Both SIdes of the Pond Reading

dublin | arts and media | event notice Monday July 27, 2009 23:09 by Sarah Lundberg - Seven Towers Agency info at seventowers dot ie

In Cassidy's Bar, Westmoreland St, Dublin 2

Reading of Irish, American and Canadian writers, reading work from both sides of the pond, about both sides of the pond!! Some the featured American and Canadian writers will live in Ireland, many of the featured Irish writers will have lived in America.

Readers include Californian poet Lynne Knight, Dublin writer Oran Ryan, New Zealand born Dublin writer, Ross Hattaway, Canadian writer and model Roslyn Fuller, Dublin poet Eamonn Lynskey, Dublin poet Catherine Ann Cullen

Lynne Knight:
Lynne Knight is the author of four full-length collections, the most recent of which is Again, published by Sixteen Rivers Press in 2009. Dissolving Borders won a Quarterly Review of Literature prize in 1996; The Book of Common Betrayals won the Dorothy Brunsman Award from Bear Star Press in 2002; and Night in the Shape of a Mirror was published by David Robert Books in 2006. She has also published three prize-winning chapbooks, Deer in Berkeley (Sow’s Ear Press), Life as Weather (Two Rivers Review), and Defying the Flat Surface (The Ledge Press). A cycle of poems on Impressionist winter paintings, Snow Effects, appeared from Small Poetry Press as part of its Select Poets Series and has been translated into French by Nicole Courtet. Knight lives in Berkeley, California.

Her work has appeared in a number of journals, including Beloit Poetry Journal, Kenyon Review, New England Review, Ontario Review, Poetry, and Southern Review. One of her poems appears in Best American Poetry 2000, selected by Rita Dove. Among her awards are the Theodore Roethke Award from Poetry Northwest, the Theodore Christian Hoepfner Award from Southern Humanities Review, the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, and an NEA grant.

Oran Ryan

Oran Ryan is Dublin novelist, playwright, poet and screenwriter. In 2008 he won an Arts Council Bursary award for his current project New Order from Zero. His published works are The Death of Finn and Ten Short Novels by Arthur Kruger. The Death of Finn concerns the sudden and untimely death of Joe Finn, a brilliant and eccentric young monk, and traces the impact of his death on the people around him, in particular his one-time best friend Frank, himself an ex-monk. The Death of Finn is a love story and a story of friendship. This beautifully written novel traces the relationship between Frank Ryan and Joe Finn, and the effect that this relationship, Finn's life and death has on Frank and on other people in their lives. It explores love and its absence as well as the power of institutions over individual relationships. Finn manages to be a truly Irish book while simultaneously evoking an internationally recognisable sense of place. It is also evocative of the past while being truly modern. Resplendent with beautiful one-liners and carefully drawn characters, it is sure to become and to remain one of the classics of Irish literature as Oran Ryan will become and remain on of its voices. Underlying the main text of The Death of Finn is a sub-text concerning a book, Giovanni Seipi at Home that the main character of the novel, Joe Finn, has himself written. In a unique venture, Seven Towers Ltd has produced a miniature version of extracts from this book to accompany the publication of The Death of Finn, Extracts from "Giovanni Seipi at Home". This miniature book is in the form of an academic biography and is written in the voice of Joe Finn.
"Oran is a new and powerful voice in Irish literature". Seamus Cashman
Seamus also praised The Death of Finn for "the fine detail of the writing, and the clarity and simplicity of expression and phraseology" and described it as "a serious and entertaining and perceptive novel of relationships and ideas and a book which will hold readers enthralled and awakened as they journey through it".
"Ryan brings a self-assured tone to this his debut novel" Sunday Tribune
"The Death of Finn succeeds well as a study of the search for faith and the inner workings of monasticism as seen from the Irish Catholic viewpoint, while also addressing the question of honesty with self and with others" Book View Ireland, Irish Emigrant (www.emigrant.ie).

Ten Short Novels by Arthur Kruger is Oran Ryan's second novel. This novel circumvents the natural order of novel writing as it is written in a cubistic format and the series of short novels contained within the novel are written by the hero of the novel himself, rather than the real-life author. Each chapter takes a different life, giving ten different perspectives on Arthur Kruger, some as lived by Kruger after he kills himself and inexplicably finds himself alive after being hit by a train. Exploring themes like life, love and the after-life, Kruger, as the author, challenges the reader to question their understanding of existence. Ten Short Novels can be read as a possible journey into a mind in the grip of a breakdown or the fictional autobiography of a man who kills himself and inexplicably finds himself still alive. Whichever way the reader experiences it, living life will never be the same again after reading Ten Short Novels by Arthur Kruger.
Writer and actor Frank Kelly, who launched the novel, described it as a stimulating, enjoyable and challenging novel "that made me chuckle with its wry Beckett-like humour."

Ross Hattaway
Ross Hattaway's first collection of poetry, The Gentle Art of Rotting, is a collection of 'High Country' poetry, reflecting the dichotomy of the New Zealand High Country where starkness and beauty, economy and expression, machismo and inner sensitivity exist in a symbiotic yet sometimes uneasy relationship. Moving and humorous, these arresting poems reflect the origins and upbringing of the poet and the psychic landscape of New Zealand. Beneath the spare, crystalline phrasing and economic use of language, Ross' poems hold a wealth of meaning and poignancy and reflect the experience of many men who are forced to trade their inner sensitivity for survival in a world of macho values. The poems come out of Ross' own personal experience growing up in New Zealand where, for instance, he bought his country music albums in secret in brown paper bags, lest his contemporaries realise what he was purchasing!
Ross Hattaway was born in New Zealand and has lived in Ireland since 1990. He has published poetry in periodicals and collections, including Writings (Wellington), Life Beyond the Louvres (Northern Territory Anthology), Poetry Australia. His readings include the Poetry Ireland Introduction Series, Anna Livia FM and Between the Lines (Belfast). The Gentle Art of Rotting is his first collection. In 2008 Ross was a guest at the Poetry Spring Festival in Lithuania, becoming the first Irish poet to guest at that festival. Part of The Gentle Art of Rotting was translated into Lithuanian and published as part of the festival celebration. An employee of the Department of Health and Children, he is currently on secondment to the HSE.

"An exciting new collection of poetry" Sunday Independent

Roslyn Fuller
Roslyn Fuller was born and raised in Ontario, Canada. As a teenager she moved to Germany where she studied law at the prestigious Georg-August-Universitaet in Goettingen. After passing the First Bar Exam, she took a position at the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Dublin, and a post as a PhD student at Trinity College. She continues to live in Dublin and in addition to her studies she also works as a model. She self-published her first book, ISAK, in 2005 which has sold hundreds of copies around the world. She is currently working on her second novel, Frustration of a Line. In addition she writes a substantial amount of legal non-fiction and has had articles published in major legal journals. She also gives seminars in public international law at Trinity College. Roslyn co-founded the Irish Writers’ Exchange in 2008 and currently contributes to a weekly book review column in Metro Eireann.

Eamonn Lynskey

Éamonn Lynskey has had poems published in many magazines. He was nominated for the Sunday Tribune/Hennessy Literary Award for New Irish Poetry in 2006 and one of his poems will feature on the 2009 OXFAM calendar. His first collection Dispatches and Recollections was published in 1998 and he is currently working on his second. Eamonn’s work is also featured in Census, The First Seven Towers Anthology. Eamonn has also translated works of Italian poets Montale and Valeri and written in Italian – he holds a Diploma in Italian Lauguage and Culture from the Italian Institute, Dublin. His nest collection And Suddenly the Sun Again will be published by Seven Towers in Winter 2009/2010.

Catherine Ann Cullen

Catherine Ann Cullen was born in Drogheda, Co Louth. She is a regular contributor to RTE Radio 1’s Sunday Miscellany and A Living Word as well as producing current affairs, arts and features. She lives with her partner Harry and daughter Stella in Kimmage, Dublin. Her first collection, A Bone in My Throat, is published by Doghouse.

Barbara Smith:
Barbara is an essayist, artist poet and teacher, originally from Armagh in Northern Ireland she now lives in Dundalk. Her critically acclaimed collection Kairos was published by Doghouse in 2007 and she is currently working on her second collection.

Celeste Auge
Celeste Auge was born in Canada and grew up between Canada and Galway, Ireland. She published a chapbook with lapwing in 2007 and her first full collection has just been published by Salmon Books.

Anamaria Crowe Serrano
Anamaria is a poet and translator, she has published a number of book, including translations and non fiction. Her first full length collection of her own work is her latest publication and is called Femispheres.

Seamus Cashman
comes from Conna in County Cork. He founded Wolfhound Press,the leading Irish literary and cultural publishing house, in Dublin in 1974, and was publisher there until 2001. He had two well received poetry collections published, Carnival (Monarchline, 1988) and Clowns & Acrobats (Wolfhound Press, 2000) and his third collection, That Morning will Come