpeaker: Martina Evans\n Martina Evans is a poet\, novelist and teacher. She grew up in County Cork in a country pub\, shop and petrol station and is the youngest of ten children. She is the author of ten books of prose and poetry. She is currently Associate Lecturer in Creative Writing at Birkbeck University\, London and a Lector for the Royal Literary Reading Round 2014-2016. Watch\, a pamphlet was published by Rack Press in January 2016 and The Windows of Graceland\, New & Selected Poems was published by Carcanet in May 2016. Her latest collection Now We Can Talk Openly About Men was published by Carcanet in May 2018. It featured in the Times Literary Supplement\, Observer and Irish Times Books of the Year and has been shortlisted for the 2019 Irish Times Poetry Now Award as well as the Pigott Poetry Award. Currently she is Royal Literary Fund Advisory Fellow and poetry reviewer for the Irish Times. \n\n\nChair: Nessa O’Mahony\n\n\n\nNessa O’Mahony is a Dublin-born poet and novelist. She has published four books of poetry – Bar Talk (1999)\, Trapping a Ghost (2005)\, In Sight of Home (2009) and Her Father’s Daughter (2014). She is co-editor with Siobhán Campbell of Eavan Boland: Inside History (Arlen House\, 2016). Her first novel\, The Branchman (Arlen House\, 2018) was recently published. O’Mahony won the National Women’s Poetry Competition in 1997 and was shortlisted for the Patrick Kavanagh Prize and Hennessy Literature Awards.. URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/days-of-clear-light-1-feb-2021/ CATEGORIES:feminism,film,poetry,publishing,Reading,women LOCATION: END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR