Bealtaine 2024: Don't come running to me!

Immortalised by phrases such as don’t mind me…, Isn’t it well for you? And of course the beloved, have you turned off the immersion?, the Irish Mammy is a perennial figure in the Irish imagination. This discussion will look at the role, characterisation and love/hate relationship with this popular figure. Chaired by writer and journalist Henrietta McKervey, the discussion will feature writers Eilis Ní Dhuibhne, Mary O’Donnell and Donal Ryan. The event will be followed by some light refeshments.

Presented in association with the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Limerick. With thanks to the University of Galway.

The Bealtaine Discussion Series 2024 is devised and presented in association with Dr ­­­Michaela Schrage-Frueh (University of Limerick) and Dr Maggie O’Neill (University of Galway).

PANEL BIOGRAPHIES

Henrietta McKervey’s most recent novel A Talented Man is a psychological suspense about a forged sequel to Dracula. She has a Hennessy First Fiction Award and won the inaugural UCD Maeve Binchy Award. She curates the ECHOES festival and contributes to the Irish Times, Irish Independent and RTÉ Radio 1.

Éilís Ní Dhuibhne was born in Dublin in 1954. She has published over thirty books. The most recent are Selected Stories (Blackstaff Press, 2023), Fáinne Geal an Lae (Cló Iar Chonacht, 2023), Twelve Thousand Days: A Memoir (Blackstaff, 2017)), Little Red and Other Stories (Blackstaff 2020), and Look! It’s a Woman Writer. Irish Literary Feminisms 1970-2020 (ed.) (Arlen House, 2021). She is currently editing an anthology of writings on ageing, with Michaela Schrage Frueh. She is a member of Aosdana.

Mary O’Donnell’s work has been published in Ireland, the UK, and internationally since 1990, including nine poetry collections, four novels and three short story collections. Her poetry collection Massacre of the Birds (Salmon) appeared in 2020 and has recently been translated into Portuguese and published in Brazil by Arte y Letras. Her selected short stories will be available in Argentina in 2024 in a new Spanish translation. She was appointed Poet Laureate of the town of Naas during 2022. Her most recent publication is a limited edition chapbook of poems, ‘Outsiders, Always’, from Southword Editions, Cork. Her essay, ‘My Mother in Drumlin Country’, was listed among the Notable Essays and Literary Nonfiction of 2017 in Best American Essays (Mariner). She has held residencies at the Irish College in Paris (2012), at the Irish College in Leuven (2022), in Varuna House (Australia), and in the VCCA (USA). Guest editor of Poetry Ireland Review until April 2024, she is also a member of Ireland’s affiliation of artists, Aosdána. www.maryodonnell.com

Donal Ryan is a novelist and short story writer from Nenagh, Co. Tipperary. He has won several national and international awards for his fiction and has twice been nominated for the Booker Prize. He teaches Creative Writing at the University of Limerick.