I attended the Peregrine Readings at the Irish Writers’ Centre last night. The readings are sponsored by the Arts Council under their Touring and Dissemination Scheme. The readers were Thomas Kilroy, Evelyn Conlon and James Lawless. You can read more about each of them here.
All readers were received warmly and took the time at the end to answer questions and chat over a glass of wine or two. Thomas Kilroy read from a work-in-progress memoir set around his native town of Callan in Co. Kilkenny, where he grew up the son of a Garda Sergeant among a large family. I was reminded in parts of George O’Brien’s brilliant memoir of growing up in Lismore in Waterford, The Village of Longing, which I read for the first time only recently. Evelyn Conlon read a short story about a man in retirement which bristled with the peculiar awkwardness of leaving behind a working life and yet was very moving, and James Lawless read extracts from two of his novels to great effect. The first from Peeling Oranges (2007) and the second from The Avenue (2010).
These writers now take to the road with readings in Sligo and Longford on 19th and 2oth October, but there will be other readings from other writers throughout October and November as part of the series. Details here.
