Irish Author Frank Delaney in Kansas City
There will be a book signing and talk by the Irish author and former BBC broadcaster Frank Delaney in Kansas City on Thursday, March 19, 2009 at 7pm at the Kansas City Public Library (Plaza Branch), sponsored by Rainy Day Books.
This is part of a nationwide book tour to promote Delaney’s new book, Shannon, will is being released on February 10, 2009 by Random House.
A couple of years ago I campaigned unsuccessfully to get this Irish author at the first Kansas City Literary Festival held down at the Plaza - because I like Frank Delaney. You may remember it had a strong Irish element with Malachy McCourt and Larry Kirwan making appearances.
Shannon is a powerful account of salvation, belief, duty, and the healing power of discovering one’s roots. In the novel, the benign quirks of Irish myth and the menace of Irish history all coalesce into an epic narrative of one young American’s travels to his family’s beginning and through a hopeful nation rushing to the future. The Kirkus review called it “a rousing tale of forbidden love, civil war, horrible death and other things Irish.”
This video is of Mr. Delaney introducing Shannon and talking about his connection to the Shannon region and the River:
Kirkus gives it a good review calling it:
a fine adventure in storytelling. A well-crafted, satisfying work of historical fiction, as are all of Delaney’s novels; respectful of the facts while not cowed by them, and full of life.
Frank Delaney’s best-selling and much loved novel Ireland (2005) was described by the Washington Post as “an intimate epic that is at once a sprawling account of 2,000 years of tumultuous Irish history and a meditation on the enduring importance of stories.”
His 2nd work of historical fiction, Tipperary (2007), was also a bestseller, and twins the story of Ireland’s fight for independence and the civil war that followed with that of his fictional hero, Charles O’Brien, an itinerant healer in love with an English woman. Shannon is the 3rd of his big Irish novels.
Frank Delaney has interviewed more than 3,000 authors for his BBC and other UK television and radio shows (Book Shelf, The Book Show, Frank Delaney, and Word of Mouth.) A former judge of the Booker Prize, he has conducted and chaired hundreds of festival sessions in the UK and his native Ireland, bringing to live audiences at great events such as the Edinburgh (where he was Literature Director), Cheltenham and Dartmouth Festivals, the great names of our time, Gore Vidal, John Updike, Scott Berg, and many more.
He has made documentaries for the BBC on characters as diverse as James Joyce (on whom he did a one-man show at London’s National Theatre), George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde and Norman Mailer; has spoken and lectured widely on Ireland, Irish history and related politics and terrorism. In the ’70s and ’80s, Delaney was a BBC reporter in Belfast covering the bombings, shootings, kidnappings, and sieges that characterized the virtual war known as the Irish ‘Troubles.’
Delaney knows a lot of stuff in other words, and he sounds great. He’s been living up in New York and connecticut for some time and should you need more information on him (you really don’t - go to this talk and you’ll enjoy it) you can get more information on his official website.
I’ll go ahead and post this in the main Irish events over in the far sidebar, and onto the full blown detailed Kansas City Irish Events calendar just as soon as I revamp it.
Update: A review of “Shannon” by Pete Maher of the Midwest Irish Focus has now been posted.
See St Patrick’s Day 2009 events in Kansas City.
See Also:
• St Patrick Fact #1: Inflatable Shamrock
• St Patrick Fact #2: Black Puddings
• St Patrick Fact #3: The Irish Panda
• St Patrick’s Day 2008 in Dublin, Ireland
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