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‘A Morning Walk’ from “Intimate City: Dublin Essays” by Peter Sirr
Featured in today’s Irish Times is a collection of essays by prize-winning poet, Peter Sirr: “Intimate City: Dublin Essays.” This week, Trasna is pleased to present ‘A morning walk,’ one of the essays from this brilliant collection. Sirr’s essays explore Dublin’s past and present; travel its narrow lanes; meditate on its earliest map; and contemplate the impact a place can…
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Felicity Hayes-McCoy and “The Year of Lost and Found”
Felicity Hayes-McCoy’s latest novel, “The Year of Lost and Found,” again takes place on Ireland’s fictional Finfarran peninsula. It is a novel about ordinary people with extraordinary secrets. Set in 2018, it takes place in the lead-up to the year of Ireland’s Civil War commemorations, and explores shared, hidden, and revealed family memories. Warmth and humour are central to Felicity…
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Linda Ibbotson, “Homage to Kinsale” and Other Writings
As we reach mid-June with the fervor to celebrate the season and enjoy beloved places, Trasna welcomes Linda Ibbotson and her tribute to the beauty of the coastal town Kinsale, to the legacy of Irish culture, and her creative collaboration with Russian pianist and composer Arsentiy Kharitonov. A gifted poet and lyricist, whose artwork and photographs have won acclaim, Ibbotson…
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New Poems from Linda Whittenberg
Linda Whittenberg first connected with Ireland through her beloved Irish grandfather, Will Shannon, with whom she spent her childhood in the Illinois farmland where she was born. As a Unitarian-Universalist minister in the United States, she served congregations in the West before launching her voice as a poet. During Writers’ Week in Listowel, County Kerry, in 2014, she launched her…
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Theresa Jones reads “Bridget or Pat” and other work
This week Trasna is pleased to present the work of Theresa Jones, whose writing frequently focuses on place, location and dislocation. We open with her reading of her poem, “Bridget or Pat”, which treats of the challenges of her mother’s identity as an immigrant to the UK, and raises the question of who has the power to name. We follow with…
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“Listening in: Radio Dramas in a Virtual Realm” by Margaret O’Brien
Many of us are discovering that the most amazing things can be achieved when people pool their talents and resources, even during a pandemic. Maybe especially during a pandemic. And this week’s post on Trasna, the ‘Radio Drama in a Virtual Realm’ project, is the result of just such a pooling of talent and a model of what can be achieved…
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‘Nora’, an excerpt, as read by its author Nuala O’Connor
This week on Trasna we are very pleased to present writer, Nuala O’Connor, reading an excerpt from her most recent novel, NORA. The eponymous Nora was, of course, Nora Barnacle, lover, wife and soulmate to writer James Joyce. In her novel O’Connor gives us Nora’s distinctive character, voice and original world view as the couple scrape a living in various parts of…
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‘Hope against Hope’ a Historical Novel by Sheena Wilkinson
Trasna is pleased to present a work of historical fiction, ‘Hope against Hope’ by Sheena Wilkinson. This is the third outstanding work of historical fiction by the multi-award-winning Sheena Wilkinson. It follows the fantastically successful ‘Star by Star’, which won the Children’s Books Ireland Honour Award for Fiction in 2018 and was shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards. Star was selected…
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Tom Sigafoos ~ The Cursing Stone, a novel
We are pleased to present here the opening scenes from a new historical novel by writer Tom Sigafoos. “The Cursing Stone” is set on Tory Island, off the coast of County Donegal in northwest Ireland. The year is 1884 and the islanders are threatened with mass evictions. What are they willing to do to prevent them happening? Tom Sigafoos has previously appeared…
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Daniel Wade reads from Rapids
What better way for Trasna to honor the conclusion of National Poetry Month in the United States–and celebrate the First Anniversary of Trasna–than with the current work of Daniel Wade, a rising star in the world of poetry! An award-winning playwright and a novelist as well, Wade appeared in Trasna in November, 2020, with his insightful tribute to his mentor,…
