THE SIXTH Féile na bhFlaitheartach, the annual celebration of the work of two of Ireland's finest writers - Liam and Tom O'Flaherty - takes place on Inis Mór, The Aran Islands, on Saturday August 25 and Sunday 26.
The keynote speech will be "The ranks of respectability": Prostitution, Social Reform and the Free State, which will be delivered by Laura Lovejoy, an Irish Research Council postdoctoral fellow in the School of English at University College Cork.
In her talk, she will examine attempts to control prostitution n the Irish Free State (1922 - 1937 ) and how this moral landscape informed the 1920s and 1930s novels of Liam O'Flaherty, and how the figure of the prostitute provided a metaphor to reflect on class and gender hierarchies of post-independence Irish society, in such novels as Mr Gilhooley (1926 ) and The Puritan (1932 ).
This year also marks the 30th anniversary of the death of another Aran Island writer - Máirtin Ó Direáin. Síobhra Aiken, from the Centre for Irish Studies at NUI Galway, who curated the exhibition Máirtín Ó Direáin Fathach File / Reluctant Modernist in Galway earlier this year, will give a talk on Ó Direáin’s work. There will also be a reading of a Tom O’Flaherty short story at the O'Flaherty Garden of Remembrance, Gort na gCapall, and a walk from the O'Flaherty homestead to Scoil Fhearann an Choirce, the school the O'Flahertys attended.
For more information on Féile na bhFalitheartach see The Liam and Tom O'Flaherty Society Facebook page.
