How it’s New York: John Kearns is a New York writer, and the event took place in Long
Island City.
How it’s Irish:
It’s a story about Irish immigration and Irish-American life.
Before the pandemic stopped the world in its tracks John Kearns was creating some worlds of his own, and they can be explored in his new novel, the aptly titled Worlds, which took its place in the literary firmament with a recent book launch at The New York Irish Center in Long Island City.
Worlds is the kind of larger-than-life epic in which a writer looks to the past to try and understand the present. It weaves together four generations of the Logan family, beginning
with Seamus, an Irish immigrant who arrives in Philadelphia in 1870 and builds a construction empire, and ending with Paul, a former South Bronx teacher pursuing his artistic and romantic dreams in New York City in the late 1990’s. We also visit the lives of Sarsdale, a Jesuit priest, and Janey, a suburban housewife and mother. It’s one family, sharing a name and a history, stretched over time, with four different people, four different stories, and four different dreams.
The event itself had the spirit of a party, with several musical performances lending flavor
to lively readings from the novel. The festivities began with warm welcomes from George Heslin, the Executive Director of the New York Irish Center, and , and emcee Sophie Colgan, a writer and host of the podcast Navigating New York. The readings themselves were delivered with passion and panache by talented actors Annalisa Chamberlin and Brendan Walsh, and by the
author himself. The soulful music was provided by A-List trad musicians Donie Carroll and Heather Bixler. It was a warm and welcoming evening.
There is the world itself, and there are the many worlds within that world. As Joyce Carol Oates wrote about storytelling, “The world has no meaning… but the world has meanings, many individual and alarming and graspable meanings, and the adventure of being human consists of seeking out those meanings.” John Kearns’ latest novel is one such adventure – it searches for those meanings as it constructs its own entertaining and unique universe.
