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 other will present €10,000 to the Emerging Writer … [Read more...] about News: New Writing Awards
Literature
Meet the Nolans
By Marsha Sorotick, Contributor
December 21, 2019
December 21, 2019
Family stories endure. It has been 75 years since the publication of Betty Smith’s best-selling novel A Tree Grows In Brooklyn. Since that time, Tree has been hailed as a modern classic and was cited by the NY Public Library as one of the best books of the 20th century. In a national survey conducted by PBS in 2018, it was chosen as one of America’s 100 best-loved novels. As … [Read more...] about Meet the Nolans
What Are You Like? Writer Mary Beth Keane
On swanky hotels, Gráinne O’Malley’s tailor-made pirate outfits, and her own unusual hidden talent.Mary Beth Keane’s novel, Ask Again, Yes, is a lyrical, moving tale spanning 40 years about family, love, alcoholism, and mental illness. Told with tenderness and empathy for the human condition, it is juxtaposed with just the right amount of humor to carry the story along. NPR’s … [Read more...] about What Are You Like? Writer Mary Beth Keane
James Connolly Visitor Centre Opens in Belfast
At a ceremony on Friday, April 19, President of Ireland Michael D. Higgins officially opened Áras Uí Chonghaile, the new James Connolly Visitor Centre, providing a new space for discovery, education, study, work, meeting, and socializing on the Falls Road in West Belfast, only yards from where Connolly lived. Connolly, a labor leader, was executed for his part in the 1916 … [Read more...] about James Connolly Visitor Centre Opens in Belfast
Your Summer Reading List
By Irish America Staff
MILKMAN Anna Burns I didn't know much about Northern Ireland before I left home in 1972. There was one shopping trip to Belfast on the train. I bought a purple and black maxi coat that looked like a woolen dressing gown. I had it for years and I can't think why I gave it away. I don't remember much about Belfast, or much else about the trip, except that on the return … [Read more...] about Your Summer Reading List