Curator: Nick Laird
Featuring:
Tara Bergin
Sara Berkeley
Timothy Donnelly
Elisa Gonzalez
Terrance Hayes
Thomas McCarthy
Mary Noonan
Sharon Olds
Tom Sleigh
Stage Manager: Julia Perez
Audio Engineer: Santiago Leon
Audio Recording: Ryan Mackstaller, Holly Rybnick
Lighting Designers: Peter Lopez, Lauren Lee
Electricians: Peter Lopez, Will Keener
Carpenters: Bryant Blackburn, Raymond Huth, Vanessa Knouse, Nicholas Santasier, Thomas Short, Finneas Weeks
SCHEDULE
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 1
8pm: Favorite Poems launch event // Laurie Anderson, David Byrne, Lucy Caldwell, Aidan Connolly, Michelle Gallen, Rachael Gilkey, Michael Patrick MacDonald, Consul General Helena Nolan, Dael Orlandersmith, and Pauline Turley with festival poets Sara Berkeley, Tara Bergin, Timothy Donnelly, Elisa Gonzalez, Thomas McCarthy, Mary Noonan, Tom Sleigh, and curator Nick Laird.
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 2
5pm: Sara Berkeley and Terrance Hayes
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 3
1pm: Mary Noonan and Tom Sleigh
2:30pm: Desert Island Poems // Thomas McCarthy and Sharon Olds, in conversation with Nick Laird
4pm: Thomas McCarthy and Sharon Olds
Lead event partner: The Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation. Presented with generous support from Culture Ireland, Northern Ireland Bureau, and Tourism Ireland.
Biographies
Nick Laird (curator) was born in County Tyrone in 1975. He is a poet, novelist, screenwriter and former lawyer, and has published four poetry collections: To A Fault, On Purpose, Go Giants, and Feel Free, as well as three novels: Utterly Monkey, Glover’s Mistake, and Modern Gods. Awards for his writing include the Betty Trask Prize, Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, Somerset Maugham Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He is on faculty at New York University, and is the Seamus Heaney Professor of Poetry at Queen's University, Belfast.
Tara Bergin is from Dublin and has published three collections of poetry with Carcanet Press: This Is Yarrow, winner of the Seamus Heaney Prize for Poetry; The Tragic Death of Eleanor Marx, which was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot and Forward Prizes; and most recently Savage Tales, listed as one of the Irish Times' ‘best new poetry books of 2022’ and shortlisted for the Pigott Poetry Prize 2023. Tara now lives in the north of England and teaches part-time in the creative writing program at Newcastle University.
Sara Berkeley grew up in Ireland and was educated at Trinity College Dublin, Southbank University London, and UC Berkeley. Some of the Things I’ve Seen is her seventh collection of poetry, published in March 2023 by Wake Forest University Press and previously in October 2022 as The Last Cold Day by The Gallery Press, Ireland. She has also had a collection of short stories and a novel published. Her poetry has been widely anthologized, nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and shortlisted for the Irish Times' Poetry Now award alongside Seamus Heaney. Sara lived for many years in the San Francisco Bay Area, but she now makes her home in the Hudson Valley in upstate New York, where she works full time as a hospice nurse.
Timothy Donnelly’s most recent book, Chariot, was published in 2023 by Wave Books. His previous books include The Problem of the Many, winner of the inaugural Big Other Poetry Prize, and The Cloud Corporation, winner of the 2012 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. A Guggenheim Fellow, he teaches at Columbia University and lives in Brooklyn with his family.
Elisa Gonzalez is the author of the poetry collection Grand Tour (FSG 2023). Her poetry and prose appears in the New Yorker, the Paris Review, the New York Times Magazine, the Drift, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, American Academy of Arts and Letters, Rolex Foundation, and the U.S. Fulbright program. In 2020, she received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award. She lives in Brooklyn.
Terrance Hayes is a 2014 recipient of the MacArthur “genius” grant and the author of How to Be Drawn; Lighthead, which won the 2010 National Book Award for poetry; Muscular Music, which won the Kate Tufts Discovery Award; Hip Logic, winner of the 2001 National Poetry Series; and Wind in a Box. He is a professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh.
Thomas McCarthy was born in Co. Waterford in 1954 and educated at University College Cork. He worked for many years at Cork City Libraries before he withdrew to write fulltime in 2014. He has won many awards for his poetry, including the Patrick Kavanagh Award, the Alice Hunt Bartlett Prize, the O’Shaughnessy Prize, and the Ireland Funds Annual Literary Award. His first collection, The First Convention, was published by The Dolmen Press, Dublin, in 1978, and his tenth collection, Prophecy, was published by Carcanet Press (UK) in 2019. A former editor of Poetry Ireland Review and The Cork Review, his latest book, Memory, Poetry and the Party: Journals 1974-2014, is published by The Gallery Press, Ireland.
Mary Noonan teaches French literature at University College Cork. Her first collection, The Fado House (Dedalus, 2012) was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Centre Prize and the Strong/Shine Award. A limited edition pamphlet—Father—was published by Bonnefant Press (NL) in 2015. Her second collection, Stone Girl, was published by Dedalus Press in February 2019. It was shortlisted for the Derek Walcott Poetry Prize in 2020. She was poetry editor of the literary journal Southword 2016-18. Her poems have been published in Poetry Review, PN Review, The Threepenny Review, New England Review, Poetry Ireland Review, and The Manchester Review, among others.
Sharon Olds has written thirteen books of poetry. Balladz was a finalist for the National Book Award and was long-listed for the 2023 Griffin Poetry Prize, and Stag’s Leap (2012) received the Pulitzer Prize and England’s T. S. Eliot Prize. Olds holds the Erich Maria Remarque Chair at New York University’s graduate program in creative writing, where she helped to found workshop programs for residents of Coler-Goldwater Hospital, and for veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
Tom Sleigh is the author of eleven books of poetry, including his most recent book, The King’s Touch, winner of the Paterson Poetry Prize and published by Graywolf Press in February 2022. His collection, Army Cats, was the winner of the John Updike Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and Space Walk won the $100,000 Kingsley Tufts Award. In addition, Far Side of the Earth won an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, The Dreamhouse was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award, and The Chain was a finalist for the Lenore Marshall Prize. Station Zed was published in 2015 and includes Sleigh’s long poem about Iraq, “Homage to Bashō,” a version of which received Poetry Magazine’s Editors Prize. In 2018 a book of prose collecting his essays on refugees in the Middle East and Africa, The Land Between Two Rivers: Writing In An Age Of Refugees, was published by Graywolf Press as a companion piece to House of Fact, House of Ruin. Sleigh has also published a previous book of essays, Interview With a Ghost, and a translation of Euripides' Herakles.
About Irish Arts Center
Irish Arts Center, founded in 1972 and based in Hell’s Kitchen, New York City, is a home for artists and audiences of all backgrounds who share a passion or appreciation for the evolving arts and culture of contemporary Ireland and Irish America. We present, develop, and celebrate work from established and emerging artists and cultural practitioners, providing audiences with emotionally and intellectually engaging experiences in an environment of Irish hospitality. Steeped in grassroots traditions, we also provide community education programs and access to the arts for people of all ages and ethnic, racial, and socioeconomic backgrounds. In a historic partnership of the people of Ireland and New York, Irish Arts Center recently completed construction on a fully-funded $60MM state-of-the-art new facility to support this mission for the 21st century.
Irish Arts Center Staff
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Gerrard Boyle
Andrew Breslin
Aidan Connolly
Kristine Covillo
John S. Daly
Robert M. Devlin
Celestine Donaghy
John Duffy
Kathleen Fee
Russell Gioiella
Loretta Brennan Glucksman
Shaun Kelly (Chair)
John Martin
Robert J. McCann
Shane Naughton (Audit Committee Chair)
Sharon Patrick
James E. Quinn
Pauline Turley
STAFF
Adam Browne (Development Associate)
Elise Bargman (Ticketing and Marketing Data Manager)
Zohra Coday (Programming and Education Assistant)
Aidan Connolly (Executive Director)
Christine Cullen (Director of Administrative Operations)
Manuel Da Silva (Production Manager and Lighting Supervisor)
Chloe Eisen (Development Associate)
Fiona Farrell (Communications and Marketing Associate)
Vivian Fong (Director of Communications and Marketing)
Laney Granito (Special Events Coordinator)
Rachael W. Gilkey (Director of Programming and Education)
Jon Harper (Chief Operating Officer)
Anah Klate (Audience Services Manager)
Barry Ó Séanáin (Director of Development)
Ciara O'Shea (Communications and Marketing Associate)
Brian Ralston ( Associate Director of Development Operations and Database Administrator)
Emma Reifschneider (Executive Assistant)
Jessie Reilly (Director of Education, Family and Community Programming)
Grace Schultz (Artist Services Manager / Resident Stage Manager)
Teresa Shyr (Development Associate)
Mac Smith (Director of Production)
Pauline Turley (Vice Chair)
Saúl Ulerio (Stage Supervisor)
Dennis Walls (Director of Facility Operations)
Kestrel Wolgemuth (Associate Director of Programming)
Tehmina Anjum (Senior Accountant, NCheng)
Desaann Legzim (Senior Accountant, NCheng)
Pat Morin (Graphic Designer)
Taylor Panetti (Graphic Designer)
Vera Wong (Senior Accountant, NCheng)
Faizan Younus (Manager, NCheng)
Blake Zidell (Public Relations Consultant, Blake Zidell & Associates)
Mia-Isabella Brea (Development Intern)
Gráinne D’Alton (Special Events Intern)
Honor Fitzpatrick (Programming Intern)
Emily Mayo (Communications & Marketing Intern)
FRONT OF HOUSE
Box Office: Bev Kippenhan, Stephen Peterson, Tylene Soto
House Managers: Lindsey Freeman, Tiffany Clifton
Ushers: Anne Marie Mascia, Anne Rutter, Aram Krikorian, Christopher Cunningham, Frances Lavezzari, Francis Rosario, James Barniker, Joanne Sutton-Smith, L.E. Woods, Michael Lester, Naima Randolph, Nyel Manley, Sylvia Morsillo
Irish Arts Center programs are supported, in part, by government, foundation, and corporate partners including Culture Ireland, the agency for the promotion of Irish arts worldwide; public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the Mayor’s Office and the New York City Council; the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature; Howard Gilman Foundation; Jerome L. Greene Foundation; the Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation; the Charina Endowment Fund; the Ireland Funds; the Shubert Foundation, Inc.; the Arnhold Foundation; the Irish Institute of New York; the Society of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick, New York; Northern Ireland Bureau; Invest NI; CIE Tours International; the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Consulate of Ireland in New York; and thousands of generous donors like you.
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