February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
Published works: “The Shamrock and the Lily: The New York Irish and the Creation of a Transatlantic Identity, 1845-1921″(New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2005) and various shorter pieces
Personal: Associate professor of history, Franklin Pierce College, N.H.
What is your latest book about?
The book explores linkages between New York and Ireland from the Famine to Independence. Among them, the Irish Question exerted a remarkable impact over the later 19th-century settlement process, as evidenced by women’s collectives, Protestant fraternities, Gaelic Revival societies, and rhetoricians of all political stripes proliferating in the post-Famine decades. Within an immigrant population more diverse than unified, the overarching concern with Ireland’s freedom informed the creation of an Irish-American identity as unique as the transatlantic culture that forged it.
What is your writing routine? Are there ideal conditions?
I juggle writing with full-time teaching in a small liberal arts college. It’s a challenging mix. Summers and sabbaticals provide opportunities for completion of writing projects. Now that I think of it, the month of June is the ideal writing condition.
What advice to you have for aspiring writers?
Persevere! My view at this point is that time regularly devoted to writing results in achievement of goals. Prioritize, then make some progress each day.
Name three books that are memorable in terms of your reading pleasure?
I typically read history or fiction with a strong sense of history, and favor authors who can merge the serious-minded with the quirky and eccentric such as William Trevor, Terry Eagleton, and Molly Keane. A motley crew indeed. I’ve enjoyed “Finders Keepers: Selected Prose 1971-2001,” by Seamus Heaney and narratives such as “The Anglo-Irish,” by Terence de Vere White. I also like “solitary” works such as “A Year’s Turning” by Michael Viney, and the novels of Anita Brookner.
What book are you currently reading?
“An Aran Reader,” ed., Breandan and Ruairi O’hEithir, and “Women and Public Policy in Ireland: A Documentary History 1922-1997,” by Richard B. Finnegan and James L. Wiles.
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Is there a book you wish you had written?
Yes, a required text for those interested in New York Irish history…
Name a book that you were pleasantly surprised by?
Joseph O’Connor’s “Star of the Sea” turned out to be a more substantial read than I’d imagined.
If you could meet one author, living or dead, who would it be?
Cecil Woodham-Smith or Mary Wollstonecraft. I would like to meet either author on the basis of her pioneering work at junctures when few were thinking in scholarly terms about the Great Famine, in the case of Woodham-Smith, or about women’s rights, with regard to Wollstonecraft. Here are two female writers who made landmark contributions to their fields. I find them admirable on those grounds alone, but the fact that their work lives on to inspire subsequent generations elevates them even higher.
What book changed your life?
“Modern Ireland 1600-1972,” by R. F. Foster was influential in my introduction to the craft of history. Prior to that, I favored authors who could evoke a distinct sense of place and time–ranging from Eleanor Fairburn in “The White Seahorse” and Brendan Behan in “Borstal Boy” in my youth through the spectrum of authors featured in “The Oxford Book of Irish Short Stories” edited by William Trevor.
What is your favorite spot in Ireland?
The top of the Reek.
You’re Irish if …
the oddly parochial and the grandly cosmopolitan seamlessly blend.