How It’s New York: Irish American Writers & Artists, Inc., is a New York-based organization.
How It’s Irish: The honorees are all Irish or Irish-American, and the event will take place at the Manhattan Club, upstairs at Rosie O’Grady’s, at 800 Seventh Avenue (corner of 52nd St).
Tickets may have already sold out to this, so go to IAWA directly if you think you’d like to attend (the PayPal button is still live)!
Irish American Writers & Artists, Inc Proudly Presents
The Event of the Year
THE 2012 EUGENE O’NEILL LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
BENEFIT AND COCKTAIL PARTY
JUDY COLLINS
Singer, author, activist, icon of the 1960s
Also appearing at the event will be Pete Seeger and Tom Paxton. It should be an amazing cultural event to remember. Judy will receive the award from Malachy McCourt. Also there will be playwright John Patrick Shanley, Mutual of America CEO Thomas Moran, singer Ashley Davis, IAWA president T.J. English and M.C. Larry Kirwan!
Here is some info from IAWA:and its blog site:
With a career that has spanned five decades, Collins recorded and performed music with the greatest singers of her era, everyone from Bob Dylan and Joan Baez to Joni Mitchell and, more recently, Irish tenor Ronan Tynan. Along with performing her own songs, she has brought her inimitable style to classics by the Beatles, Leonard Cohen and Dylan. Some of her best-known renditions, including “Both Sides Now,” “Amazing Grace” and “Send in the Clowns,” have been Top 40 hits. She has recorded 38 albums and won numerous music awards, including two Grammys. She is also an author of five books – three memoirs, a self-help book, and a novel. In 1975, she was nominated for an Academy Award for her co-direction of a feature-length documentary about her classical piano instructor.
Upon being informed of her selection for the award, Collins said, “I am thrilled and honored to be given this wonderful award named after the great Eugene O’Neill. I have always believed that, in my heart, I am first and foremost a storyteller descended from a long line of Irish storytellers and balladeers. It is a great tribute to be mentioned alongside O’Neill; I will gladly be there to accept the award.”
Malachy McCourt, actor, author, IAW&A co-director, and a personal friend of Collins’ since the late-1960s, said, “Judy sings like an angel but has the strength of an iron worker. Her career has been like a beacon of light, even though – as befalls us all over a full life – she has known tragedy and despair.”
The Eugene O’Neill Lifetime Achievement Award was established in 2009 to honor the accomplishments of a writer, actor, musician, or cultural institution that has sustained a body of work that best exemplifies the level of integrity maintained by O’Neill. The inaugural recipient was Pulitzer-prize winning author William Kennedy. The other recipients have been actor Brian Dennehy and the co-founders of New York’s Irish Repertory Theatre, Charlotte Moore and Ciarán O’Reilly.
