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News and Events
The Disposable Stories - Wednesday 21st April !
Cover of The Disposable Stories
On Wednesday, April 21, from 8.30pm onward, De Barra’s Spoken Word will host a reading of the ‘The Disposable Stories’, a new multimedia literary magazine, created by Emily Titsworth.
Originally from Mount Olive, Illinois in the US, Emily has been resident in Cork in the past year. The ten contributors on the night – including DeBarra’s very own Lauren Cavanagh – are all students on the Creative Writing MA programme at University College Cork and also contributors to the magazine.
For this particular project, each participant took two photographs using a disposable camera. Once developed, the photos were randomly distributed among them, the pictures serving as ekphrastic writing prompts: Hence ‘The Disposable Stories’ title.
Ekphrasis is a Greek word. According to the dictionary it means, ‘Calling up a subject before the eyes with visual vividness’. So words are used to create a ‘picture in the mind’ but one that can be compared to the actual picture that inspired it. It says something about how all our minds can work so differently, even when faced with the exact same visual (or crime scene, but that’s a different story).
Further information about the event can be found on DeBarra’s Spoken Word YouTube channel that features a video. Emily explains on the video how a search for inspiration led her to come up with the disposable camera idea and why she likes the restriction of “having to capture something in just two shots” instead of the seemingly endless (but often meaningless) possibilities of a digital phone camera. Plus, how her home town is connected to this part of Ireland via a remarkable woman called Mother Jones, aka Mary G. Harris, ‘the most dangerous woman in America’ who was probably born in Blarney Street, Cork, and buried in the Union Miners Cemetery in Mount Olive. Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night also gets a look-in.
Following the readings, a brief exercise that will encourage audience members to write their own piece in response to one of the ‘disposable photos’ that hasn’t been used yet. They can then read out loud what they’ve produced, if they so want. The prize? A virtual pint of genuinely Irish Guinness “from the comfort of your own home”. The evening will close with an Open Mic that is open to all-comers from everywhere.
A Zoom link will be sent to the mailing list and posted on DeBarra’s Spoken Word on the day. If you wish to be added to the list, please email debarrasspokenword@gmail.com.
Creative Writing Reading Series: Nuala O'Connor. Wednesday 14th April, 6pm. Booking Open now !
Nuala O’Connor lives in Co. Galway, Ireland. Her fifth novel, NORA, is about Nora Barnacle, wife and muse to James Joyce; it appeared in January 2021 in the USA and will be out in Ireland in April 2021. Her new chapbook of historical flash fiction, Birdie, was recently published by Arlen House. Nuala is editor at flash e-zine Splonk. (www.nualaoconnor.com / Twitter: @NualaNiC)
https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/creative-writing-at-university-college-cork-reading-series-nuala-oconnor-tickets-150049266395
This is an online event. A Zoom link, along with further details and information, will be sent to attendees via email by 6 pm on Tuesday 13th April. You may need to review your email preferences to ensure that emails from eventbrite are not marked as junk or spam.
(Photo by Úna O'Connor)
Laura McKenna shortlisted for the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year 2021 !!!!!
Congratulations to Laura McKenna!
Her debut novel, Words to Shape My Name, has been shortlisted for the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year 2021!
What a wonderful achievement and best of luck !
Sandra Beasley Poetry Reading, Wednesday 31st March 6pm. Booking Now Open!!!
The next event in the School of English UCC 2021 Reading Series is with the author Sandra Beasley, in conversation with Eibhear Walshe.
About this Event
We are delighted to announce that our 2021 online reading series will continue on Wednesday 31st March, at 6 pm, with the poet and author Sandra Beasley reading from her work.
Sandra Beasley is the author of four poetry collections—Made to Explode, Count the Waves, I Was the Jukebox, which won the 2009 Barnard Women Poets Prize, and Theories of Falling—as well as Don’t Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales from an Allergic Life, a disability memoir and cultural history of food allergies. She served as the editor for Vinegar and Char: Verse from the Southern Foodways Alliance. Honors for her work include the 2019 Munster Literature Centre’s John Montague International Poetry Fellowship, a 2015 NEA fellowship, and five DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities fellowships. She lives in Washington, D.C.
This is an online event. A Zoom link, along with further details and information, will be sent to attendees via email by 6 pm on Tuesday 30th March (you may need to review your email preferences to ensure that emails from eventbrite are not marked as junk or spam).
https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/creative-writing-at-university-college-cork-reading-series-sandra-beasley-tickets-147766687139
(Photo by Andrew Lightman)