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April 24, 2017

Fund for Irish Studies presents Author Kevin Barry

Reading from his novel Beatlebone at Princeton University

Photo caption: Author Kevin Barry reads as part of a series presented by the Fund for Irish Studies at Princeton Photo credit: Courtesy Winter Papers Who: Irish writer Kevin Barry What: Reading from his novel Beatlebone When: Friday, April 28 at 4:30 p.m. Where: James M. Stewart ‘32 Theater at 185 Nassau Street, Princeton Free and open to the public (Princeton, NJ) Author Kevin Barry will read from his novel Beatlebone on Friday, April 28 at

4:30 p.m. at the Lewis Center for the Arts’ James M. Stewart ’32 Theater, 185 Nassau Street.

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The reading, which is free and open to the public, concludes the 2016-2017 Fund for Irish

Studies series at Princeton University.

Kevin Barry’s second novel, Beatlebone, follows a fictional John Lennon as he travels in 1978 to

Dorninish, his small private island located off the west coast of Ireland. Legendary Beatles

musician John Lennon actually purchased this uninhabited property, known as “Beatle Island” or

“Hippie Island,” and owned it until his death in 1980. Yoko Ono, Lennon’s wife, eventually sold

the property in 1984.

Beatlebone consists of Lennon’s conversations and adventures with his driver, Cornelius

O’Grady, as the pair avoids pitfalls with the weather and the media to deliver Lennon to

Dorninish. The Guardian calls the novel “a lyrical exploration of love, fate and death.”

Regarding Barry’s writing, The New York Times praises his “razor-sharp prose, powerful poetics

and a dramatist’s approach to dialogue unencumbered by punctuation.”

In addition to Beatlebone, Kevin Barry is the author of the novel City Of Bohane and the story

collections Dark Lies The Island and There Are Little Kingdoms. His awards include the

Author’s Club First Novel Award and the prestigious IMPAC Dublin City Literary Award for

City of Bohane, the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Prize, the European Union Prize for

Literature, and the Goldsmiths Prize. In 2016, he received a Lannan Foundation Literary Award.

Barry’s stories and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, the Stinging Fly, Best

European Fiction, and many other journals and anthologies around the world. He also works as a

screenwriter and a playwright.

The Fund for Irish Studies, chaired by Princeton professor Clair Wills, affords all Princeton

students, and the community at large, a wider and deeper sense of the languages, literatures,

drama, visual arts, history, politics, and economics not only of Ireland but of “Ireland in the

world.” The series is co-produced by the Lewis Center for the Arts.

Information on Fund for Irish Studies series events can be found at fis.princeton.edu. The 2016-

17 series welcomed actor Lisa Dwan, musicians Brian Ó hAirt, Len Graham and Iarla Ó

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Lionáird, composer Donnacha Dennehy, held a symposium on Irish lyric and song, and

presented lectures by Irish scholars Mary Daly and Fintan O’Toole.

To learn more about the over 100 performances, exhibitions, readings, screenings, concerts and

lectures presented each year by the Lewis Center for the Arts, most of them free, visit

arts.princeton.edu.

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