Edition Cover

April / May 2018

Hall of Fame:
Kelli O’Hara

The glorious The King and I overture reaches a crescendo, filling Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont theater with some of the greatest music ever written for the theater played by...

John Owen Brennan’s 29-year career with the Central Intelligence Agency was spectacular. He was director of the agency from March 2013 to January 2017 and prior to that, his career included stints...

Jerry Brown – who has spent more time than anyone else in the California governor’s office – has been well served by his Irish Catholic roots. Brown’s great-grandfather, Joseph, came to ...

When Irish America first interviewed Dennis Long, in January 1986, he was part of a new generation of Irish American corporate leaders. “Irish Americans are really only now reaching the top levels...

“The real members of the Hall of Fame are the parents and grandparents and great-grandparents who had the courage to come here.” – Donald Keough, the former president of Coca-Cola, and our...

The USA Women’s National Hockey Team came away with their first gold medal since the sport was introduced to the games in 1998, beating Canada in the final round on February 22 in a 3-2 nail-biting...

Actor Cillian Murphy attended and spoke at the UNESCO-sponsored event Youth Empathy Day at the National University of Ireland at Galway in February. The event marked the launch of Activating Social...

The National Library of Ireland rolled out plans in January for a new digital archive of modern Irish history. The archive, called Towards a Republic, will document the tumultuous series of events...

In January the Linen Hall Library in Belfast launched a new digital archive dedicated to the Troubles. Founded in 1968, the institution has amassed over 350,000 primary sources and essays relating...

The Tánaiste and the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade launched a new website in February that seeks to keep interested citizens informed of the government’s Brexit negotiations and...

The final phase of renovations of the pier from which the Titanic launched its fateful maiden voyage began in January, with plans for completion in March 2019. This portion of the project is hoped to...

Though one of the lesser-known festivals of the ancient Celts, Imbolc was one of the four most important seasonal celebrations in the Celtic calendar, heralding the coming of spring. Hook Lighthouse,...

A tourism trail honoring Ireland’s female patron saint, Saint Brigid, has opened in Kildare. The town and county of Kildare are named after a monastery Saint Brigid established in the fifth...

In the wake of the well-received Netflix show Alias Grace, is the Irish maid who happens to be around when a horrific murder happens turning into a bit of a trend? Released last year, Alias Grace,...

Speaking of Fiona Shaw (the Harry Potter series, The Butcher Boy), she will appear alongside fellow Irish actor Denise Gough in the September film Collette. Like Lizzie, the film is a biographical...

The long-awaited Irish Great Hunger movie Black 47 premiered in February at the prestigious Berlin Film Festival. The movie is expected to open in Ireland later this year and though there has not yet...

It looks like we’ll see Pierce Brosnan singing and dancing before we see him trying to prevent the escape of three dozen Irish Republican Army soldiers from a Northern Irish prison. This summer,...

Fresh off another turn as General Hux in Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Domhnall Gleeson has a busy 2018 ahead of him. In February, he was featured in Peter Rabbit (along with Margot Robbie, Rose Byrne,...

Also in June, Irish movie veteran Gabriel Byrne teams up with Irish American Ann Dowd, who has become one of the top character actresses in this “golden age” of TV, earning not one but two Emmy...

There’s also lots of Irish-born and Irish American talent in the upcoming thriller Widows, directed by Steve McQueen, who also directed the Northern Ireland film Hunger. Described as a heist flick...

New, recent, and noteworthy Irish shows streaming on various services. ℘℘℘ The aforementioned Domhnall Gleeson is currently appearing in the Netflix comedy-drama A Futile and Stupid Gesture,...

Alice Delahunt, a County Wicklow native and Trinity College graduate, has been named the inaugural chief digital officer of Ralph Lauren. “So incredibly excited by the opportunity at hand, and...

Ocean Energy, a County Cork-based renewable energy technology company, has partnered with the U.S. Navy and Oregon-based fabrication company Vigor to build the first full-scale model of a pioneering...

Irish distillers of the “water of life” are singing “Whiskey in the Jar” this year after sales figures for 2017 have been published. According to the 2012-2018 Export Performance and...

The American Institute of Physics has appointed Irish physicist Michael H. Moloney (right) as their new CEO. The unanimous appointment of Moloney, who holds a doctorate in experimental physics from...

American citizens who check “White” on the U.S. Census will be allowed to expand on their ethnicity for the first time in the upcoming 2020 census. In an effort to establish a more comprehensive...

Ohio-raised Kathleen Sullivan recently discovered that she was one of thousands of Irish babies sent to well-off American families in the mid-20th century for profit. While Sullivan knew that she was...

The former Phillip Spiwak, a Polish American attorney who unsuccessfully ran for a judicial position in Illinois’s Will County as a Republican in 2010, has a new identity in hopes of boosting his...

Spring of 2018 promises an array of new price and destination options for flights between Ireland and the U.S. In February, Irish national airline Aer Lingus and Norwegian Air both announced plans...

In January, single mother and grandmother Kathryn Doyon, diagnosed with Stage 4 colon and liver cancer, was surprised with €600 in funds raised to help her finally take her dream trip to Ireland. A...

From May 15-17 Margaret Molloy and WearingIrish will bring Ireland’s most talented designers to New York. ℘℘℘ In March 2016, Irish expat and marketing executive Margaret Molloy began...

Celebrating its 10th anniversary, the Origin 1st Irish Theatre Fest, which ran during the month of January, welcomed all those with a love of the Irish arts scene to attend any of its seven...

Martin McDonagh and Saoirse Ronan continue to dominate the 2018 awards season, with McDonagh’s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri claiming the British Academy Film Award for Best Film and...

Leading Irish youth development group Foróige launched its first overseas club in Philadelphia in February. The launch took place in the city’s Irish Immigration Center, the new home of Foróige...

Amidst Brexit negotiations and rising uncertainty about the bi-lateral relationship between Ireland and the U.K. across the Atlantic, the New York consuls general of the two countries met for the...

The United Irish Counties Association of New York held its 114th annual banquet in January at the historic Antun’s in Queens Village, New York, recognizing the contributions of activist and...

Distinguished parasitologist, Nobel prize winner, and 2017 Irish America Hall of Fame inductee Dr. William Campbell delivered an academic discourse at the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin in November....

This year marks the 20th year of New York City’s celebrated CraicFest, a music and film festival that takes place each March throughout the city to highlight Irish culture and inspire new...

In late 1980s Ireland, commercial digital scanning was newly available, and when Dublin artist Patrick Dunning decided to scan a piece of his art – a large but simple cosmic landscape – into a...

Bernie Brennan, president of the Royal Dublin Society, will deliver the keynote address at a business breakfast in New York in April hosted by the Irish American Partnership. The breakfast, to be...

In partnership with The G-Mac Foundation and the Ireland Funds, the seventh annual Best of Ireland Gala dinner was held at the New York Athletic Club on 31st January. More than $800,000 was pledged...

Recent passings in the Irish and Irish American communities. ℘℘℘ Brendan Byrne 1924 – 2018 Two-term New Jersey governor Brendan Byrne died of a lung infection in January at the age of 93....

Fifty years ago this April, the University of Notre Dame rugby club became the first team to represent the university in competition in Ireland. Tom Condon, then a senior on the squad, recalls the...

Conor Lovett and Judy Hegarty Lovett, leading Beckett interpreters, and John Minihan, the photographer who captured Beckett on film, talk to Rosemary Rogers. ℘℘℘ Samuel Beckett created the...

Singer, showgirl, and queen of the speakeasy during Prohibition, Mary Guinan was a genuine Irish American wild woman. Larger (and louder) than life, she had an even bigger heart. ℘℘℘ During...

Known for his roles in the Academy Award-winning film The Hurt Locker and the HBO series Boardwalk Empire, Brian Geraghty stars in TNT’s new drama The Alienist, which premiered on January 22, and...

The Grand Marshal of the 2018 New York City St. Patrick’s Day Parade takes our questionnaire. ℘℘℘ When Loretta Brennan Glucksman’s grandparents immigrated to Pennsylvania coal mining...

Actor Aidan Quinn on how Dostoyevsky changed his life and made him a better performer. ℘℘℘ My father was an English teacher, and my family moved back and forth between Ireland and the United...

Recently-published books of Irish and Irish American interest. ℘℘℘ MEMOIR Box of Butterflies: Discovering the Unexpected Blessings All Around Us By Roma Downey A 10-year-old Roma Downey,...

The name O’Hara has held a distinguished place in Ireland for centuries. The current spelling is an anglicized pronunciation of the original Irish Ó hEaghra, meaning “descended from Eaghra”...

The history of April Fools’ Day and tricksters of folk mythology. ℘℘℘ April is full of surprises. When spring sunshine starts warming the earth, night can fall on a brown leafless landscape...

Retired General Martin Dempsey on the lessons he learned from his Irish grandmother. ℘℘℘ Radical Inclusion (March 2018 / Missionday / 192 pp. / $26.95) Bridget Jennings was my diminutive, Irish...

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April / May 2018

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