Irish Literature Festival - Edna O' Brien & Dr Maureen O'Connor | The Irish Cultural Centre

Описание: This is the special event which closed our 2021 Irish Literary Festival at The Irish Cultural Centre: a rare recorded interview between our esteemed ICC Patron, the late Edna O’Brien and Dr Maureen O’Connor.

EDNA O’BRIEN was a prolific novelist, short story writer and playwright. She published 18 novels, eight short story collections, six plays and six non-fiction pieces, which includes two biographies: James Joyce (1999) and Byron in Love (2009); and her memoir Country Girl (2012). In a literary career spanning over six decades since the publication of her ground-breaking debut novel, The Country Girls (1960), she not only established herself as the leading figure in contemporary Irish writing, but she also acquired a formidable international literary reputation. In addition to numerous awards for individual works, such as The European Prize for Literature for House of Splendid Isolation (1995) and The Frank O’Connor Short Story Award for Saints and Sinners (2011), Edna also received several prestigious lifetime achievement awards. These include The Irish Pen Lifetime Achievement Award (2001), The American Medal of Honour for Literature from the National Art Club (2002), The Ulysses Medal (2006), The Bob Hughes Lifetime Achievement Award (2009), her appointment as a Saoithe of Aosdána, Ireland’s highest literary award (2015), an honorary Dame of the Order of the British Empire (2028), The David Cohen Prize for Literature (2019), The Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence (2020) and, most recently, her appointment as a Commander of Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, France’s highest honour for the arts.

Born in Tuamgraney, County Clare, Ireland, on 15 December 1930, Edna O'Brien was not only a novelist but a visionary whose literary prowess transcended boundaries. She had an unparalleled ability to capture poignant portrayals of women and of Irish women’s experiences. Her evocative storytelling and fearless exploration of societal norms, at a time when talking about topics like sex and the female body were of great taboo in Catholic Ireland, have forever changed the landscape of Irish literature. Her novel ‘The Country Girls’ was banned, burned and scorned as ‘filth’ in Ireland, leading it to become one of the most famous and best loved novels of the 20th Century.

Although, like her mentor James Joyce, she lived in exile from Ireland for much of her literary life, Edna remained deeply rooted in her Irish heritage. Edna's works resonate with authenticity, painting vivid portraits of life in Ireland and a universal human condition. Like a master painter, she crafted narratives that spoke to the heart, illuminating the struggles, triumphs, and complexities of existence with unparalleled grace and depth. She was one of the bravest of writers, her storytelling, always beautiful, defiant, fierce and strong, broke boundaries, shattered silences and dared to shine a light in the darkest of places. In her late 80s, Edna twice travelled alone to Nigeria to do research for her last novel, 'Girl', based on the Nigerian schoolgirls who were kidnapped and escaped from Boko Haram. The result was a profound and extraordinary, courageous work of enduring and towering feminine strength and deep humanity.

In September 2023, Edna’s theatre play, ‘Joyce’s Women’, played to packed houses and received standing ovations every night during its run at Dublin’s Abbey Theatre. At the time of her death, Edna was in the process of completing her major nonfiction biography about the life and work of T.S Eliot.

Edna said she wished to go out ‘as someone who spoke the truth”. She always said “writing remains as essential to her as breathing, “if less easy.” She thought for a moment. “I would be so lonely on earth if I didn’t have the possibility and freedom to write. I will go to my grave changing a word and there is always the absolutely right word.”

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DR. MAUREEN O’CONNOR is a Lecturer in English at University College Cork. She has published widely in Irish Studies and is the author of The Female and the Species: The Animal in Irish Women’s Writing (2010); editor of Back to the Future of Irish Studies: Festschrift for Tadhg Foley (2010); co-editor, with Kathryn Laing and Sinéad Mooney, of Edna O'Brien: New Critical Perspectives (2006); with Lisa Colletta, of Wild Colonial Girl: Essays on Edna O'Brien (2006); and with Tadhg Foley, of Ireland and India: Colonies, Culture, and Empire (2006). Maureen’s book Edna O’Brien and the Art of Fiction was published in 2021, not long before this interview.