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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 ...
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. The ...
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. bandit 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 ...
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. "Cyprus Avenue was commissioned by the Abbey Theatre Dublin. I ...
We're delighted to welcome back Jess Kidd to the Society to discuss her novel, The Night Ship. The novel is based on the extraordinary story of the Batavia, the flagship of the Dutch East India Company that in 1628 was wrecked on Morning Reef, on the Houtman Abrolhos islands off western coast of Australia. Its wrecking was followed by factions ...
New York in the late 1960s: Mae escapes a run-down an apartment, an alcoholic mother and her mother’s occasional boyfriend to a new life as a typist for Andy Warhol, transcribing conversations with his friends and associates to provide the material for an unconventional novel. A mordantly funny investigation of celebrity, obsession, womanhood and sexuality, Nothing Special (Bloomsbury) is itself ...
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, ...
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 ...
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'. London-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 ...
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 ...
