NUI Galway to host McGahern lecture

The James Hardiman Library in association with the MA in Writing and the Moore Institute at NUI Galway will host a public lecture next week to mark the 10th anniversary of the passing of celebrated Irish writer, John McGahern.

The lecture will be delivered by the renowned John McGahern scholar, Denis Sampson, and will take place on Wednesday next, April 27, at 7pm in the Hardiman Research Building at NUI Galway.

McGahern died on March 30, 2006, and the university is home to the John McGahern Archive, which Sampson will use for his lecture. Sampson produced the first full-length study of McGahern’s works, Outstaring Nature’s Eye, in 1993, and his enduring critical attention to the writer culminated in his book Young John McGahern: Becoming a Novelist, published by Oxford University Press in 2012.

“The nature of John McGahern’s Archive here at NUI Galway ideally suits it to different kinds of exploratory readers,” said Dr John Kenny, John McGahern Lecturer in Creative Writing and Director of the MA in Writing, NUI Galway.

“Scholars of McGahern, or of contemporary Irish fiction and writing, naturally find it a highly valuable resource, but the papers also hold great promise for any student or devotee of writing intent on emulating the best models for creative practice and artistic dedication,” he said.

NUI Galway librarian John Cox said the university “treasure[s] the John McGahern archive as an enabler of new research and are greatly looking forward to Denis Sampson’s lecture as a very appropriate way of marking the tenth anniversary of John’s passing”.

In his lecture, Sampson will discuss unpublished drafts of Amongst Women from within the McGahern Archive and will reveal the links between the novel and some of the earlier McGahern short stories in his collections Getting Through and High Ground.

The lecture will be accompanied by an exhibition of select material from the McGahern Archive and is free of charge and open to all.

At the same time as the McGahern lecture, the next in the series of public interviews organised by the Centre for Irish Studies as part of its programme of commemoration of the 1916 Rising will also take place in NUI Galway.

The interview will feature Robert Ballagh in conversation with Vincent Woods and will take place from 6.30pm to 8pm in the Ó hEocha Theatre in the Arts Millennium Building.

Ballagh is one of Ireland’s leading contemporary artists and is a founding member of the Reclaim the Vision of 1916 citizens’ initiative, which was established to draw attention to the contemporary relevance of the Irish revolution.

The interview is free to attend and open to the public.