Sadbh has a feeling that we're going to be seeing a whole lot more of Adrian Frazier in the coming months. Frazier has just published a new biography of George Moore, which received the considerable accolade of making the front cover of the current edition of the TLS.
Now we hear that Frazier, who previously published a book called Behind the Scenes: Yeats, Horniman and the struggle for the Abbey Theatre, has been appointed director of a new graduate programme in drama and theatre studies in NUI Galway's department of English. Our gain will be Union College, New York's loss; Frazier is leaving that university to take up his position in Galway in September.
The playwright-in-residence for the first year of the programme will be Vincent Woods. Meanwhile, the library at the university, which is actively involved in collecting manuscripts and papers of contemporary Irish playwrights, has recently acquired the archives of the Druid Theatre Company, Macnas, the Lyric Theatre, Belfast and of Taibhdhearc na Gaillimhe.
It has been a week of literary prizes, both here and in England, with the announcement of the Orange Prize winner on Tuesday, followed by the Rooney Prize on Wednesday. Of course, Sadbh was hoping that the Irish interest, Eilis Ni Dhuibhne would scoop the £30,000 Orange (women writers only) prize, but was interested to see that Guardian journalist, Linda Grant, deprived the favourite, Zadie Smith, of the prize fruit in London on the night.
Meanwhile, back here, the Rooney prize found a worthy winner in short story writer, Claire Keegan, who is to get this year's £5,000 cheque. The award ceremony on Thursday looks as though it will be a fine literary bash as all the previous winners have been invited along to mark the 25th anniversary of the prize. Recipients have included Frank McGuinness, Neil Jordan, Medbh McGuckian, Robert McLiam Wilson, and Colum McCann, Anne Enright and Bernard Farrell. For only the third time in the history of the prize, a special award will be given - to writer and anthologist David Marcus, for his long-standing commitment to Irish literature. If ever a literary accolade was truly deserved, this is it.
Isn't it good to see a building converted from a bank to a bookshop rather than vice versa? Still, the corner spot on Dublin's Dawson Street, which is now home to Eason's Hanna's Bookshop, is no stranger to matters literary. Before it was a bank, it was Morrison's Hotel, which, at different times, played host to Charles Dickens and Charles Stewart Parnell. It was officially opened with a stylish bash on Wednesday night.
Can it possibly be Bloomsday again next Friday? Sadbh is beginning to suspect that a fanatical Joycean is manipulating the calendar, so fast do the celebrations come round each year. In Dublin, plans are being finalised for the usual orgy of offal, gorgonzola and messenger bikes, while further afield a bewildering array of celebrations are afoot. The University of Bologna in Forli, Italy, has activities Joycean all day, culminating in a Bloomsday dinner starring, among others, novelist Umberto Eco, while somewhere that rejoices in the very Joycean name of Onkaparinga in Australia is having a day of readings, topped off by a 1904 period dinner.
A couple of dates for your diaries, culture vultures: at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, John Waters will be giving the pre-show talk, before Medea, at the Abbey Theatre, entitled "Medea and Modern Ireland". Also on Tuesday at 7.30 p.m., the Rathmines Writers' Workshop will be celebrating 10 years of creative writing, with an evening of poetry, prose and music in the Oak Room of the Mansion House in Dublin.
Sadbh