• Article Cover | Reading at the Cork Midsummer Festival

Having the Craic in Cork

I was honored to read from the River Wild on the banks of the River Lee in June at the Cork Midsummer Arts Festival. It was something of a homecoming. My paternal grandfather, EJ, was born in Cork – and my second cousin Mick O’Neill, and his wife, fellow writer Mary O’Shea, joined the audience. Their son Steven was also there, as was his force-of-nature wife Jane Anne, who consults for the festival and was kind enough to wangle me a reading slot.

I decided to speak in English rather than Irish, a key decision since I don’t speak Irish. “Craic,” however, is the Irish/Gaelic expression that roughly translates to: “Having more fun than a barrel of monkeys.”