IRISH AUTHORS READING & OPEN MIC NIGHT
Thursday, March 5, 2020
6:00 - 8:00 pm
Join an evening of Irish culture and literature featuring Belfast-born author and poet, Adrian Rice and Irish-American author Ray McManus.
The community is invited to participate in Open Mic by sharing a favorite poem, story, or song. Irish and Celtic themes are encouraged for each performance.
Participants may sign up by calling Books on Broad at 803-713-READ (7323).
Adrian Rice
Adrian Rice is from Belfast. He graduated from the University of Ulster with a BA in English & Politics, and MPhil in Anglo-Irish Literature. He has delivered writing workshops, readings, and lectures throughout Europe, Russia, and the U.S. His poems first appeared in Muck Island (1990), a collaboration with leading Irish artist, Ross Wilson. Copies of this limited edition box-set of poems and images are housed in The Tate Gallery, and The Boston Museum of Fine
Arts. The Mason’s Tongue (1999) was shortlisted for the Christopher Ewart-Biggs Memorial Literary Prize, nominated for the Irish Times Prize for Poetry, and translated into Hungarian by Thomas Kabdebo. Adrian was Visiting Writer-in-Residence at Lenoir-Rhyne University in 2005. His family have settled in Hickory, from where he commutes to Boone for Doctoral studies at ASU, and to teach on the First Year Seminar Program. He has also teamed up with Hickory-based and fellow Belfastman, musician/songwriter Alan Mearns, to form ‘The Belfast Boys’, a dynamic Irish Traditional Music duo. Their debut album, Songs For Crying Out Loud, regularly airs across the Carolinas. Adrian’s latest books, The Clock Flower (2013), and Hickory Station (2015), are both published by Press 53. A poem from Hickory Station, “Breath”, was a Pushcart Prize nomination. Adrian’s new book is The Strange Estate: New & Selected Poems 1986-2017, also from Press 53.
Ray McManus
Ray McManus is the author of three books of poetry: Punch. (Hub City Press, 2014), Red Dirt Jesus (Marick Press, 2011), and Driving through the Country Before You Are Born (USC Press 2007), and the co-editor of the anthology Found Anew (USC Press, 2015). His poetry has been published recently in SC Review, Cold Mountain Review, and Talking River. His has recently published prose in TOWN magazine and the forthcoming anthology Gather at the River: Twenty-five Authors on Fishing. Ray is a professor of English at the University of South Carolina Sumter, where he teaches Southern Literature, Irish Literature, and Creative Writing, and directs the South Carolina Center for Oral Narrative. Ray also serves as the Writer in Residence at the Columbia Museum of Art and is the Chair for the South Carolina Academy of Authors.