Acclaimed novelist and musician for Nenagh event
Tullamore Park to host July 12 event
Novelist Colum McCann and musician Colm Mac Con Iomaire are coming to Nenagh for a special Dromineer Nenagh Literary Festival event.
This exciting summer event ‘Notes of Hope’ with novelist, Colum McCann who will be joined by composer/musician Colm Mac Con Iomaire. The event will be moderated by Dr Pragya Agarwal on Friday, July 12, at 7.30pm in a new venue at Tullamore Park, Nenagh.
Colum McCann is the author of six novels and two collections of stories. His most recent novel, Apeirogon, was longlisted for the Booker Prize, shortlisted for the Dublin Literary Award, shortlisted for the Prix Femina and the Prix Medicis. He was also shortlisted for the Goldsboro Books Glass Bell Award and winner of both the Prix Du Meilleur Livres Étranger and the National Jewish Book Awards. His fiction has been published in 35 languages. He lives in New York.
Colm Mac Con Iomaire, fiddler and composer is best known for his traditional albums, soundtrack work, and as a founding member of the Frames. Colm joined his friend, Colum McCann, with members of Narrative 4 (the non-profit global story exchange organisation co-founded by McCann), on a trip to the Holy Land, the setting for ‘Apeirogon’. Mac Con Iomaire will perform the music he composed as a response to this trip.
American Mother book
The English language has no specific word for the parent that has lost a child. There exist words for orphan, widow and widower, but there is no word that captures and conveys this tragic type of loss.
It has been 11 years since Diane Foley’s son, the American journalist James Foley, was kidnapped in northern Syria, and nearly 10 since that day in August 2014 when she would learn that he had been murdered by ISIS in a public beheading that would ricochet in video around the world. A whole decade. Time rushes past. And yet, for Diane, that moment is unending.
In American Mother, author Colum McCann tells Diane’s story as she recalls the months of his captivity, the efforts made to bring him home and the days following his death, in which Diane came face to face with one of the men responsible for her son’s kidnapping and torture. A testament to the power of radical empathy and moral courage, American Mother takes us inside one woman’s extraordinary journey to find connection in a world torn asunder, and to fight for others as a way to keep her son’s memory alive.
Sting described the book as “one of the most extraordinary stories that I have read in years”.
PARK & RIDE TO EVENT/TICKET DETAILS
Access to the venue will be via a Park & Ride service from Stereame Retail Park, Limerick Rd, Nenagh, E45 K379. The bus will leave at 6.30pm.
There will be a rosé and Cashel Blue Cheese reception sponsored by Country Choice, Nenagh, before the event.
Tickets, €35 (includes booking fee, reception and Park & Ride).
Booking from www.dnlf.ie/event/notes-of-hope.