Reading Ireland is a new on-line quarterly publication founded by Dundalk native Adrienne Leavy to promote Irish literature and contemporary Irish writing, both in Ireland and in the United States.
Here is what the editor Adrienne Leavy had to say:-
“Each issue will focus on a specific genre or type of literature. For example, the summer issue, which was recently published, Reading Ireland focused on Irish crime fiction. Contributors included award winning Irish crime fiction writers Louise Phillips and Declan Burke, along with regular guest columnist Des Kenny from Kennys Bookshop in Galway.
In the autumn, the focus will be on poetry, and the winter issue will concentrate on Irish drama. In recognition of the vital contribution that Little Magazines have historically made to the promotion of Irish literature and culture, each issue will also look at a Little Magazine from the past. Issue one can be downloaded at no cost under the subscribe tab on the website www.readingireland.net For more information, please contact Adrienne atleavya@cox.net”
For a snippet from my article on the Rise of Irish Crime Fiction, see below…..
Irish Crime Fiction – Emerald Noir or Emerald Diversity?
There has been a lot of discussion of late about the rise of Irish crime fiction, and rightly so. Over the last decade we’ve seen a remarkable growth in Irish crime fiction writing, with more Irish writers than ever choosing the crime genre for creative expression. People have coined phrases such as Emerald Noir or Celtic Crime, to encompass this phenomenon, but it is more than the increased numbers of Irish writers now exploring the genre, it is also the wide diversity of their work, the sub-genres within it, the topics, location and settings, and the variety by which Irish crime fiction is portraying a sense of not only how we feel about the world around us, but how we choose to write about it.
Irish crime fiction was described as being a very big tent by Dr Brian Cliff, Assistant Professor in English and Director of Irish Studies at Trinity College Dublin. During the last crime fiction festival held at the college, a festival which had unprecedented numbers attending, when asked about Irish crime fiction, he said, “Irish novelists set their work as far afield as Jane Casey’s London, John Connolly’s America, and Conor Fitzgerald’s Rome, and they do so with a broad palette from psychological crime novels to international thrillers, from socially engaging hard-boiled fiction to supernatural mysteries.”
John Connolly and many others believe that Irish crime fiction has reached its own Golden Age, not simply because of the numbers of Irish authors now writing within the field, and the diversity involved, but also because of the high quality in terms of adventurousness and critical acclaim. “It’s a kind of coming of age for Irish crime fiction,’ says John, the creator of the highly successful Charlie Parker series.
Inevitably, with an explosion in artistic expression, covering both historical and contemporary fiction, the big question is why is Irish Crime fiction booming?
Some link the creative development to the rise and fall of the so called Celtic Tiger in Ireland, and there are good arguments to support this, not least of which is the realisation that crime fiction is so often drawn to explore society and the interactions which exist, especially when people are tested. Certainly, there has been a massive period of change in Ireland, one which has left a number of questions unanswered about Irish society. On face value, this social change may not appear to be obviously connected to the rise in Irish historical crime writing, with novelists such as Kevin Mc Carthy, Michael Russell, Anthony Quinn, Andrew Hughes, Conor Brady and Stuart Neville, writing about times past, but in many ways the rise in historical crime fiction makes sense, as it is an effective means of questioning who we are as a people, by going back and reflecting on what has gone before……To Download a FREE copy of Reading Ireland click HERE
