How it’s New York: Both writers, Maura Miulligan, and John Kearns are based in New York and frequently read at the Irish American Writers and Artists Salons in Manhattan.
How it’s Irish: The reading took place in Westport, Mayo, Ireland. Maura Mulligan was born in Aghamore, Mayo. John Kearns’s cousins from Knock and Claremorris filled many of the seats.
On June 25, 2014, Maura Mulligan and I gave a reading from our works at the Westport Library in County Mayo, Ireland.
Maura read a couple of selections from her memoir, Call of the Lark, including the tale of how she left home for the first time to work in a neighbor’s house, her father and she riding their bicycles as slowly as possible and hardly speaking. Maura also read the story about how her grandfather was buried in the new cemetery and how her relatives.
I am happy and grateful that my Mayo cousins Tom and Anne Prendergast, Fiona Biesty, Mary Regan, Janet Hunt, and Sinead Hunt came to Westport for the reading. Writer Padraig Murphy came all the way from Errigna in Roscommon to attend and take photos. Padraig had met Maura and me at the IAW&A Salon in New York. Poet, photographer, and artist Mark F Chaddock also took pictures of the event.
I read from my collection of short stories, Dreams and Dull Realities, including the conclusion to the short-story “Flight” about a young boy who wants to fly off of his swingset into the sky. The second was an excerpt from my novel, The World.
Afterwards we repaired to pub suitably named, “The West” for prize-winning seafood chowder!
