Dublin, written in our hearts: A Celebration
Join us for a special evening as we celebrate the newly commissioned anthology, Dublin, written in our hearts. A selection of its contributors will be in conversation exploring how their writing vividly captures the unique character, history, people and stories of the city. This event features Paula Meehan and Peter Sirr in conversation with Chris Morash, and Caitriona Lally, Thomas Morris and Niamh Mulvey in conversation with Aoife Barry. The night will include readings, as well as a musical performance from Ultan Conlon, an internationally acclaimed musician and one of Ireland’s finest singer-songwriters. His 2023 album, The Starlight Ballroom earned him widespread praise for nostalgic story-telling and timeless media.
Paula Meehan was born and raised in Dublin’s north inner city. Her award-winning poetry has garnered widespread popular and critical acclaim. Her poetry has been scored for choirs, for solo voice, has been made into songs by artists from diverse traditions — the folk, including the legendary Christy Moore, and the avant garde; has been scored for many choirs; has been made into wee films; has been danced; has been inflicted on the youth of the country in school & university; has been 8/1 to come up on the Leaving Cert. She was Ireland Professor of Poetry, 2013–2016 and Imaginary Bonnets with Real Bees in Them, her public lectures from the Chair, are published by UCD Press. Recent publications are As If By Magic: Selected Poems, (2020) and The Solace of Artemis (2023) which received the Pigott Prize for Poetry. They are published by Dedalus Press, Dublin.
Peter Sirr lives in Dublin. The Gallery Press has published his eleven poetry collections, most recently The Swerve, (2023) and The Gravity Wave (2019) which was a Poetry Society Recommendation and winner of the 2020 Farmgate Café National Poetry Award. A collection of essays about Dublin, Intimate City, was published in 2021. He teaches literary translation in Trinity College, Dublin and is a member of Aosdána.
Prof. Chris Morash, FTCD, MRIA is the Seamus Heaney Professor of Irish Writing in Trinity College, Dublin. His most recent book, Dublin: A Writer’s City maps the city’s literary memory. He has also published Mapping Irish Theatre: Theories of Space and Place [with Shaun Richards] (2013), a book on Yeats’s theatre, histories of Irish media and Irish theatre, and a study of Irish Famine literature. He delivers the annual UNESCO City of Literature Lecture for Dublin City Libraries, and is currently working on projects on Irish literary salons and the trans-Atlantic telegraph.
Caitriona Lally has published two novels, Eggshells (2015) and Wunderland (2021). She won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature in 2018 and a Lannan Literary Fellowship for Fiction in 2019. She was the inaugural Rooney Writer Fellow at the Trinity Long Room Hub in 2022, and was one of the 2024 New Voices 20 Best New Irish Writers.
Thomas Morris is a writer and editor from Caerphilly, South Wales. His debut story collection, We Don’t Know What We’re Doing (Faber & Faber) won the Wales Book of the Year, the Rhys Davies Trust Fiction Prize, and a Somerset Maugham Award. In 2023, Thomas was named one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists and published his second book of stories, Open Up. He lives in Dublin, where he was formerly editor of The Stinging Fly.
Niamh Mulvey is a writer from Kilkenny. Her first novel, The Amendments was published in April 2024 and nominated for an An Post Irish Book Award.” Her first book, a short story collection, Hearts and Bones: Love Songs for Late Youth, was published in 2022 and was shortlisted for the John McGahern award.
Aoife Barry is a Dublin-based freelance journalist and broadcaster. She is the author of the bestselling non-fiction book Social Capital (HarperCollins Ireland). Her essays and fiction have been published by Banshee journal, ThiWurd, and Visual Verse, and broadcast on Sunday Miscellany. Her bylines include the Sunday Times, the Irish Times, the Irish Independent, the Business Post, The Journal and the Examiner. She features regularly on RTÉ and Today FM. Aoife has received Agility Award Funding from the Arts Council for a novel in progress, and was selected by the Irish Writers Centre for its Evolution Programme 2023.
https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/dublin-written-in-our-hearts-a-celebration-tickets-1272361309929Venue
Royal Irish Academy of Music, 36-38 Westland Row Dublin 2, D02 WY89 IrelandTime
April 1 at 7:00 pmTickets
Free