16th Irish Writers in London Summer School
9 June – 15 July 2011
First established in 1996, the summer school runs for two nights a week for five weeks and provides an informal but informative setting for students wishing to study Irish literature over the summer. Each week a set text is discussed in class on Tuesday evening and the following Thursday, the author reads and/or speaks about it to students.
Guests Writers:
• author and journalist Mary Kenny who will be talking about her recent play Allegiance which dramatizes the relationship between Michael Collins and Winston Churchill
• award-winning writer Maurice Leitch who will be discussing his latest novel Tell Me About It, set amongst the Irish community in London
• Booker long-listed author Gerard Donovan who will be discussing his critically-acclaimed short story collection Country of the Grand
• Irish Post journalist Joe Horgan who will talking about living in Ireland after growing up of Irish parents in England
• bookseller Tony Whelan, who recalls his life-long friendship with John McGahern in his memoir The Last Chapter.
PREFERENTIAL FEES APPLY UNTIL 8 MAY (see below)
N.B. This is not a creative writing course, but will complement such a course of study at London Metropolitan University or elsewhere.
No prior qualifications are required to attend
Times: 6.00 – 8.30pm (refreshments provided)
Days: Tuesdays and Thursdays with the opening night on Thursday 9 June
and an additional class on Friday 15 July.
Fees: £125 (concessions £95)
‘Early Bird’ enrolment before 9 May – £115 (concs £85)
Enrol at:
http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/research-units/iset/courses/irish-writers-in-london-summer-school-2011.cfm
or email: iset@londonmet.ac.uk
or ring: 0207 133 2913
More about this year’s guest writers:
Mary Kenny has been a journalist for over four decades, working in London and Dublin. She has contributed to more than 25 newspapers and journals, including the Daily Mail, Guardian, Times, Catholic Herald, Irish Times, and Times Literary Supplement. She has a special interest in the relationship between England and Ireland which she explored in a biography of ‘Lord Haw-Haw’ and in her book, Crown and Shamrock: Love and Hate between Ireland and the British Monarchy. She will be talking about her recent play Allegiance which dramatizes the relationship between Michael Collins and Winston Churchill.
Maurice Leitch has been publishing novels and other works for over fifty years. Rated by Robert McLiam Wilson, as ‘perhaps the finest Irish novelist of his generation’ he was awarded the Guardian Fiction Prize in 1969 for Liberty Lad and won the Whitbread Prize in 1981 for his novel Silver’s City. He moved to London from his native County Antrim to work as a BBC radio producer and became editor of A Book at Bedtime on Radio Four until leaving in 1989 to write full-time. He was awarded an MBE for services to literature in 1999 and will be discussing his latest novel Tell Me About It set amongst the Irish community in London.
Gerard Donovan is the author of the novels Schopenhauer’s Telescope, which won the 2004 Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award and was long-listed for the 2003 Booker Prize, Doctor Salt and, most recently, Julius Winsome, described in the Irish Times as ‘a timeless fable of loss, isolation and violence.’ Born in Ireland, he currently lives in the south-west of England and will be discussing his acclaimed book of short stories Country of the Grand, described by Joseph O’Connor as ‘meltingly beautiful’ and ‘an important and haunting collection’.
Joe Horgan was born in Birmingham to Irish parents. He was shortlisted for the Hennessy Prize in 2003 and won the Patrick Kavanagh Award for poetry in 2004. He currently writes a weekly column for the Irish Post and reviews for Books Ireland. His work has also appeared on RTE radio and television. His first collection, Slipping Letters Beneath the Sea, was
published by Doghouse in 2008. In 2010 Horgan published a new collection with Collins Press, A Song at Your Backdoor, and was anthologised in Landing Places: Immigrant Poets in Ireland (Dedalus). He is married with three children and lives in County Cork.
Tony Whelan was born near the Mountains of Mourne in 1928 and studied at Queens University Belfast before moving to England in 1952. He worked as a teacher and later in publishing and public relations and became a close friend of John McGahern. Since retiring, he has developed a specialism in selling second-hand and antiquarian Irish books. He will be discussing his memoir, The Last Chapter, which has been described as, ‘a crystal clear window onto his life’s experiences’ and ‘an intriguing portrait of the literary worlds of Ireland and England in the twentieth century.’
For further information about the course contact Tony Murray at: t.murray@londonmet.ac.uk or 020 7133 2593
The Irish Writers in London Summer School is supported by the Garnett Foundation
