Peter Quinn remembers Danny Cassidy.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author William Kennedy will be presented with the inaugural 2009 Eugene O'Neill Lifetime Achievement Award from the Irish American Writers and Artists, Inc. (IAW&A) in Manhattan on October 16, Eugene O'Neill's birthday.

Famous Irish singer Daniel O’Donnell is in the midst of a North American tour and, if the latest photos are anything to go by, he looks in great form.

IrishCentral's Bryan Fitzgerald takes a look at the New York Giants and the New York Jets as the Big Apple gets ready for another year of thrills and spills in the NFL.

Here is our annual two-part summer feature on the questions U.S. naturalization candidates can be asked during a citizenship interview, as provided by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service. Here are the first 50, with answers – next week's column will have the remaining 50 questions and answers.

A fleet of 100 chartered buses is standing by to ferry a sell-out crowd to a show by Irish singer Daniel O'Donnell. The concert, which takes place at 2pm in Albany on Monday, is a yearly ritual for O'Donnell's legion of fans who usually only see him on PBS specials. The buses will travel across the border from Canada and up from far-flung cities in Pennsylvania.

The Brady family name derives from the Gaelic McBradaigh, which was originally anglicized as McBrady, but the Mc is very seldom used in modern times. The vast majority of this power clan of Breffny, now the County of Cavan, come from Ulster. A smaller group of Bradys (formally O'Brady) come from County Clare.

Welcome to our second annual Most Influential Women list, dedicated to saluting the ladies who make things happen in all walks of Irish-American life.

A woman who claimed her neighbor molested her 12 years ago in Ireland has said she made the story up

For 22 years Joanie Madden and her female troupe Cherish the Ladies have toured the world with their Irish music and dance. Last week was one of those tour-de-force barnstorming series of shows stretching from Virginia to Connecticut.

THE new fees for most immigration benefits available through the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) will become effective on July 30, the agency announced on Tuesday.

FOLLOWING is our annual two-part summer feature on the questions U.S. naturalization candidates can be asked during a citizenship interview, as provided by the U.

If it's cultural stimulation that you are looking for as March and St. Patrick's Day approaches, the choices abound. Here is a tour of the horizon for upcoming shows with a trad bent.

"Roscoe," the latest book from Albany author William Kennedy, is a splendid novel: at once an exuberant elegy, a sad comedy, a realistic fable of life and death. In the seventh novel of Kennedy's Albany cycle, the meshed subjects are the stuff of the real world, from politics to love, corruption to honor. But there is also room for a ghost story (the epitome of an unburied past), several murders, suggestions of incest, much gaudy corruption, and the distinction between sin and vice.

Producing a list of 20 books which every Irish-American should read was both joyous and painful. The joy, obviously, came as we pored over the many volumes, revisiting the beautiful sentences, the haunted memories. The pain, however, was knowing that, inevitably, some brilliant books would have to be excluded.

IT would be so easy to write a story about the bygone days and era of the Catskill Mountains and, in particular, the tiny hamlet of East Durham which is the heart of the Irish Catskills. The latest setback is the loss of one of the more popular resorts, the historic Fern Cliff House over the winter, when it was sold to a group that saw potential in it for a summer camp for Jewish youth.

While it is a crushing blow, there is still a resiliency that seems to permeate the region when July rolls around and the annual Catskills Irish Arts Week (July 15-21) is about to encamp in rustic community just 2 1/2 hours north of New York City and less than an hour south of Albany, New York's capital.

The summer Irish festival season is now in full swing, and from the small-scale offerings to massive three-day music events, there's one for you, nationwide. This week the Irish Voice picks some tried and tested highlights.

July 13-15 sees the annual Irish American Heritage Festival in Chicago.

FROM the moment that he first set eyes on Ireland, artist John Kingerlee, 71, determined that it would become his home. The British-born artist first took a tour of Dingle Peninsula in Co. Kerry in 1981 and was immediately struck by the geological grandeur of the place, by the rocks and the sky, and he vowed to return as soon as possible.

MOTHER Nature has been very cruel to the Gulf and Caribbean areas this hurricane season, and so very devastating in the short and long term for the people who live there.

Complaining about the damp weather that beset the ICONS Festival in Canton, Massachusetts this past weekend would pale in comparison, even though the itinerant event that has moved from June to August to September this year in an attempt to seek the perfect conditions that would allow the weekend event to properly exploit its many assets.

No doubt, the heavy rain on Friday night and its softer showers on Sunday sandwiched Saturday's day of comfortable reprieve dampened the attendance - and the grounds - for the ambitious festival and the bottom line.

Here are 50 of the questions that U.S. naturalization candidates can be asked during a citizenship interview, as provided by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service.

Newly appointed New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand has a very poor record on immigration issues, a fact which will not endear her to many Irish activists. Gillibrand has Irish (Noonan) roots on her mother's side and is married to an English immigrant. Gillibrand has already been attacked by Latino groups for her anti-immigrant stance, and it could prove very problematic for her in a contested Democratic primary in two years.

SENATOR Hillary Clinton arrived late for the Irish American Presidential Forum in Manhattan last Wednesday but the crowd was kept entertained anyway. The event happened in the midtown offices of the Adrian Flannelly Irish radio show and of top Irish American lawyer John Dearie.

Over 100 Irish American leaders from all over the U.

St. Brigid's Spared by $20 Million Gift

"For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope; for who hopes for what he already sees? But if we hope for what we don't see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance."

(Romans 8:24,25)

The patience and prayers of the parishioners of St.

Obama for Irish Dinner

WHILE he may not be stopping in Ireland on his current world tour, Senator Barack Obama is apparently attending an Irish event in September.

Organizers say they have a qualified yes to the invitation to the Co-operation Ireland dinner in New York on September 24 which will be attended by among others, Martin McGuinness and Peter Robinson, Northern Ireland's deputy first minister and first minister.

The Co-operation Ireland dinner was postponed earlier in the year when McGuinness and then First Minster Ian Paisley were unable to attend.

The move to make Caroline Kennedy the new senator from New York seems sure to meet with stiff resistance from two of the major players involved, outgoing Senator Hillary Clinton and current senior Senator Chuck Schumer.

Kennedy has powerful supporters, most notably her uncle, Senator Edward Kennedy, as well as her cousin Robert Kennedy Junior. This is a family which knows how to get things done, the recent renaming of New York's Triboro Bridge as the Robert F.

Another Irish politician who is under active consideration for Clinton's seat is Buffalo area congressman Brian Higgins. Higgins is very active on Irish issues and is best remembered for attacking the Department of Homeland Security when they refused Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams a visa a few years back. Higgins replaced him as speaker at a Buffalo event.

A crowd of admirers awaited Peter Quinn when he came to Glucksman Ireland House, NYU on October 16th to launch Overlook Press's new edition of his award winning novel, "Banished Children of Eve," the tale of Irish-Americans in New York during the Civil War.

Many had read the much praised novel that celebrated writer William Kennedy called "terrific ..

A photo is a wonderful medium because it can tell a story in a thousand or ten thousand words depending on what proverb you adhere to and what kind of memories it unleashes. And photography’s ability to enhance other artistic endeavors allows for a greater appreciation by for the sympathetic and skillful lensmen who captures a certain place and time as a visual record of social importance. Traditional music feeds on such documentation of a broad community that cherishes both the roots and the preservation wherever it may be, but two of the most important are the Scoil Samhraidh Willie Clancy in