GALWAY: Creative Non-fiction with American and Irish Writers

Thursday, June 11th, 2009, 6.30pm
Galway City Library

Over The Edge in association with the American Conference for Irish Studies presents an evening of creative non-fiction with visiting American writers Jim Rogers, Christine Cusick and Jim Murphy and local writers Kevin Higgins and Patricia Burke Brogan.

Jim Rogers is editor of New Hibernia Review. His creative non-fiction has appeared in New Letters, ISLE, and elsewhere. His book of essays about cemeteries is forthcoming from Blue Road Press and is provisionally titled Northern Orchards: Places Near the Dead.

Christine Cusick is an Assistant Professor of English at Seton Hill University in Pennsylvania. She is an active member of the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment. She has published ecocritical readings of contemporary Irish poetry and landscape photography as well as place-based creative non-fiction. Her edited collection, which includes her interview with Tim Robinson, is titled Out of the Earth: Ecocritical Readings of Irish Texts and is forthcoming from Cork University Press.

Jim Murphy is Director of the Irish Studies Program at Villanova University. In March 2008 Irish America Magazine named him of its TOP 100 IRISH AMERICANS.

Kevin Higgins is writer-residence at Merlin Park Hospital, working with Galway University Hospitals Arts Trust. Using reminiscence techniques Kevin worked with patients at Units 5 and 6 of the hospital to compile the The Cat’s Cradle: Dancing On Prospect Hill (2008) and the topical The Cat’s Cradle: Hard Times Come Again (2009).

Patricia Burke Brogan is a native of Galway City. She is a poet, visual artist and playwright. She is the author of the award-winning play Eclipsed which exposed the abuses perpetuated at the now infamous Magdalen Laundries. Eclipsed was published by Salmon in 1994, republished by the same publisher in 1997 and again by Wordsonthestreet in 2007. Patricia is currently working on her autobiography, Memoir with Grykes and Turloughs.