Info:

Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art, is excited to announce our fall 2011 event. On Wednesday, October 26, the Journal will host Dublin-based literary magazine, The Stinging Fly. The Irish magazine will be celebrating the launch of their latest issue, the New York issue, featuring writing by Colm McCann, Martín Espada, Eamon Grennan, Nick Laird, Eileen Myles, Idra Novey, Sharon Olds, and many more!

Columbia: A Journal welcomes The Stinging Fly editor Declan Meade, and writers Sean O'Reilly, Keith Ridgway, Aifric Mac Aodha, and Max McGuiness. The reading will be an intimate affair, with the unique opportunity for an audience to talk one-on-one with The Stinging Fly editor and the writers.

Wednesday, October 26
8:00 in Dodge 501

Reader Bios:

Aifric Mac Aodha is the literary editor of the Irish language magazine, Comhar, and Irish language poetry editor of The Stinging Fly. She works as a translator for the New English-Irish Dictionary and lectures in University College Dublin. Her first collection, Gabháil Syrinx (The Capture of Syrinx), was published by An Sagart in 2010. She will be reading Irish poems, in the original and in translation.

Max McGuinness was born in Dublin in 1986. His first play, Up The Republic!, was performed in Oxford, London, and Edinburgh during 2007-8. He has also written journalism for publications including The Irish Times, The Dubliner, and The Daily Beast. He is currently working on a PhD in French literature at Columbia University where he also teaches language classes.

Sean O’Reilly grew up in Derry, Northern Ireland. His first book was the acclaimed short story collection, Curfew. This was followed by the novel, Love and Sleep, which was listed as one of the top fifty Irish novels by the Irish Times. His next novel, The Swing of Things, told the story of an IRA man searching for a new beginning in boom-time Dublin following his release from prison under the Good Friday Agreement. Then came Watermark, an experimental erotic novel, the first book published by the Stinging Fly Press. He has been Writer-in-Residence in various cultural and academic institutes. In collaboration with The Stinging Fly, he runs an innovative novel-writing workshop in Dublin where he now lives.

Keith Ridgway is an Irish writer, born and brought up in Dublin, who has lived in London for most of the last ten years and who now lives in Edinburgh. His first novel, The Long Falling, was published in 1998. It received the Prix Femina Étranger in 2001, and was made into a film directed by Martin Provost earlier this year. Ridgway was awarded The Rooney Prize for his short story collection Standard Time. He is also the author of the novels The Parts (2003) and Animals (2007). An extract from his new book, Hawthorn & Child, appeared in The New Yorker earlier this year; it will be published by Granta Books in 2012.