GIST: The meaning of missing
- When: 10th August
- Time: 6:00pm - 7:30pm
- Location: Robert Webster Building (G14), 3rd Floor, Room 327
Evelyn Conlon, Irish novelist and short story writer
Evelyn Conlon is an Irish novelist and short story writer. An elected member of Aosdána, the Irish honours for distinguished artistic work, she has been writer-in-residence in many countries and at University College Dublin. A clear-sighted, observant and unsentimental thinker, her work is suffused with originality and surprising wit. Born in Co. Monaghan, she is now resident in Dublin. She is currently working on a novel 'Records on Globe Street' which comments on the human and personal dimensions of loss and dislocation by addressing the transport of Irish famine orphan girls to Australia in the wake of the Great Famine. Her earlier work 'Stars in the Daytime', 'A Glassful of Letters' and 'Skin of Dreams' deal variously with social and political dilemmas in Irish life and the profundity of the death penalty; her edited works include work by Bosnian refugees in Ireland (1995) and 'Later On' (2004), a memorial anthology of prose and poetry which marked the 30 year memory of the Monaghan bombing.
Abstract
Evelyn Conlon will read from her works on how we miss places. The ‘meaning of missing’ suggests missing out in many senses. Often when we discuss the ‘diaspora’ we do so as if it is all about regret and loss. But often departure involves relieved escape. Mixing reading and discussion, this talk will concentrate on Evelyn’s writings on distant places, distant from Ireland that is, and will also discuss where fiction adds to history, fiction being a corridor of truth. In looking at how and why she wrote ‘A Glassful of Letters’, this talk will consider the epistolary form as communication from faraway places and, in particular, the role of men in diasporic letter writing.
The talk will be introduced by Dr Pamela O'Neill, Honorary Fellow, John Hume Institute for Global Irish Studies
Lecture on UNSWTV
Download event flyer (PDF) (709 Kb)
Contact Details
RSVP essential by 8 August 2011
Register online
or
E: irish@unsw.edu.au
T: 02 9385 4772
