Week 1 Writing The Troubles with Fiona O'Rourke at Irish Writers Centre
Recommended Reads & Other Resources
Hello Writers
Below are links to my recommended reads for Week 1 of Writing The Troubles at the Irish Writers Centre online (March-April 2025). Both are personal essays by two writers of the North, Maria McManus and Adeline Henry. Maria’s was published in Service95 which was founded by Dua Lipa, and Adeline’s was published in The Irish Times.
Also below, please see suggestions on other resources: an exhibition in Belfast, a one-day course with Belfast writer Maria Fusco, and what’s on at the Linen Hall Library.
MARIA McMANUS
The Control Zone: Growing Up Amid The Chaos Of The Troubles In Northern Ireland | Service95
Maria’s most recent work is Available Light ( Arlen House 2018). She previously published We Are Bone (Lagan Press 2013), The Cello Suites ( Lagan Press 2009), and Reading the Dog (Lagan Press 2006). Maria brought the Poetry Jukebox to Ireland and the latest curation is based in the Linen Hall Library, Belfast.
ADELINE HENRY
In finding my writing voice, I’ve embraced my Protestant unionist background – The Irish Times.
Adeline has a Doctorate in English / Creative Writing and is a linguist and yoga teacher.
Her draft novel 'A Quiet Hill' was long-listed in Jenny Brown, 2023 Debut Writers Over 50 Award. Adeline was awarded an MA in Creative Writing from QUB in 2019 and a PhD in Creative Writing from Ulster University in July 2024. She has been published in The Irish Times, the award-winning North Star Women Aloud anthology, and various fiction and poetry anthologies.
Find her on Instagram @adelinelhenry, X, and Bluesky.
RESOURCES
History of the Present at the Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast 15 February until 29 March 2025.
History of the Present, an exhibition based around the critically acclaimed work of the same name film History of the Present (2023). The 46-minute experimental opera-film was made collaboratively by Maria Fusco and Margaret Salmon, featuring new compositions by Annea Lockwood, libretto by Fusco, and improvisational vocal work by Héloïse Werner. An intersectional, intergenerational feminist work, which forefronts working-class women’s voices to ask: who has the right to speak, and in what way? Layering sociological, cultural, and political themes from the recent history of Northern Ireland, the work exercises voice, breath, and field-recording composition through a range of film techniques and operatic articulations, to amplify marginalised stories. The exhibition includes unseen research materials: sonic, readerly, visual. More information here.
New one-day course at the Irish Writers Centre, facilitated by Maria Fusco. Maria was one of my special guests on last year’s Northern Soul Roadshow.
The poor, by the way: Working-class Critical Writing with Maria Fusco
“The poor, by the way. Means the earth and all the creatures that live upon it, the always-with-us.” Night Philosophy, Fanny Howe
Drawing on your own lived experience, this one-day online course, for all levels of writers, will introduce and discuss techniques to turn your thoughts and observations into new critical writing, through focusing on the characteristics, images, and experiences of being working-class. Forms that we will be looking at will include the lyric essay and the researched memoir.
What’s on at The Linen Hall Library, Belfast
What's On various events at The Linen Hall
The Political Collection Tour Highly recommended: explore The Linen Hall’s world-renowned political collection every Wednesday on a collections-based tour which explores the history of the recent past through the prism of the rare and unique artefacts and objects we have been collecting for over 50 years. Started in 1968 with one civil rights leaflet, this incredible collection now holds over 350,000 items; encompassing all shades of opinion, it is the definitive archive of the ‘Troubles’, peace process, and beyond.
Poetry Jukebox at The Linen Hall
