This is the centenary year of Sean O'Faolain's birth at the impossibly romantic address of Half Moon Street in Cork city. He was born on February 22nd, and to mark the centenary, UCC is holding a weekend conference from February 25th to 27th. His novelist daughter, Julia O'Faolain, will be speaking on the opening night.
Other speakers over the weekend include John Murphy of UCC, novelist Colm Toibin, and Dr Marie Arndt, a visiting scholar with TCD, whose paper is entitled "Sean O'Faolain; Building a Nest for a Bird Alone in Erin - Self as Fiction." Eibhear Walshe of the English department hopes that the public will turn out in droves, drives, drakes etc. Registration is £6, and then it's free entrance to all events. More information from 021-902241.
The blackboard outside Waterstone's on Dublin's Dawson Street has served up many a menu of writers over the last few years. If you're one of the many who've turned up at various times for a glass of wine and a hear-the-author-reading session, chances are you'll have met Cormac Kinsella, Waterstone's events manager. He's the tall and genial one who'll have organised the reading, and who usually goes on to moonlight for the evening as barman, compere, and lots in between. It's quite possible he has the best collection of signed recent first editions in Ireland. Kinsella is also the man who edited the Waterstone's Guide to Irish Fiction. After five years there, he's off to set up the PR division of Repforce Ireland, the Irish agents for Bloomsbury and Usbourne publishers. "I start on March 1st," Kinsella told Sadbh. His best memory of a Waterstone's bash is organising the Dawson Street 10th anniversary reading held in the Abbey theatre, to which many big-gun Irish writers contributed. "My first and last time on the Abbey stage!" No new events manager has been appointed yet, but no doubt they're working on it right now.
Are you a writer and/or artist who is looking for a temporary room of your own in Cork in which to storm the braincells and stroke the muse? If you are currently working on a specific creative project, you can apply for use of one of the two studios in the Triskel Arts centre. These are non-residential, and available for between three and six months, possibly longer. Triskel is inviting applicants and is particularly anxious to hear from writers, since it hasn't had a scribe in its studios yet. And the really good news is that the studio spaces are free. Call 021272022 for more details.
We all have pasts, but some of us have more of a past behind us than others. That's talking quite literally. The Older Women's Network Ireland is looking for submissions to an anthology of poetry and short prose pieces on the subject of pasts, ageing, and life's experience - from a woman's perspective. But you can submit work even if you are still forking out to travel the highways and byways of Ireland by public transport, and you don't need to be a female either. That's what your imagination is for.
Submissions (before February 25th) to Older Women's Network, c/o Age & Opportunity, Marino Institute of Education, Griffith Ave, Dublin 9.
Poetry Ireland Review has a new editor, the Irish language poet, Biddy Jenkinson. She takes over from Mark Roper. PIR number 64 is in the bag, or out of the bag, or wherever journals go in cliches once they're published.
A quartet of little books from Mercier in the Celtic Ireland series has just been published: Irish Folklore; A Guide to Irish Mythology; Rich and Rare, The Story of Irish Dress; and Irish Marriage Customs, all at £4.99. With Valentine's Day not far away, a copy of Irish Marriage Customs slipped into a card to your beloved will either sink or sail your long-term future, but will certainly not go unnoticed. If things do go well, choose your bridal colour carefully. According to the old saying: Married in blue, you're sure to rue/ Married in grey, you'll go far away/ Married in yellow, ashamed of your fellow/ Married in brown, you'll live out of town/ Married in green, you're not fit to be seen. Feeling discouraged? Traditionalists, take heart. Married in white, you'll be all right.