Irish writers will be turning out in force tomorrow night in the Parlour on New York's Upper West Side to express solidarity with the gay and lesbian groups excluded from the Big Apple's main Patrick's Day parade. Readers who'll be flocking to the popular NY watering hole at 7.30 p.m. include Anne Enright, Colm Toibin, Nuala O'Faolain and Colum McCann. Special guests include the writer Zoe Heller and singer Brian Kennedy, one of the stars of Riverdance which opens on Broadway this week.
The Irish writers, particularly, are going to be busy as Wednesday sees the launch, also in NY, of The Penguin Book of Irish Fiction, edited by Toibin, in the Barnes and Noble bookstore on Union Square: a handful of those whose work is gathered in its pages will be on hand to give the book its US lift-off. Tony-award-winning actor Brian O'Byrne will read from Beckett at the bash.
The week gone by was also a busy one for Colum McCann, author of This Side of Brightness, and now one of the seven writers shortlisted for the £100,000 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Maggie McKernan, McCann's editor at Phoenix, told Sadbh she was ecstatic when the news was announced on Monday. "His new book, Everything in This Country Must, is a novella and two stories, and it's due out in May, which is fantastic timing for publicity." Sadbh called McCann, who currently resides in the Big Apple, on the phone the morning after the night before. "I still feel completely overwhelmed," he confessed. "I was very, very surprised." Also there to shout for Ireland at the announcement at Ireland House in New York was Nuala O'Faolain. McCann is currently some 60 pages into his new novel, which "starts in Russia in the 1940s, and is about a male dancer". Did he go on with the throng to the Waldorf Astoria afterwards to celebrate? "No, I actually came home to babysit," he said. The five judges who chose the seven titles from a longlist of 101 are novelist Colm Toibin; writer and critic Alicia Borinsky; academic David Dabydeen; Josane Savigneau, the cultural editor of Le Monde; and Suzi Feay, the literary editor of the In- dependent on Sunday. McCann has strong competition: the six other contenders are Toni Morrison for Paradise: Michael Cunningham for The Hours: Philip Roth for I Married a Communist: Nicola Barker for Wide Open: Jackie Kay for Trumpet and Alice McDermott for Charming Billy. The winner will be announced in Dublin Castle on May 9th.
Details of the Irish Seminar 2000 at Newman House in Dublin have just been announced. Or to give it its full moniker, the Second Annual Summer Session of the International Seminar for Graduate Students and Faculty in Irish Studies. The seminar will run from July 3rd to 28th, and is aimed at Irish Studies scholars worldwide. Directors are Seamus Deane, Thomas Bartlett, and Kevin Whelan. Among those who will be contributing to it are Nobel laureates Seamus Heaney and Derek Walcott. The latter will be giving a reading on July 4th, with fellow Nobel poet Heaney in the chair for the evening, and this is certain to be the highlight of the summer session. Each week of the session has a different theme: Political Revolutions; Cultural Revivals; Disenchantments; and Post-Colonial Realities. More information from Newman House, 01-418 9170.
Seachtain Na Gaeilge continues until Friday and there is a number of literary events happening throughout the week. Tomorrow at Conradh na Gaeilge on Dublin's Harcourt Street at 9 p.m. there'll be stories from Fermanagh writer Seamus Mac Annaidh and music from Joy Beatty. At the same venue on Tuesday next, Irish language poets Colm Breathnach, Celia de Freine, Cathal Poirteir, and Aifric Nic Aodha will give readings, the fear an ti for the evening being Micheal O Ruairc. In the Castle Inn on Lord Edward Street on Thursday, Donegal poet Cathal O Searcaigh will read. More information on 01 4757401.
A quartet of unusual pamphlets has arrived on Sadbh's desk, sent from the Coleraine Centre for Irish Literature and Bibliography, and published by Cranagh Press. They are: The Structure of Process, John Montague's Poetry by Robert Welch; Lightning in Low Places by Augustus Young; Bleeding the Boundaries, The Poetry of Medbh McGuckian by Jolanta Burgoyne-Johnson. And Sadbh's favourite, the esoterically titled Horsepower Pass By! A Study of the Car in the Poetry of Seamus Heaney by Medbh McGuckian. Well, when a poet gets to be as famous and widely-studied as Heaney, scholars must be quite resourceful to come up with angles on the master's work that someone hasn't beaten you to already. They're priced between £3.50 and £4.50 sterling and details are available from Coleraine Centre for Irish Literature, Coleraine, Co Derry, BT52 1SA.
Sadbh