LooseLeaves/Sadbh: Next Monday - St Valentine's Day - is the 80th birthday of novelist and short story writer Val Mulkerns, best known for her short story collection, Antiquities (Andre Deutsch, 1978) and novel, The Summerhouse (John Murray, 1984).
She is now working on a memoir, Friends with the Enemy. The title was inspired by a visit she made to Derry at the height of the Troubles in the 1980s to talk to schoolchildren. When telling them about the Frank O'Connor story, 'Guests of the Nation', in which the Irish revolutionary guards become friendly with their two English soldier hostages, a little girl in the class suddenly said: "But you can't be friends with the enemy". Mulkerns has turned that chance remark on its head for the title of her memoir. Born in Dublin in 1925, her book deals with how Civil War politics dominated adult chat when she was a child. It also deals with her years in the early 1950s as associate editor of the influential literary journal, The Bell, then edited by Peader O'Donnell. James Plunkett, Ben Kiely, Patrick Kavanagh and Mary Lavin were among the writers whose work crossed her desk in those days - as well as Edna O'Brien, who she remembers submitting poems. There was also Richard Power, author of the novel The Hungry Grass, who died aged 42, in his prime. Mulkerns's husband was the late Maurice Kennedy, author of the classic novella, Vladivostok. Given the central role The Bell played in the literary life of Dublin, Mulkerns's memories of her days in the magazine's O'Connell Street office should make interesting reading. We look forward to seeing this book in print.
Joycean eyewitness: One doesn't think of James Joyce as "Sunny Jim" but, as a child, that is apparently what he was called by his family. It's just one of the little gems in Joyce's Dublin Family, by Ken Monaghan, Joyce's nephew. Monaghan, the son of one of Joyce's younger sisters, May, has been a major force in the success of the James Joyce Centre in Dublin and to mark his 80th birthday this year the centre has produced a booklet by him, the origins of which lie in the many talks he gave on the subject, both here and abroad, with tributes added from Joyceans Morris Beja, John McCourt, Fritz Senn and David Norris. "Thank God he never listened to his aunts Eva and Florrie, who warned him never to mention to anyone that he was related to James Joyce," writes McCourt. Monaghan's memories of Joyce's sisters, Eva and Florrie, whom he calls "my poor little aunts", make poignant reading. "They never married and lived lives of quiet desperation together in an apartment in Mountjoy Square. They were frail, fragile, frightened little women who were probably the saddest members of a family in which there was little joy for anybody." They believed their lives had been badly affected by their relationship to Joyce. "They had become paranoid about him and attributed the misfortunes of their lives to being his sisters." Monaghan also paints a bleak picture of the last days of Joyce's father, known to him as Jack Joyce, living out his life in disreputable addresses in northside Dublin. On his own, after years of terrorising his remaining children, it must have been a lonely existence but "I find it difficult to find pity in my heart for him", writes Monaghan. With an army of scholars around the world adding to the Joyce industry daily, it is good that the memories of a this member of the writer's family have been put between covers for posterity.
Calling researchers: Fiction prizes and poetry prizes are common enough - but it's not often prizes are offered for research. The National University of Ireland is currently inviting applications for its Irish Historical Research Prize, worth €3,000. Offered in alternate years, it went in 2003 to Nicholas P. Canny, Professor of History at NUI, Galway, for Making Ireland British 1580-1650 (Oxford University Press). The prize is for the best work of Irish historical research, published for the first time, by a student or graduate of the NUI between April, 2002 and March, 2005. The closing date is April 1st. For details e-mail registrar@nui.ie or log on to www.nui.ie
Free speech awards: Index on Censorship, the freedom of expression magazine, this week announced the shortlist for an award to honour freedom of expression in literature. The shortlist is Soldiers of Light, by Daniel Bergner, about post civil war Sierra Leone; The Stone Fields, by Courtney Angela Brkic, about mass grave excavation in Bosnia; Secret Histories - Finding George Orwell in a Burmese Teashop, by Emma Larkin, which retraces Orwell's time in Burma working in the imperial police force; Burned Alive, by Souad, a girl born into a brutal family in the West Bank; and Guantanamo, by David Rose, one of the few journalists let in to the infamous detention centre. The winner will be announced on March 1st at an event at which Anna Ford and Bob Geldof will speak.