Former Alaskan poet Laureate Tom Sexton’s latest volume of poetry is “Cummiskey Alley.” The collection is named after Lowell’s first Irishman, Hugh Cummiskey, who walked from Boston to Lowell with a group of Irish laborers. Cummiskey and many other Irish labors dug miles of canals in Lowell, and helped birth…
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Boarding School Blues is a fictionalized story by Louise Peloquin of life at a Catholic high school in 1960s New England. The full story will be presented in regular installments over the next few months with one chapter appearing every other week. Boarding School Blues, chapter 1 The Announcement By…
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On a cold pre-dawn walk this week, my companion and I lamented the soaring rates of Covid-19 infections that plague us today. Coming after the lull in the virus during the summer and the good news of an imminent and effective vaccine, this most recent blow is almost enough to…
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The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. FICTION Homeland Elegies, this year’s novel by Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Ayad Akhtar, is a stunning book about what it means to be Muslim – in America and in the author’s father’s home country of Pakistan. It is so autobiographical…
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From Dracut to Hollywood: The Wendell Corey Story by Juliet Haines Mofford I confess to being a film addict since childhood. Money saved from my paper route went to Saturday matinees and Photoplay magazines. I kept scrapbooks of movie stars and sent away for autographed pictures. My mother considered movies…
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Rikki Don’t Lose That Number By David Daniel ~1~ We were a small, tight-knit crew of nine, linked by the dance that is youth. When high school graduation came, we didn’t want us to end. That autumn I went off to a small Christian college not far from home. The…
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Home for the Holidays: Cowboy Christmas By Henri Marchand “The memories of childhood have no order, and no end,” wrote Dylan Thomas in Reminiscences of Childhood. A popular holiday song claims that, “there’s no place like home for the holidays.” These lines come to mind as my family prepares to…
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SHELTER The Art of Caring: February 3-28, 2021 A Community Exhibit at the Arts League of Lowell Eligibility Writers & poets living or working in Lowell may submit one poem or flash fiction piece that speaks to the Shelter theme. Theme: SHELTER Shelter can be defined in many ways –…
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IRELAND’S MOST LOVED INDEPENDENT BOOKSHOPS This week on Trasna, we feature a few of Ireland’s Independent Bookshops. Ireland has over 200 Independent bookshops, and they fulfill a role that larger chains don’t: they are true members of their community. As poet Enda Wyley explains: “Here you drop in to browse…
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