A round-up of this week's other literary news, in brief ...
Fin de siècle at RIA
MacLiammóir: The last Wildean Decadentis the title of a keynote address by University College Cork academic Eibhear Walshe at a conference in early September at the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin called Ireland and the Fin de Siècle.
Over the two days of the conference – September 3rd and 4th – there will be papers on some of the major writers of the period, but also on lesser known ones. George Moore and the Catholic novel will be addressed by Eamon Maher, while Deaglán Ó Donghaile will speak on Oscar Wilde and the radical politics of the fin de siècle. The subject of women and writing by women will be to the fore of the event with a session on the "New Woman", at which Kalene Nix will speak about the novelist Katherine Cecil Thurston, and Tina O'Toole will give a paper on The New Woman and Ireland: Brittania's Rebel Daughters?There is also a full session on George Egerton, born Mary Chavelita Dunne, author of the short-story collections Keynotes and Discords. Heather Ingman, whose major title A History of the Irish Short Storyhas just been published by Cambridge University Press, will speak on Egerton and the Irish short story, while Whitney Standlee will give a paper called Forging the Uncreated Conscience of Her Sex: Decadence, New Womanhood and the Escapefrom Ireland in George Egerton's The Wheel of God(1898).
Nicola Gordon Bowe's subject will be symbolist imagery in the arts of the period in Ireland, while Leon Litvack will talk about the photographic portraits of the era in a paper called Posing for Posterity. Details on 01-6762570.
Irish Templar winners
There are three winners who are either Irish or have Irish links among the four winners of the 2009 Templar Poetry Pamphlet and Collection Competition, which was judged by poet Tim Liardet. These are Galway-based Nuala Ní Chonchúir with Portrait of the Artist with a Red Car, Belfast resident Paul Maddern with Kelpdings, and Omagh-born Dawn Wood with Connoisseur. The fourth winner is David Morley with The Rose of the Moon. Each winner receives £500 plus publication of their poetry in a pamphlet, and the option to submit a full poetry manuscript to Templar Poetry. The pamphlets will be launched at the Derwent Poetry Festival in the autumn.
Another Big Chapel
It's always good to see a new edition of a great novel, and Liberties Press has just issued one, The Big Chapelby Thomas Kilroy (below), which was first published by Faber in 1971.
Liberties has added to the occasion by including a new foreword by Brian Friel, in which he welcomes this chance for the novel “to come back to full life after 30 years of catalepsy”. The story of the aggression and conflict that grips an Irish town over a simple disagreement about schools – and based on a notorious clerical scandal in Victorian Ireland – is, says Friel, a prickly story, an angry story and an important novel. “The Red Priest will thunder again. The big chapel will be desecrated. The Master will be felled. And the mystery life of its people, agitated and baffled by an unease just that bit beyond their comprehension and control, will unfold again as if for the first time.”
Website brings Irish to US
A new website, The Irish Book Review, aims to bring news and reviews of the latest books emanating from the old sod to a US audience. Set up by Corkman Liam Moroney, former employee of Gill Macmillan, The O’Brien Press and Mercier Press, the site aims to be a resource in the US for Irish-published books.
“I started the Irish Book Review because, while there is a clear demand for high-quality Irish books on true Irish-interest topics, there is little awareness of – and virtually no access to – this information, and the US market deserves better,” says Moroney. theirishbook review.com