Daniel Wade, award-winning playwright, poet, essayist, and novelist, is making his second appearance in Trasna this week. Following his memorable tribute to poet Dermot Healy, last year, Dublin-born Wade has been actively pursuing his writing career and is now celebrating the release of his historical novel, A Land Without Wolves.…
Rooted in Brooklyn By Malcolm Sharps Prompted by Betty Smith’s iconic novel of childhood, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Malcolm Sharps reflects on his own childhood and family life and attempts a comparison Betty Smith, author of the semi-autobiographical A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, wrote in an introduction to a…
Autumn is the season that embraces reflection: thoughtful persons give thanks for their harvest even as they mourn the [human] losses that befell them during the time past. In the poems she reads for Trasna, works from her newly published collection Reshaping the Light, Irish writer Breda Joyce voices the…
Wormwood By Stephen O’Connor Just before noon, the cloud bank that had hunched over the city like a great gray cat skulked off to the west, giving way to light. Lowell always looked beautiful to me in the sun: red brick and gray stone under blue. Along the cobbled streets…
Odysseus Wandering (How I Became a Prison Guard) By Tim Trask Here’s how it started. I’m on an overnight flight from San Francisco to Boston on January 10-11, 1969, after spending a year in the Republic of Viet Nam. There aren’t many people on the flight, but even the few…
Boarding School Blues: Chapter 21 By Louise Peloquin Ch. 21: Inspection Desk inspection replaced morning chores the Saturday before Thanksgiving. Blanche and her classmates welcomed the shake-up in the schedule and felt confident that Madeleine’s tidying techniques would serve them well. “Girls, Sister Gerald will soon join us. We want…
On the morning of Wednesday September 20th 1922 – the closing months of the Irish Civil War – soldiers of the Freestate army shot dead six anti-Treaty Volunteers atop Sligo’s Benbulben Mountain. How did it come about? That Irishmen, former comrades, after together winning a bloody war against the British…
All Over America By David Daniel Was it the recent summer Olympics that put it in my mind? Or, somehow, the TV footage of the chaotic evacuation of Afghanistan? I’m not sure, but . . . does anyone remember the great high-jumping mania that once gripped the nation? All over…
Boarding School Blues: Chapter 20 By Louise Peloquin Ch. 20: Orderliness That Friday evening in study hall, Sister Roger had special instructions. “A week from today, you will be home eating leftover turkey sandwiches and telling tales of your first weeks here – the friends you have made, the academics,…
Spangeldorff’s Got It By David Daniel My niece is going off to college in a few days and was telling me she was approved for a new credit card. She already has two. “Is that a good idea?” I asked. She shrugged. “Sure, I guess.” It got me remembering a…