-
bound for Squarebound
This Saturday, 18 June 2011 there is a one-day Irish comic book creators’ convention going on in the Irish Writers’ Centre in Dublin called Squarebound. The Guest of Honour is Gerry Hunt (In Dublin City, Blood Upon the Rose), and there is a €5 Entrance Fee for the entire day. Here’s the schedule of events: 10.00 Comic Cast Panel: Liam Geraghty, Craig O’Connor 11.00 Atomic Diner Panel: Robert Curley, Barry Keegan, Maura McHugh 12.00 Michael Carroll: How to Write for 2000AD 13.00 Lunch Break 14.00 Gerry Hunt Interview 15.00 Alfonso Zapico 16.00 O’Brien Press Panel: Ivan O’Brien & Alan Nolan 17.00 Irish Small Press Comics Creators’ Panel I’ll be there…
-
FanSciCon 2011
University College Dublin is hosting a new sf/f convention called FanSciCon, which will be taking place all-day on Friday, April 15th. The convention is free to enter, and the poster gives you an idea of the kinds of events that will be taking place. Guests listed are: Robert Curley, Stephen Doweny, Alan Nolan, Barry Keegan, Paddy Lynch, CE Murphy, Micheal Carroll, Deirdre de Barra, Hilary Lawler, Gar Shanley, and me. The event is in aid of Dublin Wicklow Mountain Rescue Team, which is a great cause, and members of the Team will be attending (as long as nobody gets lost up a mountain!). It looks like it will be a…
-
women in comics in UK/Ireland – overview
There are occasions when perhaps it’s best not to promise a blog post on a subject. Regular readers might remember that in January I commented upon the utter lack of women comic book guests at the forthcoming Kapow! comic book convention in London. This was followed by an entry in which I posted a number of women artists/writers working in the field in the UK (and Ireland), with a promise to put together a much more detailed listing of women working in the field. The follow-up post has been a long time coming because: There are loads of women working in comics in the UK and Ireland People might remember…
-
women in comics in UK/Ireland – redux
The promised follow-up to the British women in comics blog post in January. I’ve written an overview of this entry also. A list of female writers and artists (colourists, inkers, pencilers, etc.) who work in sequential storytelling in the UK and Ireland. I’ve created a permanent page for this list on my web site – it’s linked on the sidebar. This post will no longer be updated. All further updates will be on the page. Update: for a comprehensive overview of the history of women who have worked in the comic book industry in the UK read The Inking Woman, edited by Nicola Streeten and Cath Tate, published by Myriad.…
-
Octocon 2010
This weekend I’ll be a guest at the 2010 Octocon convention in the Camden Court Hotel, Dublin. The Guest of Honour is George R.R. Martin, best known as the author of the A Song of Ice and Fire fantasy novels. The first novel in the series, Game of Thrones, is currently being filmed in Northern Ireland as a HBO mini-series. Its tone has been described as ‘Sopranos with Swords’, and since HBO rarely does anything badly, this could be the fantasy television series of a generation. It’s a considerable coup for an Irish convention to have such an established author as a guest, and I hope there will be a…
-
two nobles
There are a lot of Holly trees my local woods. Not that you’d notice during the summer, when the other trees flounce about in their finery. Lately, I’ve noticed Holly’s re-emergence as one of the dominant personalities of the woodlands as we spin further into autumn. The above photograph is of a Holly tree growing under an Oak which I took yesterday. In Irish lore there were four classifications of trees, the highest being Airig Fedo, or Nobles of the Wood. There were seven trees in that caste, including Oak and Holly. As I considered the mythology of trees, as well as this image of the two nobles standing beside…
-
Autumn
I spotted this fine fellow on my way into the woods to walk my dog this morning. It’s a good example of Coprinus comatus, also known as the shaggy ink cap or the lawyer’s wig, among others. I usually refer to it as the shaggy ink cap (or, as I misspoke this morning upon my return – the shaggy inkwell). This mushroom erupted and flourished in the mere 48 hours since my last visit to this location, or else I was singularly unobservant during my previous trip. Change can occur in a day or two, if you notice. It was the first thing I spotted on this occasion, and I…
-
"walk on air against your better judgement"
Nobel Prize-winning Irish poet, author and playwright Seamus Heaney has been awarded the £40,000 David Cohen Prize for Literature. Every two years the David Cohen Prize is bestowed upon a writer, novelist, short-story writer, poet, essayist or dramatist in recognition of an entire body of work, written in the English language. Previous winners include Derek Mahon, Harold Pinter, Doris Lessing, and V.S. Naipaul. By strange coincidence I happened to read Heaney’s new poem called “In the Attic” a couple of days ago. It was published in The New Yorker last month. Because Heaney has enjoyed a long and successful career as a poet, and many of us studied him in…
-
one for the calendar
IFTN mentions an event that should interest Irish screenwriters, playwrights, and film aficionados. A new play by New York playwright and Oscar-winning screenwriter John Patrick Shanley (Moonstruck, Alive) will debut in Ireland on Thursday 26th October at the Abbey Theatre. The Tony-winning play is called Doubt, and is set in a Bronx Catholic school in 1964. Following the premier of the play there will be a free post-show event, which will start around 9.30pm. Oscar nominated Irish writer/director Jim Sheridan (My Left Foot, In America) will be “In Conversation” with John Patrick Shanley, and the two men will discuss the play, Hollywood, and filmmaking. It should be an event well…
