By T.S. Flynn

Oscar Wilde's The Ballad of Reading Gaol and Brendan Behan's The Quare Fellow are separated by more than half a century, yet both are haunted by the same reality: a prison preparing to kill one of its inmates. This essay explores how Wilde's prison masterpiece…

Most nations celebrate writers who tell their stories. Ireland rioted against one who questioned them.

On 26 January 1907, Dublin's Abbey Theatre became the scene of one of the most famous controversies in Irish cultural history. The premiere of J.M. Synge's The Playboy of the Western World provoked protests,…

From a plantation named Tara to wartime ballads invoking the rebellion of 1798, Confederate culture repeatedly drew upon Irish historical memory to frame the Southern cause as a struggle against oppression. In doing so, it borrowed the language of exile, resistance, and dispossession, transforming one people's…

For more than a century, popular culture has looked eastward to the mountains of Transylvania in search of the origins of modern horror. Count Dracula is routinely presented as a Romanian monster inhabiting a Victorian nightmare: a foreign aristocrat who invades England and threatens the certainties of the British Empire.

Yet the deeper one…

For more than a century, James Joyce's Ulysses has occupied a near-sacred place in the literary canon. Yet its immense reputation raises an important question: has Joyce's masterpiece expanded the possibilities of fiction, or has its towering influence encouraged critics to prize complexity over connection, innovation over…

During a nostalgic trip to Dublin City, Ireland in June 1971, I found myself in the delightful St. Stephen's Green, a welcome oasis in that bustling, cosmopolitan city. The park is sited not far from the Four Courts building, which sits on the north bank of…

If as an Irishman/Irishwoman you've ever wondered where you got your love of the spoken word, your love of storytelling, your love of long winded conversation, the following…

On 10th May 1916, the "Daily News" posted a letter from the Irish playwright, George Bernard Shaw, in which he condemned the ongoing execution of the leaders of the Easter Rising: "My own view is that the men who were shot in cold blood, were prisoners of war, and that it was, therefore, entirely…

The life and accomplishments of John Quinn are so improbable that if they were fiction no one would believe them. The son of a baker from a small town in Ohio, Quinn, by the time of his untimely death in 1924 at the age of 54, had not only amassed the greatest collection of…

I've been down in the green valley, the holy place.

Hello, Everyone, 

My name is Mary and I'm from County Cork, Ireland. I have just joined this great group and I'm still trying to find my way around the site. I heard of this group through the lovely Claire Fullerton and I want to say thank you to her. I am a published writer and enjoy crocheting when not writing. 

I have two gorgeous grandsons and being a Nana is one of my greatest joys. I am a Mum of four…

Chicago River Dyed Green for St. Patrick's Day

[Cross-Post from Chief O'Neill Blog]

What would Chief…

Dear Friends,

I attended a two-week writing workshop run by the Sancho Panza Literary Society at Trinity College in Dublin in June. It was a wonderful writing experience as well as an opportunity to explore historic Dublin and attend the…

Colm Herron knows all about The Troubles. He lived through them. Protested his way through them. Now he reveals a slice of the chaos that pitted friends and neighbors and family against each other. In his current book, activist Anna leads naive teacher Robert through local battles and through the joys and complexities of his first-time-ever love. As…

I will arise and go

(After William Butler Yeats)



My people are a migrant clan

Prospering not by hook or crook or craft

But by diligent labour and an easy charm

Flung from one small corner

Across every wind-tossed sea

Mountaintop to valley floor

To lay a thousand roadways

Or stand on…

This year marks an uneasy halfway for me—I have been in Australia for as long as I lived in Ireland. So where does that leave me? The truth, I have come to realise, is somewhere in between. In Australia, I am regarded as Irish. My accent, parlance, even my ‘writing voice’ are often differentiated as such.…