Lucy will be joining Jan Carson and Michelle Gallen for a series of events in the United States entitled ‘A New Chapter: Women Writing Northern Ireland Now’

This ambitious 3-city touris  in partnership with Columbia University, NYU, Georgetown and Villanova, supported by Northern Ireland Bureau.

The tour, presented as part of the Consulate’s commemorations of the 25^th Anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, will see the writers in conversation at Columbia University with Caoilinn Hughes and Stephanie McCurry on Monday November 27, at Villanova University on Tuesday November 28, and at an event at Georgetown University in partnership with Solas Nua on Wednesday November 29.

Dates & Venues

Mon November 27: Columbia University’s Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities will be hosting the 3 authors for a conversation from 6:15 to 8 pm in the Joseph D. Jamail Lecture Hall, Journalism School. The link to the event registration page can be found here.

Tues November 28: The Villanova Center for Irish Studies will be running a literary panel discussion and readings about women’s rights and sectarian division in Northern Ireland with Lucy Caldwell, Jan Carson, and Michelle Gallen at 6 pm in the Mullen Center’s Topper Theater. This event is co-sponsored by the Anne Welsh McNulty Institute for Women’s Leadership and supported by various departments within Villanova and St. Joseph University’s Irish Studies program. The link to the event registration page can be found here.

Wed November 29: Georgetown University will be hosting a readings and conversation event at 6 pm in the ICC Auditorium at Georgetown University’s Intercultural Center. The link to the event registration page and directions can be found here.

“Beautifully crafted, and so finely balanced that she holds the reader right up against the tender humanity of her characters.” – Eimear McBride

The Strand is delighted to welcome the novelist and playwright, Lucy Caldwell, who hails from East Belfast, to launch her latest publication and first collection of shorts ‘Multitudes’. Glenn Patterson, another local literary talent, will be in conversation with Lucy, before she reads from the title short.

Lucy is an established and celebrated young novelist and playwright of our time. Her accolades to date include receiving the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature and being shortlisted as Irish Novelist of the Year in 2013, as well as receiving the George Devine Award and the Imison Award for her stage and radio plays. She often draws on her own Belfast up-bringing to inform her work and Multitudes is no exception.

Multitudes’ eleven stories take you from Belfast to London and back, exploring the many facets of growing up – the pain and the heartache, the tenderness and the joy, the fleeting and the formative – or ‘the drunkenness of things being various’. Stories of longing and belonging, they culminate with the heart-wrenching and unforgettable title story.