Writers and academics will be flocking to Cork during the first weekend in February for a major conference on emigration at UCC organised by Professor Dermot Keogh. The event, titled The Lost Decade? Emigration, culture and society in Ireland of the 1950s, will be opened on Friday, February 2nd, by Professor Joe Lee. Subjects being addressed include "Nostalgia and Dissent in Irish Emigrant Writing 1949-1964 " by Liam Harte, while Enda Delaney will speak on "The Vanishing Irish? The exodus from Ireland in the 1950s".
Novelist James Ryan, whose first novel, Home from England, explored the ambivalent feelings towards Ireland of an emigrant family in London, will speak on "Inadmissable departures: Why did the experience of emigration feature so rarely in Irish writing of the mid-20th century while Professor John Bradley's subject is "Changing the Rules; Why the failures of the 1950s forced a transition in economic policy making". Other topics include the Irish in the States; post-second World War emigration from Ireland to Britain - and the perception of Ireland in the US media. Brian Fallon of The Irish Times will speak on arts and culture in 1950s Ireland while Orlaith O' Callaghan will concentrate on the Irish theatre of the period , focusing on the Pike Theatre.
The conference is open to the public. Details from Dr Carmel Quinlan at 0214903584 and e-mail: c.quinlan@ucc.ie
Sadbh has seen a lot of things come out of vending machines in her day from chocolate bars to condoms; now it's books. Dubliner Ned Guinness and Alexander Waugh, grandson of Evelyn, with their company Travelman Vending, this week launched dispensing machines through the London underground.
For £1 sterling, they will spill out a book on a page that folds up like a map when you need to move on. Now they want to bring the scheme to Ireland. The authors on offer include Dorothy Parker, D. H. Lawrence, and Katherine Mansfield.
The death in her late 50s of one of the finalists has cast a sad aura over the Whitbread Book of the Year award due to be made next week. Up against such major tomes in the initial Biography category as Ian Kershaw's Hitler 1936-1945 - Nemesis; Tim Hilton's John Ruskin - The Later Years as well as Claire Harman's Fanny Burney, Lorna Sage, who died last week, had triumphed with Bad Blood - A Memoir, her look back at her unhappy grandparents and her own childhood, which included finding herself pregnant at 16 without realising she'd had sex.
If her book wins the overall prize it won't be without precedent; Ted Hughes won the Whitbread Book of the Year award posthumously for his surprise collection about Sylvia Plath, Birthday Letters.
Sadbh