Dublin’s Dalkey Book Festival is celebrating its second decade by launching two major new annual Irish literary awards worth a total of €30,000. These awards will recognize writers in two categories. One will offer €20,000 for the Novel of the Year, making it the biggest prize that is exclusively available to Irish writers. The otherRead more..
℘℘℘ The ascension of Sally Rooney from promising young Irish writer to A-list entertainment mogul continues at a breathtaking pace. The latest proof? A fawning report in Vanity Fair, from the set of the much-buzzed-about TV series based on her book Normal People. The swanky magazine describes Rooney’s novel as a “complex portrait of modern love,Read more..
Jim McCann is a successful entrepreneur, business leader, author, media personality, and philanthropist whose passion is helping people deliver smiles. Jim’s belief in the universal need for social connections and interaction led to his founding of 1-800-Flowers.com, which he has grown into one of the world’s top gifting companies. He has expanded the company’s offeringsRead more..
Kevin Fortuna is an entrepreneur, author and filmmaker. Currently, he runs Gramercy Labs, the NYC-based incubator that has launched successful startups such as Lot18, GeistM, GearBrain and BeoFior. He serves as founder / CEO of www.GeistM.com and www.Lot18.com whose wine subscription service, www.TastingRoom.com is the #1 personalized wine subscription in the nation. Lot18 “powers” theRead more..
On the best advice he ever received, talking on plane rides, and being 20 years late on his book deadline! ℘℘℘ It took 20 years of intensive research, hundreds of interviews, missed deadlines, and publishers demanding their money back, but Tom O’Neill’s CHAOS: Charles Manson, the CIA and the Secret History of the Sixties isRead more..
In February of this year, globally-renowned Irish author Edna O’Brien was named as the winner of the PEN/Nabokov award for achievement in international literature. Today, on International Women’s Day, we celebrate this seminally feminist voice in modern Irish culture, and look back on Patricia Harty’s 2007 interview with O’Brien, where they talked writing, family, andRead more..
June 16, 2004 is the 100th Anniversary of Leopold Bloom’s Fateful Walk. ℘℘℘ As we go to press and the world is celebrating Bloomsday, plans are already afoot for next year’s “Bloomsday Centenary.” Ireland’s Minister for Arts, Sports and Tourism John O’Donoghue has set up the Bloomsday Centenary Coordinating Committee, to plan the event which willRead more..
On May 30, 2002, John B. Keane, author, raconteur and much-loved Kerryman, passed away. Keane, at 73, had been diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1994. The author of 18 plays and 32 works of prose and poetry, including Big Maggie, which played on Broadway in 1982, and The Field, which was made into an award-winning movie starringRead more..
William Kennedy, known as the author who captured Albany, New York, talks to Tom Deignan. ℘℘℘ William Kennedy is telling a story about his father that could very well be a haunting moment from any one of his seven “Albany cycle” novels. “My father’s father came from Tipperary,” the novelist, 74, says over an IrishRead more..
“For twelve long years I’ve suffered this damned cat…/ though more than once I’ve threatened violence/ the brick and burlap in the river recompense/ for mounds of furballs littering the house.” – “Grimalkin” ℘℘℘ “Grimalkin,” Tom Lynch informs me, “is dead.” I couldn’t help it, I had to know. The cat lasted almost eight yearsRead more..