Mary Beth Keane
What is your new novel Whale Harbor (out in November) about?
This book came most immediately from my own family. My dad was the second of 11 siblings, like the main character, Macdara, in Whale Harbor. He lost his mother when he was 19. He had a five-year-old brother, Gerry, and all these other siblings. They lived in a rural part of Connemara and spoke Irish. My grandfather got remarried very quickly. And possibly because of that new person added to the mix, Gerry ran away when he was 13 and was lost to the family for 30 years. When my dad was on his deathbed, he reverted to speaking Irish. (He got Parkinson’s when he was young). And he fixated on why he hadn’t brought his younger brother to America with him in 1963. He was only 19 at the time. It bothered me that after this long life he had, with so much hard work and happiness, my dad was still troubled by this. So I wanted to do some justice. And bring [the story] to life.
How did your upbringing lead to being a writer?
Did you talk a lot about books and ideas at home?
My mother got annoyed at me once when I said on NPR that we had no books in the house. She called me and said, “I bought a set of Britannica encyclopedias for you.” It was like $600. She was pissed. She encouraged me to go to the library. It was a safe place.
TV journalist and documentary filmmaker Mary Murphy
What did you learn about NYPD officer Steven McDonald while making your documentary film Saint of the City?
I’m looking at more than 30 years of Steven McDonald’s life, which ended in 2017. I covered his funeral at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. When his son Conor was born, right before the baptism, Steven decided to forgive the troubled 15-year-old who had shot him. I didn’t want to look only at the original story. I wanted to look at what it was like for him to endure 30-and-a-half years in a wheelchair. And some of the history he lived through. He went to Northern Ireland on a peace-making mission right after the Good Friday Accord. Ireland was a very special place for me to visit [for this documentary]. We met and talked to some of the people Steven had encountered. The first time he went to Ireland was a week after the Omagh bombing, and a lot of people thought Steven shouldn’t go – it was dangerous – but Steven said, “I have to go.”
Best-selling author (Captain Phillips and The American School of Spies) Stephan Talty
How did being Irish influence your writing career?
My idol growing up was F. Scott Fitzgerald. My first published piece was a book review in Irish America about Fitzgerald and his Irish side. In my early 20s, I moved to Dublin for two years. I hitchhiked and got to know the place that I had only known from my parents’ stories. I don’t get back as often as I’d like to. My brother lives outside Galway. My mom had 12 brothers and sisters, so I have a huge amount of Irish cousins.
How did your parents end up in Buffalo?
My Dad followed the work. He worked on the St. Lawrence Seaway. My parents immigrated in the 1950s. They grew up seven miles from each other in Co. Clare but never knew each other. They met in New York at an Irish dance. My dad was a ferocious reader, He loved the Old West, and read mostly nonfiction about the Civil War. I’d go to the library with him and I’d walk away with five or six books I wanted to read. South Buffalo was an Irish Catholic working class enclave where you really felt part of a community.
EXTRA! Broadcast from Derry: Two of Irish America’s longtime contributors have new books out.
Anne Cadwallader and Brian Dooley got together at the Gasyard studio in Derry City in September to discuss their work.
Cadwallader is a London-born investigative journalist, author, and human rights advocate who spent over 40 years reporting on the Troubles in Northern Ireland. After decades of frontline reporting, she left mainstream journalism in 2009 to join The Pat Finucane Centre for Human Rights in Armagh. She has written several non-fiction books about the Troubles and recently published her first novel, Crossing Over, about an English journalist who arrives in the North in the middle of the Troubles.
London-born to Irish parents, Brian Dooley is a longtime human rights activist and the author of several books on civil rights and the Northern Ireland conflict. His book DEFIANT: Profiles of Resistance is a gripping account of changemakers in Europe today, and features 11 stories of local people defending their communities against injustice.
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