Frank McCourt's phone message for Mayor Dannel Malloy

"I have a soft spot in my heart for underdogs who beat the odds," McCourt says. "He's overcome obstacles every step of the way. He's a different kind of leader, the kind we need fighting for us in Connecticut."

Technorati Tags: Literature, Ireland, irish, writer, author

Ancient Irish Book found in Bog in Ireland supposed to warn of Israel Wipeout Threat

"’This is really a miracle find." - Pat Wallace, Director, National Museum of Ireland, informed AP that the "miracle" took place in Ireland. Archeologists on Tuesday, July 25, 2006, informed media that that discovery of God’s Word is most unusual.

"The discovery of an ancient book of psalms by a construction worker who spotted something while driving the shovel of his backhoe into a bog" has stirred the knowledgeable world.

Twenty pages. That’s how large the book is. It dates to AD 800-1000, according to Trinity College manuscripts expert Bernard Meehan. "It was the first discovery of an Irish early medieval document in two centuries."

The book was opened to Psalm 83, the latter concerning the enemies of Israel out to annihilate the nation. How significant is it that this find occurs in the midst of this present Middle East conflict?

On Wednesday, under the title An Amazingly Timely Discovery, a writer with one Israeli news magazine devoted an entire column to the find, which he regarded as "nothing short of a phenomenon".

"I don't want to take it any further than I should, but time may show that the discovery of the Irish psalm book was a warning," he wrote.

However yesterday, before it all got out of hand, the director of the National Museum, Dr Patrick Wallace, issued a statement saying the text visible on the manuscript found in the bog does not refer to the wiping out of Israel but to the "vale of tears".

"This is part of Verse 7 of Psalm 83 in the old Latin translation of the Bible [the Vulgate] which....would have been the version used in the medieval period.

"In the much later King James version the number of the psalms is different, based on the Hebrew text and the 'vale of tears' occurs in Psalm 84.

"The text about wiping out Israel occurs in the Vulgate as Psalm 82" which equals Psalm 83 (King James version), he said.

"It is hoped that this clarification will serve comfort to anyone worried by earlier reports of the content of the text," Dr Wallace added.

Click here to read about ancient irish texts

Technorati Tags: Literature, Ireland, irish, writer, author

James Joyce's Exiles at London National Theatre

For the first time in more than 30 years, James Joyce's only play, Exiles, is being held in London.

James Joyce's only play is a portrait of a very modern marriage between an apparently unfeeling husband, obsessed only with his writing, and an openly unfaithful wife, hoping to disturb his dispassionate calm.

Name: Exiles
Address: National Theatre, Cottesloe
South Bank Centre
Dates: Running from Wed 26th Jul 2006 until Sat 12th Aug 2006
Info: Showing for 16 more days!
Times: 19:30 | matinees 14:30
Pricing: £10 - £28
Phone: 020 7452 3000
Travel:
Temple Underground [MAP] 6 minute walk to the North
Euro star [MAP] 7 minute walk to the South
Waterloo Underground [MAP] 7 minute walk to the South
Waterloo Railway Station [MAP] 7 minute walk to the South
Waterloo East Railway Station [MAP] 7 minute walk to the South
Parking:
Coin Street NCP [MAP] 3 minute walk to the East
Q-Park Waterloo A [MAP] 7 minute walk to the South
St Martins Lane Hotel NCP [MAP] 14 minute walk to the North West
Library Street NCP [MAP] 15 minute walk to the South East
Hillgate House NCP [MAP] 15 minute walk to the North East

Technorati Tags: Literature, Ireland, irish, writer, author

Ancient Irish book found in Bog

Irish archaeologists Tuesday heralded the discovery of an ancient book of psalms by a construction worker who spotted something while driving the shovel of his backhoe into a bog.

"This is really a miracle find," said Pat Wallace, director of the National Museum of Ireland, which has the book stored in refrigeration and facing years of painstaking analysis before being put on public display.

He said an engineer was digging up bogland last week to create commercial potting soil somewhere in Ireland‘s midlands when, "just beyond the bucket of his bulldozer, he spotted something." Wallace would not specify where the book was found because a team of archaeologists is still exploring the site.

Crucially, he said, the bog owner covered up the book with damp soil. Had it been left exposed overnight, he said, "it could have dried out and just vanished, blown away."

The discovery of an ancient book of psalms by a construction worker who spotted something while driving the shovel of his backhoe into a bog.

The approximately 20-page book has been dated to the years 800-1000. Trinity College manuscripts expert Bernard Meehan said it was the first discovery of an Irish early medieval document in two centuries.

The book was found open to a page describing, in Latin script, Psalm 83, in which God hears complaints of other nations' attempts to wipe out the name of Israel.

Ireland already has several other holy books from the early medieval period, including the ornately illustrated Book of Kells, which has been on display at Trinity College in Dublin since the 19th century.

Click here to read about ancient irish texts

Technorati Tags: Literature, Ireland, irish, writer, author

Frank O'Connor International Short Story competition

Nepali-born writer Samrat Upadhyay has been named a finalist in the Frank O'Connor International Short Story competition.

When I met Upadhyay in the Hotel Ambassador in Lajimpat on July 14 he had recently learned the news. "When I saw the list of finalists, I was surprised," he said.

Come September, this 43-year-old writer of a recently published and much acclaimed short story collection, The Royal Ghosts, will attend the award ceremony in Ireland. Who knows, he could be the winner! Upadhyay has his fingers crossed for good luck.

The prize, which is awarded to a complete collection of previously unpublished stories in a book collection, stands at &euros;35,000, making it the world's richest short story prize. Administered from the Munster Literature Centre in Cork, the prize was established in 2005 during the city's tenure as European capital of culture, in honour of the author Frank O'Connor, Cork's most famous literary son.

Technorati Tags: Literature, Ireland, irish, writer, author

Literature at Kilkenny Arts Festival

The 2006 Kilkenny Arts Festival 'promises to ignite the Marble City with an explosion of art, drama, music, literature, dance, comedy and colour between the 11th and 20th of August,' according to a statement from the Arts Festival office this week.

It's expected that this years festival will showcase the very best of the arts from both home and abroad and some highlights include a sensational festival parade, performances by the world renowned Argento Chamber Ensemble, an Asian flavoured evening entitled Masala!, stunning visual arts exhibitions inspired by the theme of ‘Failure’, plus readings by best selling authors Darren Shan and Alex Barclay for the literary enthusiasts. Other musical gems include dance floor jazz from the Five Corner’s Quintet; the return of the breathtaking Ex Cathedra in St Canice’s Cathedral; authentic trad music from Téada & Beoga, as well as funky afrobeat sounds from Nigerian Femi Kuti. Add to that more top acts including the hilarious comedians The Ornate Johnsons; theatre from the acclaimed French group Fiat Lux; hip hop for the kids with the Mayhem Poets plus much much more and it becomes clear that the Kilkenny Arts Festival has a treat in store for everyone.

The writers for this year’s festival, programmed by Eoin McNamee, have been chosen to reflect a whole spectrum of work within the crime/thriller genre. David Peace and Gordon Burn represent the leading edge of crime writing. Alex Barclay and Adrian McKinty are two of the most exciting talents in a new generation of Irish crime and thriller writers; Tobias Hill’s phantom fictions stretch the boundaries of crime fiction; and Eoin McNamee is back with a genre-defying exposition of the strange death of Diana Spencer in Paris in August 1997, entitled “12:23”, to be published in spring 2007, completing a literary line up to entertain and thrill!

To book tickets or for more information on the festival check out www.kilkennyarts.ie or call 00 353 (0) 56 775 2175. Booking opens Wednesday July 5.

Technorati: Literature, Ireland, irish, writer, author

International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award

"Well, I have to stay sober all day because there's a dinner this evening... so I'll start drinking about 11 o'clock tonight and I don't know when I'll stop." - Colm Toibin

Colm Tóibín is the first Irish writer to win the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. In this the 11th year of the Award, the Lord Mayor, Councillor Catherine Byrne announced that Tóibin’s novel The Master has won the €100,000 prize – the world’s richest literary prize for a single work of fiction published in English. The International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award is administered by Dublin City Public Libraries and sponsored by IMPAC (Improved Management Productivity and Control) an international company with its headquarters based in Florida, USA.

The Master was chosen by an international panel of judges, having been nominated by 17 libraries worldwide.

The Master, Colm Toibin (Picador imprint)“It’s an honour to present such a fine writer as Colm Tóibín, with the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award - the largest and most international prize of its kind”, says Lord Mayor of Dublin, Cllr Catherine Byrne. “Libraries from all corners of the globe nominate entries and the Award is open to books written in any language. The Award is a Dublin City Council initiative and a partnership between Dublin City Council and IMPAC, a productivity improvement company operating in over 50 countries. The Award is administered by Dublin City Public Libraries”.

The 10 shortlisted titles included three Irish authors and were selected from a 132 novels, nominated by 180 libraries from 43 countries and from 124 cities; 32 titles were in translation, covering 15 non-English languages.

The shortlisted titles were:
Graceland by Chris Abani
Maps for Lost Lovers by Nadeem Aslam
Havoc, In Its Third Year by Ronan Bennett (Irish author)
The Closed Circle by Jonathan Coe
An Altered Light by Jens Christian Grøndahl - translated from the Danish by Anne Born
The Swallows of Kabul by Yasmina Khadra - translated from the French by John Cullen
Breaking the Tongue by Vyvyane Loh
Don’t Move by Margaret Mazzantini - translated from the Italian by John Cullen (Mazzantini was born in Dublin)
The Master by Colm Tóibín
The Logogryph by Thomas Wharton

The Master, Colm Toibin (Scribner imprint)Judges’ comment: “In The Master, Colm Tóibín captures the exquisite anguish of a man who circulated in the grand parlours and palazzos of Europe, who was astonishingly alive and vibrant in his art, and yet whose attempts at intimacy inevitably failed him and those he tried to love. It is a powerful account of the hazards of putting the life of the mind before affairs of the heart.
“This probing portrayal of Henry James is not merely an outstanding narrative. In crisp, modulated writing, it subtly balances a range of devices that leave the reader in no doubt about the accomplishment of this work. For its deftly excavated psychology of the Jamesian childhood and youth, for its quiet revelations of the artist's journey and the emotional and material necessities accompanying this, for the melancholic undertone which surfaces through the probing landscape of this writer's life, 'The Master' is, and will continue to be a work of novelistic art: its preoccupations are truth and the elusiveness of intimacy, and from such preoccupations emerge this patient, beautiful, exposure of loss, and the price of the pursuit of perfection.”

The judges this year were:
? Jane Koustas, currently serving as the Craig Dobbin Professor of Canadian Studies at UCD.
? Mary O’Donnell, poet, novelist, translator and critic.
? Andrew O’Hagan, whose first novel, Our Fathers was shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, among other awards and was winner of the Holtby Prize for Fiction.
? Paulo Ruffilli, poet and novelist, is general editor of the Edizioni del Leone in Venice.
? Eugene R.Sullivan, non voting chair is a former Chief Judge of a US Court of Appeals.

Colm Tóibín is the author of four novels, The South, The Heather Blazing, The Story of the Night and The Blackwater Lightship, which was shortlisted for the 1999 Booker Prize and the 2001 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His non-fiction includes Bad Blood, Homage to Barcelona, The Sign of the Cross and Love in a Dark Time. Colm Tóibín is now a Stein Visiting Writer at Stanford University, USA.

The Master was nominated by 17 Libraries; State Library of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia, State Library of Queensland, Brisbane, Tweebronnen Openbare Bibliotheek, Leuven, Belgium, Biblioteca Luis Angel Arango, Bogota, Colombia, Cork City Libraries, Ireland, Dublin City Public Libraries, Ireland, Limerick City Library, Ireland, Dunedin Public Libraries, New Zealand, Edinburgh City Libraries & Information Services, Scotland, Cape Town Central Library, South Africa, Public Library of Cincinnati & Hamilton Country, Cincinnati, USA, Hartford Public Library, USA, Kansas City Public Library, USA, Minneapolis Public Library, USA, Free Library of Philadelphia, USA, San José Public Library, USA, Lincoln Library, Springfield, USA

Previous winners of the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award are
2005 The Known World by Edward P Jones.
2004 This Blinding Absence of Light by Tahar Ben Jelloun
2003 My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk
2002 Atomised by Michel Houellebecq
2001 No Great Mischief by Alistair MacLeod
2000 Wide Open by Nicola Barker
1999 Ingenious Pain by Andrew Miller
1998 The Land Of Green Plums by Herta Muller
1997 A Heart So White by Javier Marias
1996 Remembering Babylon by David Malouf

Read more about Colm Tóibín

Dublin celebration of George Bernard Shaw's 150th Anniversary

"The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and all time". - George Bernard Shaw

Ireland will celebrate the life and works of George Bernard Shaw, Irish playwright and Nobel laureate, in Dublin from 22 July to 28 July, 2006.

Born in Dublin in 1856 Shaw was an Irish dramatist, literary critic, a socialist spokesman, and a leading figure in 20th century theatre. In 1925 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

The week-long celebrations are to be held at Shaw’s birthplace, 33 Synge Street, Dublin 8, a ten minute walk from bustling Grafton St. Recently restored, the house has been furnished in Victorian style to re-create the atmosphere of Shaw's early days. This charming residence also gives a wonderful insight into everyday life of Victorian Dublin.

Planned festivities will include readings from some of his most noteworthy plays; themed talks such as ‘Shaw & War’ and ‘Shaw as an Irish man’; guided tours of the house; and a performance by actress Eileen O’Sullivan twice daily, comprising Shaw’s life, his witticisms and dramatic excerpts from his work.

Readings

Monday 24 July, 1pm, reading of Shaw’s play ‘The Man of Destiny’ by Angela Grayson

Tuesday 25 July, 1pm, talk with Mary Lou Norton ‘The First Twenty Years’

Wednesday 26 July, 1pm, talk with Angela Grayson ‘’Shaw as an Irish man’

Thursday 27 July, 1pm, talk with Angela Grayson ‘Shaw & War’

Guided Tours

Saturday 22 July & Sunday 23 July, 2.30pm guided tour

Monday 24 July to Friday 28 July inclusive, 3pm guided tour

Performance

Performance by Eileen O’Sullivan, the show will comprise of Shaw’s life, his witticisms and dramatic excerpts from his work and will last approximately 30 minutes.

Saturday 22 July & Sunday 23 July
Performance at 3.30pm

Monday 24 July to Friday 28 July inclusive
Performance at 12 noon & 2pm

Normal admission charges apply and include all of the above events

For more information: George Bernard Shaw

Beckett and Painting - Sunday Times

The entire article by Michael Ross can be found here

Visitors to Samuel Beckett’s flat in Montparnasse, Paris, remarked on three images prominently displayed there. In the hallway was a poster of a shock-haired Albert Einstein, his tongue stuck out. On the mantelpiece stood photographs of two Irishmen, the writer Francis Stuart and the former Irish rugby international Ollie Campbell.

Beckett had known Stuart in Dublin and Paris before the second world war, but the two took opposite sides: Beckett working with the resistance, Stuart writing scripts for Lord Haw-Haw. They did not meet again until 1987 and it was, by Stuart’s account, an initially chilly encounter.

Campbell was someone Beckett described to acquaintances as “a genius”.

Conspicuous by their absence in Beckett’s flat were the two images perhaps closest to his heart: A Morning and Regatta Evening, two small oils by Jack B Yeats he bought from the painter. The first he prized so highly that he took it with him when on the run in Roussillon during the war, but subsequently gave away to Jack McGowran after the actor expressed a liking for it; the second painting he gave to his nephew Edward.

As his biographer James Knowlson has pointed out, Beckett did not need to hold on to paintings to retain an appreciation of them. With his intense scrutiny and his prodigious memory, Beckett was able to recall in vivid detail paintings he had seen perhaps decades earlier. His own collection was remarkably small and mostly bought from artist friends such as Yeats, Henri Hayden, Avigdor Arikha and the brothers Geer and Bram van Velde.

The two Yeats oils, on public display with the rest of Beckett’s collection for the first time, are the most exciting pieces in the National Gallery’s small but fascinating exhibition Samuel Beckett: A Passion for Paintings. Along with 10 works owned by him, it includes two dozen pieces that were significant in his appreciation of art.

These range from works he came across in the gallery as a young man, such as Perugino’s The Lamentation over the Dead Christ, to others that he encountered elsewhere, such as Munch’s Two Women on the Beach.

The most interesting such work, Two Men Contemplating the Moon, by the German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich, is not yet in the exhibition, but is due from the Gemaldegalerie in Dresden in the middle of August. In 1975, rehearsing Waiting for Godot in Berlin, Beckett told the scholar Ruby Cohn that the play’s imagery had been inspired by Friedrich’s Man and Woman Observing the Moon, but subsequently, speaking to Knowlson on two occasions, he cited Two Men Contemplating the Moon as the source.

The exhibition points to themes that emerged in Beckett’s writing, but sensibly stops short of suggesting a causal relationship between visual art and Beckett’s writing. It also gives a sense of how his interest in visual art developed to fever pitch as a young man — he even applied to work in the National Gallery in London, citing Yeats as a referee.

It also illuminates how in Yeats and in German expressionism Beckett found, as Knowlson put it, what he wanted to find there.

In visual art as in literature, Beckett was obsessed by an aesthetic double bind, what he characterised in a dialogue with his friend George Duthuit as “the expression that there is nothing to express . . . together with the obligation to express”.

Beckett responded to painting and writing in peculiarly philosophical terms, seeing them in terms of the relationship between being and expression characterised for him by impossibility, necessity and inevitable failure. As he conceded in a letter to Duthuit in the 1950s, when he wrote about art he was writing about his obsessions. He expressed these in a most concentrated form in Beckett’s review, published in 1945, of an essay on Yeats by their friend, Thomas McGreevy, who introduced them.

“He is with the great of our time,” wrote Beckett about Yeats, “Kandinsky and Klee, Ballmer and Bram van Velde, Rouault and Braque, because he brings light, as only the great dare to bring light, to the issueless predicament of existence, reduces the dark where there might have been, mathematically at least, a door.”

The essay was a key statement by Beckett about the resistance of artists to influence, rejecting McGreevy’s argument that Yeats was the first great Irish painter. “The artist who stakes his being comes from nowhere,” as Beckett put it, somewhat melodramatically.

As it happened, Beckett came from a specific place. Born into a prosperous Protestant family in Foxrock in 1906, the son of a quantity surveyor, he moved in privileged bohemian circles. Slotted into a temporary lecturing job in 1928 in the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris by his mentor, Professor Thomas Rudmose-Brown, in preparation for a career at Trinity, Beckett met McGreevy and struck up a friendship. When they returned to Dublin, McGreevy introduced Beckett to Yeats.

James Joyce's Ulysses first edition sells for 30,000 at Sotheby's

A first edition of James Joyce's masterpiece 'Ulysses' sold at auction at Sotheby's for £30,000, far below the guide price of between £36,000 and £50,000.

James Joyce's Ulysses first edition under the hammer

A first edition of James Joyce’s classic novel Ulysses is reportedly expected to sell for tens of thousands of euro when it goes under the hammer in London today.

Reports this morning say the book has a guide price of up to €50,000, but is expected to fetch significantly more than this figure.

Interest in James Joyce artefacts has soared in recent years leading to a rise in prices being paid as collectors across the world seek out rare items.
Ulysses is seen as James Joyce’s most important work. It was released in 1922 but banned in many English-speaking countries until it was finally published in Britain in 1936. Only 750 first-edition copies of Ulysses were printed.

Ulysses deals with the opulence of personal thought and while we are ushered into its characters private worlds with ease, we know little about their exteriors. The narrative parallels Homer’s Odyssey, but an in-depth knowledge of The Odyssey is not necessary for enjoyment of Ulysses.

The main character in the book is Leopold Bloom, a non-practising Jew. Throughout the novel, the reader is permitted to become wholly familiar with the inner workings of Leopold’s mind, but not given enough information about his physical appearance to form a clear mental picture of him. We are told he is quiet and decent, a man of inflexible honour to his fingertips. He has a pale intellectual face in which are set two dark large lidded, superbly expressive eyes.

The story of a haunting sorrow is written on his face and his friends say that there’s a touch of the artist about old Bloom. A safe moustached man who has his good points and slips off when the fun gets too hot.

Another significant figure winding his way through the streets of Dublin in Ulysses is Stephen Dedalus, whom we first meet in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Stephen is an arrogant young intellectual whom Bloom takes under his wing. He acts as a father figure to the young Stephen who fulfils the role to some extent of son for Bloom whose own son died in infancy.

Molly Bloom in Ulysses is equated with Penelope in The Odyssey and the last chapter of the book is dedicated solely to her meanderings and musings. It is one of the most renowned pieces of writing in Ulysses and is famous for its celebration of this voluptuous, sensuous, opulent, abundant, independent, lush, and blooming woman.

Declan Kiberd Appointed to Abbey Theatre Board

Declan Kiberd has been appointed to the new board of the overhauled Abbey Theatre.

Professor Kiberd has published widely on Irish drama and is internationally recognised as a leading expert on the work of Abbey playwright John Millington Synge. He is the author of the ground-breaking study Synge and the Irish Language and has written extensively on Irish theatre in his books Inventing Ireland and Irish Classics. His most recent book, The Irish Writer and the World was published in the last few months by Cambridge University Press.

The Abbey Theatre is currently undergoing a process of radical redevelopment which will involve relocating to a new building in Dublin’s Docklands in 2009.

Syd Barrett in Ireland

On September 17, 1967 Syd Barrett and The Pink Floyd (Nick Mason, Roger Waters, Rick Wright) played the Arcadia Ballroom, Cork, Ireland.

Famous Seamus sells out in Edinburgh

Irish author Seamus Heaney is among several authors whose appearances at the Edinburgh Book Festival, http://www.edbookfest.co.uk, have led to a record demand for tickets.

Two events with the Nobel Prize-winning author have sold out and 25% of all tickets have been sold in three days.

Seamus Heaney
MEET THE AUTHOR
Venue:RBS MAIN THEATRE Date: Thu 24/8/2006 Time: 8:00 PM To Fri 25/08/2006
Appearing: Seamus Heaney

We are overjoyed to welcome the great Nobel Prize-winning poet, one of the most distinguished and important writers alive today, back to the Book Festival. In this special talk, entitled Brede and Braird, he explores some Scottish connections, reflects on language and its furtherings, and reads some poems. Supported by the Hawthornden Literary Retreat

Mounting forces agains the James Joyce Estate

Now Michael Groden, a University of Western Ontario professor has taken up sword and sheild against the unfair and often brutish dealings of Stephen Joyce, grandson of the writer James Joyce.
Stephen Joyce has guarded his grandfather's legacy by blocking public readings; threatening legal action over the publication of biographies; announcing that he'd destroyed family letters (including correspondence from Samuel Beckett); and waging war on all perceived affronts to the Joyce family's dignity.
You can read more about Groden here

Stephen Joyce lives in the French town of La Flotte, on the Île de Ré, off the Atlantic Coast. He loves the island, which is the Martha’s Vineyard of France, but he has sometimes been willing to leave it when academics have invited him to attend Joyce commemorations and symposia. The scholars’ courtesy is, in part, tactical: Stephen is Joyce’s only living descendant, and since the mid-nineteen-eighties he has effectively controlled the Joyce estate. Scholars must ask his permission to quote sizable passages or to reproduce manuscript pages from those works of Joyce’s that remain under copyright—including “Ulysses” and “Finnegans Wake”—as well as from more than three thousand letters and several dozen unpublished manuscript fragments.
You can read more about Stephen Joyce here

Colm Toibin's book The Master wins more than one prize

Colm Toibin's The Master has won the Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger for the best foreign novel published in 2005 in France.

Irish author Colm Toibin won the world's richest literary prize for a single work of fiction in English on Tuesday for "The Master," his portrayal of 19th century novelist and critic Henry James.

Toibin, whose previous novels include "The South" and "The Blackwater Lightship," collected 100,000 euros ($125,800) as part of the annual International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, fending off competition from nine other shortlisted writers.

You can read about the Irish author at his website here:

DruidSynge - Lincoln Center Festival

Step into the haunting, gritty world of John Millington Synge, one of the most influential figures in the Irish literary renaissance. Only thirty-eight when he died, Synge left behind six plays which have had a profound impact on Irish theater. His most famous play, The Playboy of the Western World, caused a riot on opening night at the Abbey Theatre as an unwelcome and perhaps too frank mirror of Irish rural life, a reaction that was often repeated when the play was performed elsewhere.

Garry Hynes, the Artistic Director of Druid Theatre Company, and the first woman to win a Tony Award for best director (for The Beauty Queen of Leenane), brings her extraordinary vision to DruidSynge, a day-long cycle of all six plays. From the first play, The Shadow of the Glen, to the last, Deirdre of the Sorrows, Synge celebrates the costly victory of the Irish spirit over the ineluctable realities of life.

Combining six dramatic works, DruidSynge is a fully integrated production, one that is vibrant and earthy. Magnificent ensemble acting keeps a taut rein on these harsh, funny and moving pieces, as Garry Hynes captures the bluntness of Synge’s world.

Read more about DruidSynge here: http://www.syngecycle.com

James Joyce in court again

Professor Lawrence Lessig of Stanford University filed a legal suit against James Joyce's estate in a US district court, accusing the administrator of the writer's estate of 'copyright misuse'. In the case agains Stephen Joyce will be up against the formidable resources of Stanford Law School and hopefully it will break the strangle hold that has caused controversy around the work of Joyce for years. You can read about Professor Lessing or contact him here: http://www.lessig.org

Bisto Book of the Year

Kate Thompson, the daughter of Marxist historian EP Thompson, has won the 16th Bisto Book of the Year award for her book 'The New Policeman'. Born in Yorkshire, Kate now lives in Ireland, and in The New Policeman, Thompson subjects the small Irish town where she lives, Kinvara.

36th Listowel Writer's Week

Last month was the 36th Listowel writer's week, where Sebastian Barry won the 'k e r r y g r o u p i r i s h f i c t i o n a w a r d' worth 10,000 euro. for more information you can go to the official wensite here: www.writersweek.ie
Since it’s inception in 1970 Listowel Writers’ Week has been recognised as the primary event in Ireland’s literary calendar. North Kerry is the birthplace of many of Ireland’s most prominent writers past and present including Dr. John B Keane, Dr Bryan Mac Mahon, Professor Brendan Kennelly, Gabriel Fitzmaurice, George Fitzmaurice, Maurice Walsh and Robert Leslie Boland. Writers’ Week festival was established in 1970 to celebrate those writers and to provide an opportunity for Irish Writers in general to develop their talents and meet new audiences.

The concept of the Literary Workshop was first introduced at Writers’ Week in 1971 by Bryan MacMahon. Since then our Literary Workshops continue to be the most popular in the country. Prominent Irish writers have shared their skills in poetry, fiction, theatre, screen, writing for radio and children’s literature.

Competitions were introduced, together with a series of literary awards, which have given valuable recognition to new writers over the last number of years. In that time many eminent Irish and international literary figures have gathered in Listowel at the annual Maytime event to celebrate the work of new and established writers. Participants have included Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney, Booker Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro, Poet Laureate Ted Hughes, Laurence Block, Blake Morrison, Chris Whyte, award winning playwrights Tom Murphy, Brian Friel, Roddy Doyle, Frank McGuinness and Hugh Leonard, celebrated poets Michael Hartnett, Richard Murphy, John Montague, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Kate Cruise O’ Brien, Aidan Matthews, Rita Ann Higgins and acclaimed novelists Colm Tóibín, Jennifer Johnston, John McGahern, Joseph O’ Connor, Hugo Hamilton, William Trevor, Colum McCann and Edna O’ Brien.

Under the leadership of its president David Marcus, together with literary advisors Professor Brendan Kennelly, Seamus Hosey, Colm Tóibín, Lawrence Block and Michael Collins, Writers’ Week provides a wide ranging programme of literary and assorted cultural events including lectures, readings, workshops, book launchings, seminars, theatre, literary and historical tours, art exhibitions, music and dance.