Acclaimed writer Mary Lavin will be commemorated today when a public plaza near Baggot Street Bridge in Dublin is named in her honour. Mary Lavin Place is the first public space to be named after an Irish woman writer.
“It’s such an honour, we’re so proud of her,” Lavin’s granddaughter, author Kathleen MacMahon, tells Róisín Ingle on the latest episode of The Women’s Podcast. Lavin, who died aged 83 in 1996, was an acclaimed short-story writer and novelist who was “quite a big figure around Dublin City”.
The author of novels and short story collections such as Happiness and Other Stories was, MacMahon says, “very distinctive in her grey bun and her black cashmere… she was one of Dublin’s sights, talking to people and gathering stories everywhere”.
Situated near Lad Lane where Lavin lived with her three daughters, Mary Lavin Place is a public plaza in the centre of IPUT Real Estate’s newly reopened Wilton Park.
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The unveiling of Mary Lavin Place by Lavin’s friend, author and Irish Laureate for Fiction Colm Tóibín, follows the announcement by Trinity College that its main library will be renamed for poet Eavan Boland.
In the latest episode we hear about Lavin’s life and legacy and what the commemoration means to the family. Lavin was the mother of the late Caroline Walsh, former literary editor of The Irish Times
We also hear from historian and Director of Gender Studies at UCD, Mary McAuliffe who explains why so few streets and places in Ireland are named after women and how this is slowly beginning to change.
You can listen back in the player above or wherever you get your podcasts.
