The Laureate for Irish Fiction, Colm Tóibín, hosts ‘The Art of Reading’ Podcast in Cashel Library.
Maura Barrett, Cashel Library, Reports: –
The ‘Art of Reading’ is a monthly book club hosted by Irish novelist, short story writer, essayist, journalist, critic, playwright and poet Colm Tóibín, the Laureate for Irish Fiction. It is available to library book clubs across the country and offered as an online event for readers and booklovers everywhere on the last Thursday of every month.
Since February, the Laureate has met a different library book club each month to discuss a novel by an Irish writer, highlighting outstanding Irish writing and celebrating the reader and book clubs.
In November 2022, Colm Tóibín comes to the bookclubs in Cashel Library, where he will record live his podcast that will be aired live on the last Thursday in the month, through the Arts Council website and social media
The selected titles include new work by contemporary Irish writers as well as novels from the past, that the Laureate wishes to bring to a new generation of readers.
Readers, book lovers and book clubs everywhere are invited to join in the Art of Reading with the Laureate, to read these outstanding books and to engage in reading in a deep and focused way.
The Poet Laureate will discuss Elizabeth Bowen’s ‘The Last September’ with noted Cork Novelist and Poet Thomas McCarthy, before opening the discussion out to the Book Clubs.
Note: There are a limited number of spaces available to interested readers for this event and early booking is advised.
Please contact Maura Barrett in Cashel Library on Tel: 062 63825, to secure a place at this event.
Colm Toibin FRSL
Colm Toibin was born in Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford in 1955.
He studied at University College Dublin and lived in Barcelona between 1975 and 1978.
His work has been translated into more than thirty languages. He is a regular contributor to the New York Review of books and a contributing editor at the London Review of Books.
Between 2006 and 2013 he was a member of the Irish Arts Council. He has twice been Visiting Stein Writer at Stanford University and has also been a visiting writing at the University of Texas at Austin.
He taught at Princeton from 2009 to 2011 and was Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Manchester in 2011.
He is currently Mellon Professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia and Chancellor of Liverpool University. He is President of Listowel Writers Week and a member of the Board of Druid Theatre.
His second collection of stories ‘The Empty Family’, published in 2010, was shortlisted for the Frank O’Connor Prize.
His book of essays on Henry James ‘All a Novelist Needs’, appeared also in 2010.
Also, in 2012, his novel ‘The Testament of Mary’ was published and short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. In April 2013, ‘The Testament of Mary’ opened on Broadway, with Fiona Shaw, and was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Play. In 2013 it was released as an audiobook with Meryl Streep.
Colm Toibin’s novel ‘Nora Webster’, published in 2014, won the Hawthornden Prize.
His ‘On Elizabeth Bishop’, published in 2015, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism.
His ninth novel ‘House of Names’ appeared in 2017.
In May 2017, he co-curated ‘Henry James and American Painting’ at the Morgan Library.
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