Ireland
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The Rumpus Interview with Tomi Ungerer
Writer and illustrator Tomi Ungerer discusses his exile in Ireland, being a target of censorship, and his work’s recent resurgence of popularity in the US.
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A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing by Eimear McBride
McBride has said that she wants this book to be read fast, letting it wash over you, but the struggle to make sense and to fill in the unsaid is hard to resist.
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Profile of “Pangaeic” Writer David Mitchell
Fans of Cloud Atlas, a sextet of sweeping stylistic range, know well that Granta-recognized author David Mitchell has a knack for mimesis. But they may not know that he is also “uncommonly good at imitating nonhuman noises.” In anticipation of…
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100,000 Free Books Dumped in Skip
Cut to a skip adjacent the River Foyle in Derry, Ireland, where over 100,000, count ‘em, one-hundred thousand, books lie in massive piles, free for the taking. “It’s heartbreaking to see what was once my life’s work being dumped into…
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The Rumpus Interview with Ethel Rohan
Writer Ethel Rohan talks about Out of Dublin, her memoir in e-book form, as well as growing up in Ireland, her awe for human endurance, and giving voice to the silent.
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Where Betty Byrne Lived
Story is an integral part of the city of Dublin. Bronze statues of beloved writers roam the landscape, immortal: Wilde lounges “languidly on a crag in the park at Merrion Square,” while Joyce is “depicted rather more severely in bronze, leaning on his cane…
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The Rumpus Interview with Kevin Barry
Irish writer Kevin Barry sits down for a chat about life in County Sligo, not knowing what your stories are about until years after you’ve written them, and the summer he spent in a camping trailer on a West Cork…
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The Country Outside Us
In Ireland, I fell in love easily and often. On the bus from Galway to Dublin; in a smoky, centuries-old pub; on a Donegal beach, my hair wet with rain.
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Send A Letter Commemorating Irish Letters
What a cool way to celebrate Ireland’s storytelling tradition: a new Irish stamp features the text of an entire short-short by 17-year-old Dubliner Eoin Moore. Moore’s piece, about how “[t]he city embodies the people, and the people embody the city,”…
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Acts of Imagination
It is mildly surprising that the New York Times didn’t see John Jeremiah Sullivan’s essay “My Debt to Ireland” as fit to print in its Sunday magazine on a date closer to March 17, and, actually, it’s sort of a…
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Irish Writers Online
When my wife and I signed the lease on our new place, we fell into a discussion with our new landlord about writing and writers; not surprisingly, he’d come to the Rumpus to check out my work, and ended up…
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Happy Bloomsday!
Today is the 105th anniversary of Leopold Bloom’s one-day passage through the ordinary streets of Dublin in James Joyce’s Ulysses. Dubliners and Joyce-lovers around the world are celebrating the author as well as the book, with readings, races, reenactments, and…