IASIL 2008 - Home and Elsewhere: the Spaces of Irish Writing






		Confirmed keynote speakers include the following academics and writers: Edna Longley, Professor Emerita, Queen’s University Belfast Chris Morash, NUI Maynooth Claire Connolly, Cardiff University Michael Longley Hugo Hamilton Edna Longley Professor Edna Longley is one of the most influential critics writing on modern Irish and British poetry, and is one of the most powerful voices in contemporary Irish culture. While earning international renown for her many publications, she has also had a huge and enabling influence on the literary culture of Northern Ireland, especially at Queen’s University, through her teaching, and through the English Society that flourished under her direction, giving much impetus to the creation of The Seamus Heaney Centre. Married to the distinguished poet Michael Longley, she was the recipient of an honorary degree from Trinity College Dublin in 2003. Edna Longley’s most recent publication is ‘The Great War, History and the English Lyric', in ed., Vincent Sherry, The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of the First World War (2005). She is currently working on The Annotated Edward Thomas, to be published by Bloodaxe Books in 2007. She will also be one of the editors for the planned Oxford University Press series: Edward Thomas: The Essential Prose. Chris Morash Chris Morash is the Head of English but is also Lecturer in Media Studies at National University of Ireland Maynooth. He is currently working on a history of the media in Ireland, commissioned by Cambridge University Press. This study will begin with the advent of print in the 1550’s, and move through cinema, radio and television to electronic media. His previous book was A History of Irish Theatre 1601-2000 (2002). He had previously published Writing the Irish Famine (1995), as well as numerous articles and contributions to reference works. See below for a full publications list. http://english.nuim.ie/chrismorashpersonalpage.shtml Claire Connolly Claire Connolly is Reader in English Literature at Cardiff University, and has been Visiting Associate Professor of Irish Studies at Boston College. With Joe Cleary, she is editor of The Cambridge Companion to Modern Irish Culture. She has edited the critical anthology, Theorizing Ireland, as well as a number of scholarly editions of nineteenth-century Irish novels, including two volumes of the Tales and Novels of Maria Edgeworth and (with Stephen Copley) Sydney Owenson’s The Wild Irish Girl. Recent work includes essays on Edmund Burke and Scottish and Irish romanticism. New research is towards a book, London and the Making of the Romantic Nation. She is currently Principal Investigator on the Ireland-Wales Research Network, funded by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council. Link to Ireland-Wales Research Network as follows: http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/encap/walesireland/index.html Link to personal home page http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/encap/staff/connolly.html Michael Longley Michael Longley was born in Belfast in 1939 and educated at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution. After reading classics at Trinity College, Dublin, he taught in schools in Belfast, Dublin and London. He joined the Arts Council of Northern Ireland in 1970, working in literature and the traditional arts as Combined Arts Director before taking early retirement from the post in 1991. He was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 2001. His first collection of poetry, No Continuing City: Poems 1963-1968, was published in 1969, and the collection Poems 1963-1983 was published in 1985. There was a 12-year gap between the publication of The Echo Gate: Poems 1975-1979 (1979) and the acclaimed Gorse Fires (1991), winner of the Whitbread Poetry Award. The Weather in Japan (2000), won the Hawthornden Prize, the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Belfast Arts Award for Literature. He is editor of 20th Century Irish Poems (2002). Michael Longley was Writer Fellow at Trinity College, Dublin, in 1993. He has written widely on the arts in Northern Ireland, contributing to magazines including Encounter and Phoenix and has written scripts for BBC radio. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a member of Aosdána, an affiliation of Irish artists engaged in literature, music and visual arts. His Collected Poems was published in 2006. In September 2007 Michael Longley was appointed Ireland Professor of Poetry. Hugo Hamilton Hugo Hamilton is the best-selling author of The Speckled People (4th Estate), a German-Irish memoir which has so far been translated into 15 languages. His unique experience of growing up in Dublin during the 50s and 60s with a fervent Irish nationalist father and German mother who came to Ireland in the aftermath of World War 2, has found resonance right across the globe. Hailed by many as a ‘masterpiece’ (Colm Toibin) and an ‘instant classic’ (Roy Foster), his account of German-Irish childhood addresses all the ‘great issues of the 20th century’ ( Nuala O Faolain). Described by Joseph O Connor as a ‘book for our times and perhaps for all time’, it won the prestigious Prix Femina étranger in France, as well as the Berto Prize in Italy, and appeared on the New York Times notable books list. His equally ‘rich and compelling’ second memoir The Sailor in the Wardrobe which continues this complex dual upbringing in a ‘language war’ where he was prohibited from speaking English, has also been hailed an ‘enchanting piece of work’ (Terry Eagleton). He is the acclaimed author of five novels and one collection of short stories, all of which reflect on the increasingly compelling issues of cultural divisions, belonging and identity. The Speckled People was optioned by Neil Jordan. His new novel entitled Disguise is due out with 4th Estate in spring 2008. Hugo Hamilton lives in Dublin. __________________________________________________________________________