Author Susan Cahill tells what prompted her to write For the Love of Ireland: A Literary Companion for Readers and Travelers. I grew up in New York City in an Irish-American family whose patriarch on my mother's side fought to keep Ulysses out of the Queensborough public libraries and later grand-marshaled the St. Patrick's Day Parade. As a graduate student in David … [Read more...] about For the Love of Ireland
Literature
Hibernia: Ulysses
Back in Dublin
The original manuscript of James Joyce's Ulysses traveled to Dublin this summer to be exhibited at the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin Castle. Entitled "Ulysses in Hand: The Rosenbach Manuscript," the exhibit was organized by the Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia.
Ulysses takes place on one day – June 16, 1904 – in Dublin. In fact, Joyce is said to have claimed … [Read more...] about Hibernia: Ulysses
Back in Dublin
Nora, an Excerpt
Even now, here 30 years since, when I turn to the southwest in Ennis from Shannon, and head out on the peninsula that ends at Loop Head, and somewhere on that road get my first wind of turfsmoke, I remember the first time and the sense that I had then of coming home. "The name's good," the man in the customs hall had said, letting my bags pass without a look. I had a hundred … [Read more...] about Nora, an Excerpt
Seamus Heaney Poetic Champion
A native of Northern Ireland, Seamus Heaney won the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature. The following excerpts are taken from interviews conducted with him in 1986 and shortly after he won the Nobel in 1996. Poetry summons you. That's been my own experience. The real difficulty about being a poet is not in the writing. It's surviving the silence, surviving lack of … [Read more...] about Seamus Heaney Poetic Champion
A Memorable Evening with Seamus Heaney
Courtesy of NYU Glucksman Ireland House
On April 13, this Saturday, Seamus Heaney would have been 80 years old. Though he passed away too early, on August 30, 2013, his work lives on. Through the last 25 years of his life, the poet had an ongoing connection with Glucksman Ireland House, the center of Irish Studies at NYU, and its founder Loretta Brennan Glucksman. On April 11, 1996, just six months after winning the … [Read more...] about A Memorable Evening with Seamus Heaney