Latest news with #IrishLiterature
Irish Times
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Walking Ghosts by Mary O'Donnell: An ambitious, dystopian and horny collection
Walking Ghosts Author : Mary O'Donnell ISBN-13 : 9781917453226 Publisher : Mercier Press Guideline Price : €16.99 The opening story of Mary O'Donnell's new collection sets a pattern for what is to come by depicting the Covid-19 lockdowns as an instance of paralysis in the Joycean fashion. Its protagonist struggles to live meaningfully in a world turned upside-down by 'that microscopic ball with the little cartoon feet', and many of the characters who follow experience a similar longing to shatter the nagging stasis of their lives. On one level these are the walking ghosts of the title but, on another, they are ciphers for the old-guard tropes of Irish literary writing – the contested field, the London abortion, and so on – which O'Donnell here seeks to reanimate and, in one or two cases, cast aside entirely. No surprise, so, that many of her protagonists are survivors of Ireland's literary-industrial complex (one rather brilliant tale, The Stolen Man, concerns a writing student succumbing to the seductive creative freedoms of Galway). Yet, after several stories content to probe the margins of suburban realism, O'Donnell suddenly delivers a jolt of genre energy halfway through The Space Between Louis and Me. It is the kind of story that makes you go back and re-read it from the start (to say any more would be to ruin the surprise). READ MORE Soon after comes The Creators, the most striking story here, which offers a reflective extrapolation of our contemporary climate crisis. Set in a future of 'fear and extreme heat' where Scotland's Hebrides have been transformed into 'Garden Isles', this is a deftly sketched portrait of desperation and desire, one worthy of inclusion on the eclectic shelf of insular dystopian fiction by Irish women (think The Bray House by Éilís Ní Dhuibhne or Last Ones Left Alive by Sarah Davis-Goff). Walking Ghosts is a work of quiet ambition rich in standout descriptions ('He looks like a horse in a cubist painting'). Moreover, this is a horny collection, one happy to linger on female desire through chances taken – or not – on lost loves or intoxicating holiday acquaintances. Yet the most intriguing flirtation here is that of O'Donnell with speculative fiction. This paradoxically both elevates and anchors the proceedings. Because, yes, the future may be dire, but its calamitous potential may yet be dampened by the choices we make now.
New York Times
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Paul Durcan, Irish Poet of Tortured and Tender Souls, Is Dead at 80
Paul Durcan, an Irish poet whose droll, sardonic and frequently tender poems about lads in dimly lit pubs, quotidian life in the countryside and the trauma of political violence made him one of Ireland's most popular writers of the 20th century, died on May 17 in Dublin. He was 80. His death, in a nursing home, was caused by age-related myocardial degeneration, his daughter Sarah Durcan said. In the annals of long-suffering poets, Mr. Durcan's hardships probably merit special distinction. After he set about becoming a writer in the 1960s, his father — a hidebound judge who called him a 'sissy' — apparently sent family members to remove him from a Dublin pub and then had him committed to a psychiatric hospital. Mr. Durcan suffered through several years of electroshock treatments. He feared he would be lobotomized. 'I was seen as going the way of a poet,' he once said, 'and that had to be stopped.' After running away the hospital, Mr. Durcan sought out fellow poets for assistance and mentorship, including Patrick Kavanagh, who helped him publish his work. Mr. Durcan channeled the trauma of his father's emotional abandonment and the horrors of psychiatric wards into an unmistakable voice on the page. 'Durcan's abundant imagination has indeed left us a universe of iconoclastic poems that combine art and everyday life, insight and originality,' the poet Gerard Smyth wrote in The Irish Times after Mr. Durcan's death. 'He was one of the great mavericks, a literary phenomenon with a commitment to poetry as a calling.' Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Irish Times
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Siobhán Flynn and Sarah Davy win Mairtín Crawford Awards
In The Irish Times tomorrow, Orlaine McDonald tells Mia Levitin about her award-winning debut novel. Anna Carey has researched and compiled the perfect summer reading list for you. And there is a Q&A with Sarah Maria Griffin about her new YA novel. Reviews are: Sally Hayden on We Came by Sea: Stories of a Greater Britain by Horatio Clare; Kevin Power on The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong; Claire Hennessy on the best new YA fiction; Naoise Dolan on Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid; Malachi O'Doherty on Death in Derry by Jonathan Trigg; Paul D'Alton on The Sleep Room by Jon Stock; Henrietta McKervey on Our Song by Anna Carey; Eilís Ní Dhuibhne on Best Friends by Andrew Meehan; Val Nolan on Walking Ghosts by Mary O'Donnell; Laura Slattery on The Warrior: Rafael Nadal and His Kingdom of Clay by Christopher Clarey; Jessica Traynor on This Interim Time by Oona Frawley; and Rachel Ashcroft on Inside the Stargazer's Palace: The Transformation of Science in 16th-Century Northern Europe by Violet Moller. This weekend's Irish Times Eason offer is The Coast Road by Alan Murrin, just €5.99, a €6 saving. Eason offer Siobhán Flynn from Dublin and Northumberland-based Sarah Davy have won this year's Mairtín Crawford Awards for Poetry and Short Stories respectively at an award ceremony in the Crescent Arts Centre last night as part of the Belfast Book Festival. READ MORE The winners each receive £500 cash, plus a 'time to write' package which includes a three-night stay at a hotel in Belfast and four days of dedicated writing space at The Crescent Arts Centre. Flynn, who began writing quite late in life, won the 2022 Cúirt New Writing Prize for Poetry and a John Hewitt Bursary in 2023. Davy, who works for Hexham Book Festival, won the Finchale Prize for Short Fiction at the Northern Writers Awards in 2023. Short Story judges were Belfast authors Lucy Caldwell and Wendy Erskine. The Poetry Award was judged by Kathleen McCracken and Dawn Watson. * 'Men must endure / Their going hence, even as their coming hither' – King Lear. Have we no more active rights over life, birth and death? The attitude of passive acceptance of birth and death, preached by Edgar to his father in King Lear, has been variously challenged in the modern period. The nature of human rights in the matter have been hotly contested: the right to life of the unborn child as against women's reproductive rights, the principle of the sanctity of all human life clashing with the right to a chosen, dignified death. The title for this year's Hubert Butler Essay Prize invites reflection on the ethical questions raised by such debates. First prize is €1,500. The closing date is July 4th. * The Irish Writers Centre is packing its literary bags once more, embarking on a nationwide roadshow that will see it travel to five festivals across the island in 2025 – from Belfast to Bantry, Wexford to Waterford, before returning to Dublin in November for the Dublin Book Festival. Fresh from appearances at Galway's Cúirt and the University of Limerick's Creative Writing Festival, the Centre continues its mission to support writers of all backgrounds and at all stages of their careers. Events will include masterclasses, writing seminars, panel discussions, spoken word showcases and zine workshops. In Belfast, the Centre will showcase its Young Writer Delegates and host an information session featuring Novel Fair winner Andrew Cunning. West Cork welcomes seminars, spoken word, and panels on diversity and queer literature. Wexford offers conversations with John Banville and Victoria Kennefick, while Waterford sees a Writers in the Regions masterclass from Danielle McLoughlin. 'It's about making space for writers everywhere, not just in the capital,' said CEO Mags McLoughlin. 'We want to build a national community of storytellers.' Further details and programme links can be found at . * Bernardine Evaristo is the recipient of the Women's Prize Outstanding Contribution Award, a one-off literary honour marking the 30th anniversary year of the Women's Prize for Fiction. This prestigious accolade, funded by Bukhman Philanthropies, celebrates Evaristo's body of work, her transformative impact on literature and her unwavering dedication to uplifting underrepresented voices across the cultural landscape. As the recipient of the Women's Prize Outstanding Contribution Award, Evaristo will receive £100,000 prize money and a special sculpture named 'Thoughtful' by Caroline Russell MRSS, both of which will be presented on June 12th at the Women's Prize Trust's summer party in London, alongside the winners of the 2025 Women's Prize for Fiction and the Women's Prize for Non-Fiction. * Sandycove is to publish Miriam O'Callaghan's memoir, Miriam: Life, Work, Everything, on October 30th. O'Callaghan is one of Ireland's best-known broadcasters, covering every election, referendum, big controversy and important public event for RTÉ, and hosting an award-winning radio show, Sunday With Miriam on RTÉ Radio 1. She has presented RTÉ's Prime Time since 1996. O'Callaghan said: 'It's 20 years since Sandycove first sent me a contract – let's just say, it's taken a while! I thank them for their patience, persistence and belief in my story. I have always lived my life in fast forward, so I never thought I would have the time to look back and reflect. I also wondered if anyone would be interested. Then one day not that long ago – with a prompt from Patricia Deevy – I decided I would write it, because if I didn't write it now, I might never do so. 'At first I thought it would just be about my work as a journalist, but then when I began writing I realised how impossible it was to separate my professional and personal lives. I don't know if that's because I'm a woman or a mother or both or none of those things, but I just knew that for my story to be authentic and truthful, I couldn't simply focus on the work side of my life.' * The Irish Writers Centre launches the first in a new series of Writers Showcase events spotlighting newly published writers from across the island. The inaugural showcase, titled The Out of Towners, takes place on Wednesday, June 18th, at 6.30pm at the centre, 19 Parnell Square North, Dublin 1. Curated to celebrate Ireland's rich poetic diversity, The Out of Towners features five poets whose compelling work captures a range of regional and personal perspectives: Afric McGlinchey is an award-winning poet based in West Cork. Her latest collection À la belle étoile – the odyssey of Jeanne Baré (Salmon Poetry) continues her internationally recognised body of work. Afric has received multiple Arts Council bursaries and her poetry has been translated into several languages. Lauren O'Donovan is a rising star from Cork whose recent accolades include the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award and the Fool for Poetry Chapbook Competition. Her debut Taxidermy Heart and new chapbook Superposition were both published in 2025. D'Or Seifer is a Limerick-based poet whose debut collection On Being Un/Able to Walk Through Walls was published earlier this year by Revival Press. She is the founder of Lime Square Poets and co-hosts the First Wednesday Series in Limerick, as well as co-editing Skylight 47 magazine. Luke Morgan , based in Galway, is the 2025 recipient of the Lawrence O'Shaughnessy Award for Poetry. His third collection, Blood Atlas (Arlen House), was supported by The Arts Council and follows his acclaimed work as both a poet and film-maker. S.C. Flynn recently relocated from Australia to Dublin and brings an international voice to the evening. His debut collection The Colour of Extinction (Renard Press, 2024) was The Observer 's Poetry Book of the Month. His work has appeared in over 100 literary journals worldwide. Each writer will read from their newly published collections and chapbooks, which will be available to purchase after the event. The evening will be hosted by Damien B. Donnelly , creative projects co-ordinator at the centre. 'Ireland is bursting with poetic diversity and to gather these talented poets in one room reading from new collections is a privilege for the Centre. We are hopeful that the Writers Showcases will become a regular series, celebrating all forms of writing from all corners of the country,' said Donnelly. * The Eavan Boland Award returns for 2025, inviting applications from early-career poets based in the UK and mid-career poets based in Ireland. The Eavan Boland Award 2025 will support two cross-residency opportunities at Trinity College Dublin School of English and the University of Manchester Centre for New Writing, supported by Poetry Ireland, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Trinity College Dublin, The University of Manchester and the British Council. This award honours Boland's dedication to fostering new voices and diverse perspectives in poetry and celebrates her legacy by supporting emerging and mid-career poets through residencies and mentorship. For full details and application, please visit here . * Sixteen young writers from Ballinrobe Community School, Gaza and Cairo have published A Spinning Tyre, an anthology of poems and short stories born from cross-Border writing workshops led by Liam Horan through the University of Limerick's Creative Writers in the Community programme. Developed with the Hands Up Project, the collection explores themes such as war, identity and belonging. Featured are Ben Egan, Caoimhe Macken, Dominic Brennan, Donal Lenihan, Jessica McMurray, Nathan Loughrey, Stephen John Feerick (Ballinrobe); Alaa Kamal, Hala Aqel, Islam Kamal, Jaber Hammam Basal, Lama Ehab Sadi Kuhail, Leen Ehab Sadi Kuhail, Malak Basal, Marah Kamel Abu Shamla and Wadee Nasser Ahmed Shabat (Gaza and Cairo). It is available for €10 at Martin Murphy's Newsagents, Ballinrobe. * Little Island Books have signed multi-book deals for the first time in the company's history, agreeing three-book contracts with two Cork-based Irish authors: Kel Menton and Jen Wallace. Menton, whose debut A Fix of Light was published by Little Island in February, has signed on for three more novels for young readers: a mix of YA and middle-grade titles with an emphasis on speculative fiction and magic realism. Wallace, whose debut chapter-book Dinosaur Pie won the junior category at the 2025 Great Reads Awards, has plans to publish three more works of fiction with neurodiverse protagonists. Illustrator Alan O'Rourke has also signed on to illustrate two sequels to Dinosaur Pie , while Wallace's fourth publication will be a picture book about an autistic girl's relationship with her grandmother. * The Week Junior Book Awards have unveiled their 2025 shortlists, celebrating the best in children's literature across 13 categories, including Irish authors Chris Haughton, Sheena Dempsey, Eilish Fisher and Dermot Flynn. Author and singer Geri Halliwell Horner, CBeebies' George Webster, presenter and actor Rhys Stephenson, and lexicographer Susie Dent are among the judges who will select the winning titles. Winners will be announced at an award ceremony in central London on September 29th. * An intense portrait of obsessive desire set in the rural Netherlands and a lushly illustrated elegy for the lost histories and identity of the Arab world have won the UK's longest-running literary awards, the James Tait Black Prizes. Lucas Rijneveld's My Heavenly Favourite won the fiction prize and the biography prize was won by Lamia Ziadé for My Great Arab Melancholy . Each prize is shared with the writers' respective translators, Michele Hutchison and Emma Ramadan. This is the first time that both prizes have been awarded to translated works and only the second time a writer and translator have been awarded a prize together in the history of the awards. The prizes were opened to translations in 2021, with authors and translators honoured equally.
Irish Times
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Let Me Go Mad In My Own Way by Elaine Feeney: An ambitious, thoughtful, nicely layered book
Let Me Go Mad In My Own Way Author : Elaine Feeney ISBN-13 : 978-1-787-30348-5 Publisher : Penguin Guideline Price : £14.99 Claire O'Connor is a poet and lecturer in creative writing. She lived in London for about a decade with Tom but soon after the death of her mother she left him and returned to 'the West of Ireland' – Athenry. She decides to stay in the family home, a bungalow built beside the original farmhouse, now derelict. The novel by Elaine Feeney focuses on Claire's relationship with her siblings, her dead parents, and with Tom, who reappears some years after the split. We delve into the past, both Claire's childhood and the earlier history of the family and region. A brutal encounter with the Black and Tans during the War of Independence is a key moment. The history of colonialism in Ireland, and the particular socio-economic culture of east Galway are dealt with. In the fields of Athenry, horses vault the class divide. Hunting 'was far from being a sport of kings around these parts'. 'The women with wizened faces and men with booming voices, their riding style slightly at odds with the locals' join the farmers for the hunt. The queen of England wants to buy a mare from the O'Connors! [ Elaine Feeney on her new novel: 'I was pushing a sort of Chekhov dinner party in the west of Ireland' Opens in new window ] The colonial legacy is one of the novel's thematic strands and is linked to the story of domestic intergenerational trauma. John, Claire's father, is capricious and violent. Her mother and the children live in terror. The unravelling of the mystery surrounding the mother's death is shockingly disclosed towards the close of the novel. READ MORE Gender issues are also dealt with at a local and universal level. Claire follows Insta posts by Kelly Purchase, one of those awful American 'tradwives'. She finds Kelly absurd but compelling. Ironically, by the end of the novel, she hosts a splendid party (Pinteresque, naturally), revealing that Kelly has exerted influence. 'The crab was set on a bed of baby gem lettuce, dressed with some hard shell, samphire, cracked black pepper and fresh parsley.' The novel is written in transparent, unshowy prose. Not linear, the narrative maintains its focus on Claire and despite several time-shifts never confuses. The main themes are handled with insight and real depth, and the depiction of the peculiarities of east Galway society is ethnographically interesting and convincing. An ambitious, thoughtful, nicely layered book. Éilís Ní Dhuibhne is a writer and critic. She is a member of Aosdána
Daily Mail
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Blue Road: The Edna O'Brien Story: Trailer, certificate and where to watch
Profile of the controversial Irish author Edna O'Brien, with her diaries read by Jessie Buckley 2024
