Really have to look up a lot of words when I read John Banville

Colum McCann's #Twist - a sea adventure with shades of Verne, Conrad, and Fitzgerald - is the book for our latest episode tinyurl.com/irishbookspod

For the (Blooms)day that's in it. My Ulysses group meets on a Tuesday and is discussing Oxen of the Sun today

Kevin Barry's The Heart in Winter is like Irish folklore, the Wild West, and a Nick Cave ballad all at once tinyurl.com/irishbookspod

Mary Shelley has us view her novel The Last Man through a classical aperture: it's framed as sybilline prophecy. A key source is Gibbon’s Decline and Fall. Yet Shelley draws on tragedy too to suggest her characters inherit a curse on Constantine the Great. muse.jhu.edu/issue/56924

Man, the dog massacre.

My other life: interviewed in Xinhua as "Bajiquan bronze medalist" h.xinhuaxmt.com/vh512/share/...

James Chandler of U. Chicago joins me to discuss Milkman tinyurl.com/irishbookspod

Sebastian Barry's Old God's Time is a belter. Hear me discuss the novel with Kevin Foster tinyurl.com/irishbookspo...

Taking Sally Rooney as broad millennial spokesperson risks neglecting her engagement with modern Ireland. A discussion of Intermezzo tinyurl.com/irishbookspo...

Sally Rooney's Intermezzo is the topic of my discussion with my great ally Maddy Callaghan tinyurl.com/irishbookspod Great to see some coverage for the show in the Irish Times recently too www.irishtimes.com/culture/book...

@lcollins232.bsky.social joins me to discuss The Gorgeous Inertia of the Earth, Adrian Duncan's latest novel from @serpents-tail.bsky.social - episode at tinyurl.com/irishbookspod

Did Colm Tóibín's Brooklyn need a sequel? tinyurl.com/irishbookspod

Entire 2-hour seminar spent on Yeats's "Easter, 1916." That'll learn 'em

Being away from Ireland on 17 March tends to make me feel like I'm missing something - but glad to have my Ulysses group today (we're talking about Stephen in the classroom, lots of Blake references). Meanwhile for discussion of Eimear McBride's Joycean exile (of sorts) tinyurl.com/irishbookspod

Grime, passion and addiction in 90s London, with experimental writing - a discussion of Eimear McBride's The City Changes its Face tinyurl.com/irishbookspod

Religion in Irish Literature and Culture has been published! Glad to meet this one in the flesh. www.cambridge.org/by/universit...

Irish Books Podcast E2 tackles Paul Lynch's Prophet Song with guest Chris Morash of Trinity College Dublin @langslitscultures.bsky.social Full discussion tinyurl.com/irishbookspod

Historian Dianne Hall and I discuss Emma Donoghue's "textual nuances" and historical evidence of diverse sexualities and ethnicities in the 1890s, realities that far predate our own moment. Full discussion at www.monash.edu/arts/languag...

Irish Books Podcast debuts with a discussion of Emma Donoghue's Paris Express featuring guest historian Dianne Hall @dihall.bsky.social Available on all platforms www.monash.edu/arts/languag...

“What struck me most flying over the Otways during the fires—seeing scorched forest, blackened and dead trees with fires still smouldering nearby, followed by ... gas drilling equipment emerging from the ocean—was the price we are all paying for the bottomless greed of fossil fuel corporations.”

The Irish Books Podcast begins in January. If you’re interested, you can subscribe on the major platforms via the link. www.monash.edu/arts/languag...

Re-reading #Milkman by Anna Burns ahead of a podcast. Hard to express how much I admire this novel. If you haven't read it you must put down your phone right now and find a copy

Irish Studies (post)graduate student essay prize now open. The chance of a cash prize and publication in our refereed journal isaanz.org/ajis/postgra...

Beckford's Tower, recently reopened. With Ant Howell

Just one Romanticism in-joke amid the assorted Australiana I've brought a colleague: Byron Bay was named for the poet's uncle, "Foul Weather Jack" Byron (not to be confused with "Mad Jack" Byron)

Getting to our Manchester hotel was an odyssey, but now relaxing, and enjoying Holmes on Tennyson hugely

Enjoying time in Oxford as Carr-Thomas-Ovenden Fellow in Romantic Literature. It's an ever-evolving institution, as I see at the beautiful and brand-new Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities

Sad to learn of the death of Simon James, Professor of Victorian literature at Durham University. I have lost a friend

Irish Studies 6-week fellowship at the University of Melbourne isaanz.org/odonnell-fel...

My review of #Twist, the new novel by #ColumMcCann theconversation.com/in-colum-mcc...