Irish America
Irish America
In January 2025, to open the Jubilee of the World of Communication in Rome, the Dicastery for Communication at the Vatican, Colum McCann, author of numerous works and co-founder of Narrative 4 – a global non-profit which uses storytelling to better communities, stressed the importance of stories in his address to an audience that included Pope Francis. “The shortest distance … [Read more...] about A Pilgrimage of Repair
A LONDON nursing home. The shape of a figure beneath the sheets. My grandfather could just about whisper. He wanted a cigarette and a glass of whiskey. “Come up on the bed here, young fella,” he said, gruffly. It was 1975 and I was 10 years old and it would be the first — and probably last — time I’d ever see him. Gangrene was taking him away. He reached for the bottle and … [Read more...] about But Always Meeting Ourselves
The crowd on Tuesday, March 5, 2024 at Manhattan's Swift Hibernian Lounge, off The Bowery, was energetic. In the back room, Dublin-born author Colum McCann smiled and shook many hands, while also introducing Diane Foley to many of those who’d come out to launch the co-authors’ powerful new book American Mother. In a new interview with Irish America magazine, McCann confronts … [Read more...] about American Mother
On August 9, 2014, one of the most chillingly iconic photographs of the 21st century was published online. The memory of it still sends a pour of cold along my spine. The orange jumpsuit. The black balaclava. The line between desert and sky. The knife was held casually by the executioner’s thigh. The portent. And then – in later images taken from a video still – the eerie, … [Read more...] about A Tale of Two Photos
Every Christmas Morning Now, Every Christmas Morning ThenEvery Christmas morning now is full of every Christmas morning then, and in the old unaccountable unfolding of memory I can’t rest on a single time when it all took shape, but this is the story of a suburban Christmas, an Irish Christmas, a Dublin Christmas, a Christmas in the four-bedroom house where I spent my first … [Read more...] about Christmas Then and Now
