Silent Testimony
A new series of portrait paintings by Colin Davidson captures the suffering and loss that marked the lives of ordinary...
MoreWhen General Martin E. Dempsey, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, received the telegram announcing his appointment to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, he was far from certain...
More“I’m of Irish descent and in America, 100 years ago, we were refugees, my family. Irish were treated terribly in America for a period of time and not accepted, and America learned to accept all...
MoreIn recognition of his extraordinary role in bringing peace to Northern Ireland, Irish America honors former President Bill Clinton on March 30th with a Lifetime Achievement Award. ℘℘℘ A little...
MoreIn the 1950s and ’60s, as the industries that had helped populate and sustain upstate New York like railroading and manufacturing were leaving, the Harris Hill Gliderport in the lagging town of...
MoreIf asked for a single word that accurately and completely sums up Pete Hamill’s career, there is only one answer – writer. His genre? Just about everything – novels, short stories, history,...
MoreTraveling to Belfast post-Good Friday Agreement with Ed Kenney and Mutual of America CEO Tom Moran in the late 90s and early 2000s almost always meant engaging in quiet diplomacy – shuttling...
MoreDublin City Council recently unveiled a plan that, if accepted, will radically change traffic patterns in front of Trinity College and allow for easier flow of pedestrians. Under the proposed...
MoreA 102-year old Jesuit priest in Hong Kong, who is also the last living son of executed Rising leader Michael Mallin, was awarded the Freedom of the City of Dublin. Mallin, was presented with the...
MoreThe March 10th election of the Irish Parliament’s, called the Dáil, failed to decide on a new Taoiseach, despite four candidates facing the vote: Enda Kenny, Fine Gael, the majority, center-left...
MoreICON plc was recently selected by Genomics England to support their “100,000 Genomes” project, the world’s largest genome sequencing project for cancer and rare diseases, which could...
MoreIn February, the Centre for Secure Information Technology (C.S.I.T.) at Queen’s University Belfast received a royal award for its work in strengthening cyber security. Chancellor Tom Moran,...
MoreIreland’s first-ever Catholic radio station, Radio Maria Ireland, launched in February. It will offer 24-hour, 365-day programming without advertisements that will cover three main areas: prayer,...
MoreIrish tourist board Fáilte Ireland is partnering with Google to bring images of some of Ireland’s most beautiful and historic places to Google Street View for the first time. Using Google’s new...
MoreLast October, a statue of John Devoy was unveiled in Naas, Co. Kildare, the New York Fenian’s home county, aided primarily by the Kildare Association of New York, which raised the funds for the...
MoreTralee, the capital of County Kerry, has reached the ripe old age of 800. Founded in 1216 by John FitzThomas Fitzgerald, the town will kick-off the celebration with the St. Patrick’s Day Parade as...
MoreGiven the raves she earned with her searing performance in Brooklyn, we can expect many breakthrough performances from Saoirse Ronan in the years to come. But one of her next projects is a...
MoreIn April, Irish director Paddy Breathnach teams up with an Irish screenwriter to explore the world of drag performers in Havana. This unlikely story was dubbed “one of the audience favorites at...
MoreAlso in April, Irish director John Carney, tries “once” again to capture the magic of his hit movie Once, which won an Academy Award (for Best Original song) and has since become a successful...
MoreAnother big book coming to the big screen (but not until 2017) is Jo Nesbo’s thriller The Snowman. Irish Academy Award winner Michael Fassbender is slated to star as sleuth Harry Hole in this...
MoreColm Meaney, Fred Willard and Kevin Farley (Chris’ brother) are among the stars of writer-director Sean Lackey’s film The Yank, an Irish/American culture clash comedy. Lackey also stars in the...
MoreIn other Irish TV news, Tipperary native Kerry Condon is back as a troubled single Mom on the new season of AMC’s Better Call Saul. And Irish American author Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch books...
MoreColin Farrell is among the big stars who will appear in The Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Slated to be released this November, the film is based on the JK Rowling book of the same title....
MoreFirst it was the Irish wrestler Sheamus appearing in the next Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. And now another world-class Irish athlete – boxer John Duddy – is making the leap to the...
MoreSpeaking of Derry, filmmakers from there debuted a documentary about Northern Ireland at the recent Capital Irish Film Festival in Washington D.C. Together in Pieces, a film by David Dryden and...
MoreIn January, actress Saoirse Ronan stopped by the Late Show with Stephen Colbert. She was there to promote her movie Brooklyn, but the conversation moved into Ronan teaching Colbert (whose ancestry is...
MoreA long time ago, on an island six miles off the Irish coast, a Christian monastery was built on a place called Skellig Michael sometime between the 6th and 8th century. Now, the island and the...
MoreThe New York City St. Patrick’s Day Parade this year added two first-time marchers to the roster: The Lavender and Green Alliance, a group of LGBT Irish, and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, who had...
MoreBuilt between 1799 and 1809 by Ezra Weeks, Gracie Mansion is the mayoral residence in New York, and it’s likely that Irish builders, artisans, and tradespeople were numerous among the construction...
MoreMore than 45 million Americans have at least one tattoo. The vast lot of them got inked by way of an electric tattoo machine. And chances are they have no idea who invented the electric tattoo...
MoreQuinnipiac University, home to Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum (Músaem An Ghorta Mhóir) which houses of one of the world’s largest collections of art concerning the Great Irish Famine, has...
MoreCelebrity photographer Kevin Abosch scooped an impressive $1 million from his portrait of an organic Irish potato, “Potato #345 (2010)” (below), making it the 15th most expensive photo ever...
MoreIrish American astronaut Scott Kelly returned from a year in space after taking part in a NASA study, analyzing the impacts long-term space travel can have on the human body. The mission was aimed at...
MoreJohn Greed, president of Mutual of America, was named CEO in March, succeeding Tom Moran, who is retiring after 21 years in the position. Mr. Moran, who will stay on as chairman of the board of...
MoreThe annual County Cork Association, which was founded in New York in 1884, held its annual dinner at Antun’s in Queens, New York on March 5, 2016. Ed Shevlin, a lifelong resident of Rockaway whose...
MoreJack Haire, former Irish America Business 100 Honoree, will succeed Joseph Cahalan as the new CEO for the Irish humanitarian non-profit Concern Worldwide U.S. Cahalan and Haire have worked together...
MoreThe Irish Club of Willmantic and the Windham Textile and History Museum in Willmantic, CT, have co-sponsored a new exhibit that examines Irish immigrant workers and their descendants. The exhibit,...
MoreIrish Ambassador Anne Anderson became the first women to be inducted into the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick, an organization that has had an exclusively male membership since it was founded in...
MoreA new series of portrait paintings by Colin Davidson captures the suffering and loss that marked the lives of ordinary people and their families during the period known as the Troubles in his Native...
MoreLeading historians reveal the American story behind Ireland’s 1916 Easter Rising with new books and exhibitions that explore America’s role in the Rising. ℘℘℘ “No people ever believed...
MoreWith the centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising upon us, a curious piece of memorabilia printed 150 years ago reminds us that the Rising was not the only bid for Irish independence. In the possession of...
MoreA grandmother’s letters, passed down through two generations, offer a fascinating, and at times intimate, glimpse into the period following the 1916 Rising. Dermot McEvoy talks to Rosemary...
MoreErnie O’Malley was a renowned figure in Ireland’s fight for independence. Here are his memories of 1916 as compiled by his son Cormac O’Malley. ℘℘℘ Born in 1897 in Castlebar, Co. Mayo,...
MoreCounty Mayo is largely a rural, wild, untouched landscape on the west coast of Ireland, but it has changed drastically over the years. The images in Cormac O’Malley and Juliet Christy Barron’s...
MoreIn the following excerpt from Timothy Egan’s new book on Thomas Meagher, the legendary Irishman arrives in New York City having escaped from the Tasmanian prison colony where he had been banished...
MoreTimothy Egan (born November 8, 1954 in Seattle, Washington) has written eight books including the newly released Immortal Irishman: The Irish Revolutionary Who Became an American Hero, about Thomas...
MoreRobert Schmuhl takes us behind the scenes on a decade-long research project that culminated in his book Ireland’s Exiled Children: America and the Easter Rising. ℘℘℘ Facts are stubborn...
MoreIn 1991, Irish America magazine published one of the first interviews with Gerry Adams. (As far as we can tell, Playboy was the only other American magazine to interview Adams before that.) In...
MoreMegan Smolenyak writes about a decade-long search that finally turned up the Irish cousins of Annie Moore of Ellis Island fame. Thanks to improved access to a variety of resources, Irish genealogy is...
MoreThough never particularly numerous (as of the last count in 1996 by the Irish Times, the surname ranks as the underwhelming 164th most common surname in Ireland), the Dempsey clan was a powerful sept...
MoreJohn Concannon takes our questionnaire. ℘℘℘ John Concannon is the Director of “Ireland 2016,” the state centenary program to commemorate 1916, reflect on the Republic 100 years on, and...
MoreSettled in 1848 by brothers John and Daniel Murphy from County Wexford, Murphys, California, once a mining town, is today a major tourist destination. ℘℘℘ Hidden in the Sierra foothills of...
MoreRichard B. Evans, an American-born composer and musician, has been immersed in Irish music and culture for decades, and his exploration of the events leading to 1916 is about to come to American...
MorePeter Quinn, noted novelist, historian, and speechwriter has been awarded the Annie Moore Award from the Irish American Cultural Institute. The Annie Moore Award is named for the first immigrant to...
MoreFounder of the W.B. Yeats Foundation James Flannery (pictured above) read “Easter 1916” at the start of the Atlanta commemorations for the Easter Rising Centenary. Flannery, who is the Winship...
MoreO’Connor. Celebrating the legacy of famed writer and short story master Frank O’Conner (top right), University College Cork put on a symposium that coincided with the 50th anniversary of his...
MoreAt a special event this February, the National Library of Ireland (N.L.I.) celebrated the official arrival of a first draft manuscript of Sean O’Casey’s play Juno and the Paycock. The...
MoreAs St. Patrick’s Day is celebrated around the world, Edythe Preet looks to March 17, 1776, and the role the Irish played in America’s bid for freedom. ℘℘℘ Pop quiz: what color ink is used...
MoreIrish nationals were instrumental in helping secure American independence from England during the Revolutionary War. Edythe Preet explores the key figures. ℘℘℘ John Barry County Wexford Driven...
MoreKevin Barry talks to Julia Brodsky about his prize- winning novel Beatlebone, set in “the haunted, sea-obsessed world” of Ireland’s Atlantic coast, and the “terrifying” prospect of writing...
MoreEdna O’Brien’s acclaimed new novel, her first in a decade, is reviewed. ℘℘℘ Celts have always believed in an invisible spirit world running parallel to our visible world, a mystical...
MoreBrian Mallon’s epic novel chronicling the life of Shane O’Neill, the 16th century Irish chieftain, is reviewed by Fionnula Flanagan. ℘℘℘ Here is the great dark cloak of Irish Elizabethan...
MoreBooks of Irish and Irish American interest. ℘℘℘ The BBC’s ‘Irish Troubles’: Television, Conflict and Northern Ireland By Robert J. Savage Rob Savage, professor of history at Boston...
MoreHistorian Christine Kinealy wonders if the Irish national anthem is still relevant today. ℘℘℘ Soldiers are we, whose lives are pledged to Ireland, Some have come from a land beyond the...
MoreBarney Devlin c. 1919 – 2016 Barney Devlin, the Bellaghy, Co. Derry blacksmith whose workshop Seamus Heaney popularized in verse, passed away in February at the age of 96. Heaney first wrote about...
MoreMonsignor , my uncle, had a curious saying for a priest: “M’anam an diabhal” – “May the Devil take my soul.” He’d say it several times a day, laughing, when something struck him as...
MoreIn February, the Centre for Secure Information Technology (C.S.I.T.) at Queen’s University...
A long time ago, on an island six miles off the Irish coast, a Christian monastery was built on a...
In January, actress Saoirse Ronan stopped by the Late Show with Stephen Colbert. She was there to...
Jack Haire, former Irish America Business 100 Honoree, will succeed Joseph Cahalan as the new CEO...
The New York City St. Patrick’s Day Parade this year added two first-time marchers to the roster:...
The annual County Cork Association, which was founded in New York in 1884, held its annual dinner...
Quinnipiac University, home to Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum (Músaem An Ghorta Mhóir) which...
Irish American astronaut Scott Kelly returned from a year in space after taking part in a NASA...
Built between 1799 and 1809 by Ezra Weeks, Gracie Mansion is the mayoral residence in New York, and...
Tralee, the capital of County Kerry, has reached the ripe old age of 800. Founded in 1216 by John...
Last October, a statue of John Devoy was unveiled in Naas, Co. Kildare, the New York Fenian’s...
A 102-year old Jesuit priest in Hong Kong, who is also the last living son of executed Rising...
The Irish Club of Willmantic and the Windham Textile and History Museum in Willmantic, CT, have...
John Greed, president of Mutual of America, was named CEO in March, succeeding Tom Moran, who is...
The March 10th election of the Irish Parliament’s, called the Dáil, failed to decide on a new...
Dublin City Council recently unveiled a plan that, if accepted, will radically change traffic...
Irish tourist board Fáilte Ireland is partnering with Google to bring images of some of...
ICON plc was recently selected by Genomics England to support their “100,000 Genomes” project,...
More than 45 million Americans have at least one tattoo. The vast lot of them got inked by way of...
Celebrity photographer Kevin Abosch scooped an impressive $1 million from his portrait of an...
Ireland’s first-ever Catholic radio station, Radio Maria Ireland, launched in February. It will...
Irish Ambassador Anne Anderson became the first women to be inducted into the Friendly Sons of St....