Fly writers create a New York buzz
"I am a New Yorker and an Irishman and I see absolutely no contradiction in this," writes the novelist Colum McCann, in sync with what many of the new wave of young Irish emigrants must feel wherever it is that circumstances have tossed them. McCann's piece is in the smashing winter issue of the Stinging Fly(issue 20, volume two, €7). It is New York-themed because the magazine and a team of writers will head there later this month for three events as part of Imagine Ireland, Culture Ireland's year of Irish arts promotion in the US.
The writers Aifric Mac Aodha, Emer Martin, Sean O’Reilly and Keith Ridgway will be on the trip with the magazine’s editor, Declan Meade. The events are at the Centre for Fiction (October 25th), Columbia University (26th) and the Swift Hibernian Lounge (27th). If you’re lucky enough to be in New York, why not attend all three?
In his essay, McCann, who lives in the city with his family, says that when he dies he’d like most of himself to be thrown into the wind over Manhattan and to end up wherever the breeze takes him, “the corner of a room in the Chelsea, the dark of a Second Avenue bar, in the dust of the paths of Central Park, in the spin of a Coney Island dodgem car, in the grime that settles on the fire escapes of the Lower East Side”.
In her essay, the novelist Mary Morrissy outlines how a bit of literary sleuthing took her to Arverne, in Queens, the location of the Lawrence nursing home where the troubled Irish New Yorker writer Maeve Brennan died. Morrissy has been researching Brennan for “a novel I’m not sure I will ever write, perhaps because I have hunted my quarry too assiduously”. Arverne, says Morrissy, will be the last stop on her Brennan pilgrimage. “If I am ever to put her in a novel, I will have to invent from now on. The trouble is that fiction has a way of simplifying real people; the novel has little tolerance for unanswered questions.” Still, this is one novel we would love to read, so with luck Morrissy will persist.
Another of the commissioned essays is by the novelist Kevin Barry, who finds in New York, built by immigrants, a city that wants to be someplace else. “It is the transplanted capital of Mitteleuropa, the great Jewish city.” Roam it, Barry recommends, at 4am, when it’s almost quiet and as though you have it to yourself.
There is also new fiction from Max McGuinness and Kathleen Murray, and poetry by Nick Laird, Ciaran Berry, Helena Nolan and Sharon Olds. See stingingfly.org.
New chapter for Brandon Books
A year after Steve MacDonogh (below) died suddenly, his publishing house, Brandon Books, founded in 1982, has a new owner. The O’Brien Press, founded in 1974, announced the
deal at Frankfurt Book Fair this week, and Brandon will trade as an imprint of O’Brien. “Steve was a man of many talents. From a small base in beautiful Kerry, he created an international literary press. He was a lifelong friend and colleague,” says the publisher and founder of the O’Brien Press, Michael O’Brien. Writers on Brandon’s list include the bestselling Alice Taylor (
To School Through the Fields
) and Gerry Adams.
Nobel but not pretentious
The Irish poet John Montague got in touch to salute the new Nobel laureateTomas Tranströmer, the Swedish poet. “He came down to read in Cork, on the fringe of a hotel restaurant where there was a lot of bustle. But he didn’t bat an eyelid at the noise. Indeed he was one of the nicest, least pretentious bards I have met. He had a lovely wife, who would later look after him devotedly when he’d had his stroke,” recalls the Irish bard.
