The programme of events for this year's McGlinchey Summer School was announced by Seamus Heaney at a ceremony in the Abbey Theatre this week.
The summer school will focus on the theme of emigration to the US and Britain since the Famine and will run from June 29th to July 1st in Clonmany on the Inishowen peninsula.
In his speech, Seamus Heaney commended the school for its part "in articulating the history of lives that might otherwise be overlooked" and for "rescuing them from the blur of sentiment and clarifying them in the light of scholarship".
The McGlinchey Summer School was set up to explore and explain the tradition and folklore of the north-west region. It grew from the publication of a book, edited by the playwright Brian Friel, which told the life story of Charles McGlinchey.
He was born in Clonmany in 1861 and was a weaver, tailor and storyteller. A local school teacher, Patrick Kavanagh, wrote down his story in the 1940s and 1950s, and this was edited by Brian Friel and published 30 years later as The Last of the Name.
Speakers this year include Piaras MacEinri, director of the Irish Centre for Migration Studies in UCC, John McColgan, deputy archivist for the City of Boston, and Angela Bourke of UCD and author of The Burning of Bridget Cleary.
Further information from 077-76772.