Tip Sheet
by Cahir O'DohertyRSS 
Recent Posts
- Review: Learning to live with the past - “That’s That” by Colin Broderick
- New York Irish Craic Fest is back for benefit night - Film festival brings Mundy, Julie Feeny and more
- Silent night in the country - Conor McPherson’s “The Weir” at the Irish Rep
- In twilight years and refusing to go quietly - 'These Halcyon Days' at The Irish Arts Center - VIDEO
- A look at books: Ireland’s growing cadre of first rate thrillers and personal essays of home
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In Northern Ireland this is especially true. If ever there was a place where history keeps playing out on a loop tape over and over, it’s there.
So the most challenging thing you can do, in a place that’s reflexively repressive, is try to write your own story or step outside the one you’ve been handed at birth. Mold breakers more often find it’s themselves who are being broken there.
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The Last Girl
Ireland's growing cadre of first rate thriller writers is already a thing to marvel at, and Jane Casey is emerging as one of its most accomplished members. In 'The Last Girl' her nervy young detective Maeve Kerrigan sets out on her third (about to be bestselling) case, and this time it’s a murder at a well to do home.
The house happens to belong to defense attorney Phillip Kennford, a man who isn’t particularly beloved by the police for his tendency to get convicted criminals off the hook.
Casey excels at creating plot complications when you least expect them, and her characters continually throw up hooks and snares that you can’t see coming. She’s a born thriller writer.
By Racer Lynch
It hasn’t been two decades since the last Magdalene Laundry in Ireland closed in 1996. That’s well within the living memory of young adults. The question is, what to do with all that suffering now that its come to light?
Even now most would prefer to look the other way, exactly the way they used to when these unpaid gulags were in operation. The Irish government had to be browbeaten for years by a group of committed former inmates and their offspring before finally offering a full apology. That apology was offered in February 2013, by the way, just two months ago.
Try to book your tickets now because they're going to become sought after. This show delivers the best new musical on Broadway since The Book of Mormon broke the bank.
By Sean Sexton and Christine Kinealy
Sometimes a photograph can be a door you can walk through into the past. In The Irish: A Photohistory, Sean Sexton and Christine Kinealy have assembled one of the most evocative and moving collections of the life of the Irish over the past two centuries that I have ever seen.
The first Irish photographs date from 1840, six years before the unforeseen catastrophe that would come to define the tragedy of British colonialism in Ireland.
By Benjamin Black
Benjamin Black is the pen name of award winning Irish novelist and Booker Prize winner John Banville, which means that the prose stylings of this impressively literary whodunit (and the focus on fully realized characters) are much finer than the genre usually affords.
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By J.P. Mallory
About 80 million people trace their origins to Ireland. The question that hasn’t really been asked in nearly 80 years is how did the Irish people come into being themselves?
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for tickets and showtimes.
The Nice born French pastry chef became a world class chocolatier right here in New York City after challenging himself to create an exciting new dessert repertoire.
In 2009, Payard opened the François Chocolate Bar, and since then the former James Beard Foundation pastry chef of the year has been delighting new Yorkers with his chocolate and seasonal fruit menus.
By Geraldine Comiskey
Ireland is the acknowledged home of surrealism and Geraldine Comiskey (a roving reporter for the Sunday World) often has occasion to encounter it at its source.
Having a journalistic resume that includes getting set on fire by stuntmen, dancing on the wings of a World War II bi-plane (well, who hasn’t?) and joining a circus trapeze troupe, she’s clearly ready for anything.
The 1st Irish Theatre Festival deserves accolades for bringing these talents to an American stage, and Irish drama has been enriched by their appearance.
Prodigals And GeniusesBy Brendan Lynch
The Irish love a good pub within walking reach and Ireland’s most gifted artists and thinkers have been no exception. As Paris has it’s Left Bank and New York has its Upper West Side, for decades Dublin’s bohemian quarter has been centered around Baggot Street and Leeson Street, fringed by the Grand Canal.
Among it’s familiars were four winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature and nearly every major Irish writer of the 19 century, including Oscar Wilde, W.B. Yeats, George Bernard Shaw and even Samuel Beckett.
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The Colours of Man
By Micheal O’Conghaile
Michael O’Conghaile is already a famous short story writer in the Irish language, but this new collection of his most celebrated works translated into English will introduce him to a larger (and I am certain appreciative) new audience.
A typical offering in this brilliantly funny collection of short stories is Death at a Funeral, where O’Conghaile illustrates just why he’s widely revered as an Irish language author. O’Conghaile’s works illustrate what the poet W.B. Yeats called the Irish preference for a swift current in both language and human interaction.
Lucien was a shy boy who has grown into a overly cautious and haunted young man (Christian Conn) and Anthony (Blake DeLong) is a ne'er-do-well who was struck by lightening when he was six and looks fated to live out a damaged existence under the watchful eye of his old friend.
Morgan underscores the enduring love between the two friends, which crucially runs just a little deeper than the mistrust that occasionally brims to the surface between them. As adolescents we learn that both men once loved a young woman who took her own life. The affection was so deep, the loss so profound, they can barely bring themselves to speak of it.
By Maura Mulligan
Maura Mulligan is perhaps best known to the Irish community in New York for her works as a dancer and actor at the Irish Arts Center, and as the founder of the Irish language school An Scoil Gaelige.
In Call of the Lark, her atmospheric and heartfelt new memoir, she conjures an Ireland and a way of life that may be as irretrievably lost to us now as Atlantis.
Oscar’s Shadow
By Eibhear Walsh
After his imprisonment and death, poet and dramatist Oscar Wilde continued to be a visible presence in popular culture in Ireland in a way that did not happen in England.
James Joyce had a lot to do with it. He wisely read Wilde’s sexuality and his art as challenges to the dominant political and moral hegemony of the British Empire (bolstering his own fight with official Ireland in the process).
Kazee, 36, who gives his all to his portrait of a wounded young Dubliner with a song in his heart, lost his mother at Easter whilst the show was still in preparation. Lat night Kazee remembered her in an emotional tribute that brought supporters to their feet.
In his acceptance speech he quoted Arthur O'Shaughnessy, the poet of Irish descent, saying : 'We are the music makers and we are the dreamers of dreams.'
, or call 401-486-9601.
By Jane Casey
By Lara Marlowe
Lara Marlowe is best known as a distinguished foreign correspondent for The Irish Times, but she is equally well known in Ireland for her writings on French art. Painted With Words is her luminous new collection of essays on some of the world’s greatest painters.
“Painting is not done to decorate apartments,” wrote Pablo Picasso. “It is an instrument of war against brutality and darkness.”
By Darina Allen
Can you call yourself Irish if you don’t own at least two Irish cookery books by Darina Allen? Simply put no one else has ever assembled the classic Irish dishes with the range and scope and appreciation for Irish tradition that she has.
In Irish Traditional Cooking Allen has assembled over 300 recipes that are as wholesome and unpretentious and the books title. Allen is a seasonal cook, which means she lists dishes that are in tune with the produce on offer year round, which makes this book an especially worthwhile purchase for discerning cooks.
Edited By Emily Firetog and Declan Meade
Turn heads and maybe win some new admirers before or after the parade. You can pick 'em up by clicking here.
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More US politics news from IrishCentral
John Walker Lindh, the American Taliban, seeks Irish citizenship - POLL
The Academy's decision to overlook his work was a widely lamented travesty, but an expected one, considering their track record on mature themes and nominations.
Male nudity has always been a bridge too far for the sensitive types who compile the nominations but thankfully Fassbender's not concerned. In fact he recently had a laugh at all the fuss his latest film caused in some quarters.
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Based on the life of Ghandi, with illuminating reference to the lifelong struggle of fellow titan Martin Luther King, the performance achieved moments of extraordinary beauty.
This being a Phillip Glass work it was also ponderous, aching, celebratory, stirring and at times - yes - seriously dull.
'I wanted to make people more aware of our veterans’ sacrifices and help put people’s lives into perspective,' Sanders told CNN.
Photographed above is James Tobin, who fought in the Pacific.
Here's an Irishman's view of the Wall Street shenanigans. The language is colorful and probably not safe for work - you have been warned!
Asking Apple's iPhone Siri app to 'create a reminder' is a bit of a challenge in Scotland:
'The writers we’re bringing over are Irish writers we’ve been associated with for a few years,' says Stinging Fly editor Declan Meade. 'It’s work that we want to showcase. And we’ve also asked Irish writers who live here in New York to contribute to the event as well. So the works will be from the perspective of people who live here and from the people we’re bringing over from Ireland.'
Not only a magazine, but now also a publishing press, in recent years The Stinging Fly has become the recognized launch pad for a new generation of Irish talent. Created as the Celtic Tiger economy was taking flight, since that time it has helped launch the careers of writers like Emma Donoghue, Eamon Grennan, Kerry Hardie, Michael Harding, Claire Keegan and James Kelman.
