The Jane and Harry Willson Center for Humanities and Arts will welcome the internationally acclaimed Irish writer Colm Toibin to UGA as the second annual Delta Visiting Chair for Global Understanding March 15-17.
Toibin is a prize-winning novelist, short-story writer, dramatist and critic whose works have been translated into more than 30 languages. He is the author of the acclaimed novels The Master and Brooklyn, a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books and a contributing editor at the London Review of Books.
The first public event of Toibin’s visit will be a March 15 screening of the Academy Award-nominated 2015 film adaptation of his 2009 novel Brooklyn at Cine, 234 W. Hancock Ave. in downtown Athens. A public reception and book signing event with Avid Bookshop will begin at 6:30 p.m. in the CineLab, followed by the screening at 7:30 p.m., which is open free to the public but with extremely limited seating available. Toibin will take part in an audience Q&A session after the film.
On March 16 at 3:30 p.m., Toibin will give a reading and talk in the Chapel titled “Staying Home, Leaving Home: Ireland and America,” followed by a book signing event at Avid Bookshop on Prince Avenue at 6 p.m. On March 17 at 7 p.m., Toibin will have a public conversation in the Seney-Stovall Chapel with Irish writer and editor Fintan O’Toole, followed by a special St. Patrick’s Day performance by singer Iarla O Lionaird.
O’Toole is a columnist, literary editor and drama critic for the Irish Times and one of Ireland’s leading public intellectuals. O Lionaird is one of Ireland’s most renowned singers. He is a member of The Gloaming and performed “Casadh an tSugain (Twisting the Rope)” in Brooklyn.
From March 15-25 in the Barrow Hall Gallery, the College of Family and Consumer Sciences will host 1950s Fashion Inspired by Colm Toibin’s Brooklyn, an exhibit from the college’s Historic Clothing and Textile Collection curated by Monica Sklar, assistant professor of textiles, merchandising and interiors.
The Delta Visiting Chair, established by the Willson Center through the support of The Delta Air Lines Foundation, hosts outstanding global scholars, leading creative thinkers, artists and intellectuals who teach and perform research at UGA. Its first honoree was Alice Walker in 2015.
