Local & Irish Writers

"Abbeyfeale holds a special place in my heart and soul, and I hope you enjoy this book written in its vernacular style" ~ Sean Ward

"Why is it easier to write than not to write in Listowel? One theory is that there is something in the water, the magic water of the River Feale. The river sometimes rises to a mighty flood, when the view from the Bridge can be spectacular and so it is with Listowel Just Write Group. From time to time they too are overwhelmed by a rising tide of words and burst their banks into print. This is the second anthology of their work. We hope you enjoy their view from the Bridge" ~ John McGrath.

"A living, breathing, surprising, definitive and glorious document…The writing is as rich and rewarding as you would expect from Humphries, a master of his craft. The book is simply a treasure" ~ Sunday Times

"Nobody writers about sport better than (Humphries) does and if the Gaelic football watchers of the mid to late 70’s were blessed to have the likes of Mullins and Hickey and Mikey and Jacko, well, readers of sport in Ireland over the past decade can feel no less lucky to have had this man and his laptop to serve them" ~ Sunday Tribune

"A hugely enjoyable salute to what is arguably the most enduring and glamorous rivalry in Gaelic games …….The anecdotes and warmth in this wonderful and heartening book about a rich chapter in Irish life are of universal interest, and by the time you reach the last pages it comes as something of a surprise and disappointment to remember that all this happened years ago and that those princes of the 1970’s will not grace Croke Park again" ~ Irish Times

"A valuable and riveting chronicle of the face-off that shaped Gaelic football for decades afterwards" ~ Sunday Business Post.

This edition is based on a copy of Kerry Memories once owned by Dr Maurice McElligott, a native of Listowel, and Bertha Beatty’s senior by some ten years, and who, like her, spent most of his life in England. Dr McElligott’s comments, essentially fair-minded even if occasionally ill judged and sometimes less than completely accurate, throw valuable additional light on the rather divided society of late Victorian Listowel to which they both belonged.

Jack O Connor managed the Kerry footballers for three seasons in which the Kingdom reached three All Ireland finals and won two, including last year’s demolition of Mayo. That makes him the most successful Kerry manager since the county’s golden age ended in the mid 1980’s. But because Jack O’Connor comes from a remote corner of south Kerry, and because he was not a member of the golden-age side, he was never really accepted by the Kerry establishment. In Keys to the Kingdom, Jack tells the story of where he comes from, and where he got to, and how he did it.

This is by some distance the most revealing account ever published of how a GAA manager takes a group of players – some living two-hour’s drive from the training ground – and moulds them into a winning unit. Jack describes his early struggles with the brilliant O’Se brothers – nephews of his predecessor as Kerry manager – and how he won their respect and got the best out of them. He tells of the challenge of coping with fading geniuses and rising stars – most dramatically Kieran Donaghy, the basketball player who took the 2006 championship by storm when Jack moved him to full forward.

Frank, witty, moving and often controversial, Keys to the Kingdom is a must read for any sports fan.

On 19 September 1982 Kerry ran out in Croke Park chasing immortality. Victory over Offaly in the All-Ireland football final would secure them five titles in a row, a record certain never to be matched again.

It had taken Offaly six heartbreaking years under manager Eugene McGee to drag themselves up from their lowest ebb, but now they stood on the cusp of a glorious reward. The outcome was a classic final that changed lives and dramatically altered the course of football history

Kings of September is an epic story of triumph and loss, joy and tragedy, a story of two teams that illuminated a grim period in Irish life and enthralled a nation.

Michael Foley is GAA correspondent with the Irish edition of The Sunday Times.

Fergal Keane is one of the BBC’s most distinguished foreign correspondents. He was won numerous awards for his courageous and humane reportage and has built up a wide popular following. His most famous broadcast, Letter to Daniel, attracted and extraordinary response from listeners.

In Letters Home, Fergal Keane reflects on the last violent days of our century. This collection brings together essays written specially for this volume along with previously published articles and broadcasts. The writes of joining the families of the disappeared in Bosnia as they identify the bodies of their loved ones; of his return to the site of massacres in Rwanda; of the extraordinary characters he encountered in the midst of Sierra Leone’s brutal civil war; and of his own family’s political awakening in the heat of the Irish rebellion against the British in 1920. But there are also lighter, more personal pieces; the discovery of his father’s life as a young man in London; his own experiences playing in a rock band in the forlorn halls of rural Ireland; on his travels ranging from Spain to Japan, from Tuscany to Manhattan; and of the delights and agonies of traveling with his three-year-old son, Daniel.

Praise for Fergal Keane:

"Evocative, lucid and engaging; Keane is a writer of great integrity" ~ Daily Mail.

"He is a great reporter not only because he writes so well and brings a sense of himself to his work, but also because he can arouse our fellow feeling for people who are otherwise current affairs items" ~ Stephen Pile, Daily Telegraph.

"A marvelous and moving collection" ~ Sunday Times.

Kids will love this collection of hilarious and revolting rhymes on everything from puke to pooh, snots to spiders and other really rotten stuff that children will relish!

Gabriel Fitzmaurice is Ireland’s best-selling children’s poet. His previous books for children include I’m Proud to Be Me, But Dad! The Oopsy Kid and Don’t Squash Fluffy

"Sean McCarthy’s imprint on the folk scene grows deeper and brighter with the passage of time" ~ Dr John B Keane.

"He was a man of great humour. Sean McCarthy would be my kind of an Irish man. He had a very deep insight into the heart and soul of Ireland" ~ Tommy Makem.

"The Singer and Song live on" ~ Dr Bryan McMahon.

"A man so full of life, of joy, sympathy, understanding of human weakness, so full of appreciation of the gifts of God around us" ~ Seamus McConville.

"On my first visit to Listowel many years ago he held out the hand of friendship and encouragement to me as I was taking my first faltering steps into the world of public writing. I was testing the temperature with my toe and Sean put out a firm arm and pulled me in" ~ Alice Taylor.

"There’s a warmth about Sean McCarthy’s songs that is infectious. Some of hi9s ballads like – Red Haired Mary – and Shanagolden – have passed the only test worth passing – they have gone into tradition. The Listowel literary phenomenon grew out of the ballad and Sean McCarthy was a ballad maker supreme" ~ Gabriel Fitzmaurice.

Sunny Spells, Scattered Showers is a unique collaborative venture between two creative artists, poet Mary Kennelly and artist Rebecca Carroll. Mary and Rebecca both worked on the committee of the Brendan Kennelly Summer Festival in Ballylongford, Co. Kerry for several years, forging the solid working relationship and friendship that enabled them to embark on this journey of exploration through Rebecca’s paintings and Mary’s poetry. Working closely together, inspired by shared thoughts and ideas, they have explored topics such as nature, spirituality, love, family, loss, sex, death and place. The result is a stunning visual and literary work

The Field is John B. Keane’s fierce and tender study of the lover a man can have for land and the ruthless lengths he will go to in order to obtain the object of his desire. It is dominated by the Bull McCabe, one of the most famous characters in Irish writing today.

Irish immigration to America was an episode of unique proportion: it started two centuries ago, when Ireland became a nation of “emigrants” supplying the foremost nation of “immigrants” in the world. No fewer than fifteen on of the forty-three presidents of the United States were Irish (John F. Kennedy was the first Catholic).
In 1850, a quarter of all the residents of New York and Boston were Irish, and in the 1990 census, forty-four million US citizens declared they were of Irish origin.
The Americans had never seen such poor and desperate Europeans as the Catholic Irish after the famine. They lived in shantytowns on the edges of the great cities, such as the famous Five Points of New York with its dives and its fights between gangs of Irish and “nativists” – descendants of northern Europeans who, since they had arrived earlier, considered themselves to be the “real” Americans.

There are more shades to John B. Keane’s humour than there are colours in the rainbow. Compassion, shrewdness and a glorious sense of fun and roguery are evident in this collection, which brings together John B. Keane’s tales. Included are gums such as “The Hanging”, a tail of accusation by silence in a small village, which shows both the comic and tragic effects of small-town gossip, and “Guaranteed Pure” which concerns the innocence of bachelor, Willie Ramley who is seeking an unsullied bride in Ireland. Keen but never unkind, the attention of Ireland’s best-loved writer falls on human vanities and frailties of all kinds.

Listowel man John B. Keane who died in 2002, was an Irish literary legend: dramatist, novelist, raconteur and wit, his numerous works continue to delight his reading public.

From the introduction by Brendan Kennelly:

Listowel man John B Keane, who died in May 2002, was an Irish literary legend. Dramatist, novelist, raconteur and wit, his published work includes The Field and Durango (which have been filmed), Sive and Celebrated Letters of John B. Keane.

This expanded version of The Street also includes songs and ballads such as “Many Young Men of Twenty” and “Kitty Curley”

John B. Keane wrote poems at different times in his life. As a young man, he wrote quite a lot, but as he turned his attention more and more to plays, his poetic output understandably diminished. Yet, he always kept in touch.

This new collection has all the imaginative vitality and variety, the linguistic energy, the blend of humour and compassion, the sharp powers of observation, the love of nature, the understanding of people, the love of music, the lifelong appreciation of drink and drinking companions, and that tolerant open-mindedness towards different kinds of experience that characterizes all his work.

Readers of this book, these poems and ballads, will be struck, once again, by the warm humanity of the man who wrote them, and by the scrupulous, traditional skills with which he expressed that humanity.

Gabriel Fitzmaurice was born, in 1952, in the village of Moyvane, Co Kerry where he still lives. He has been teaching in the local primary school, where is now principal teacher, since 1975. He is author of more than forty books, including collections of poetry in English and Irish as well as several collections of verse for children. He has translated extensively from the Irish and has edited a number of anthologies of poetry in English and Irish. He has published two volumes of essays and collections of songs and ballads. A cassette of his poems, The Space Between: New and Selected Poems 1984-1992, is also available. He frequently broadcasts on radio and television on education and the arts.