Irish writer, Evelyn Conlon • Spats, Berkeley

Evelyn Conlon • Spats, Berkeley, Sep 25

The diaspora, borders, and recalcitrant women and men are recurring themes in the work of Irish writer Evelyn Conlon. Her work “highlights the exceptional and unfathomable depths of what we nonchalantly dismiss as the normal, the everyday … Conlon emerges as champion of the individual, the Everyman and the Everywoman” (The Irish Times).

 Her novel A Glassful of Letters was hailed as “a brilliant epistolary work suffusing a portrait of modern Dublin with the subtle wit of Clarissa” (Kirkus Review, USA).

Evelyn’s most recent novel, Not the Same Sky (Wakefield Press) steps back in time to tell the stories of four young women who were among the orphaned Irish girls shipped to Australia following the Great Famine. An elegant and subtle novel, this is a powerful tale of memory and the ability of the mind to shut out the past. It uses a stark, poetic intensity, suffused with understated humour, to shape its characters’ human presence and historical importance.

On her way to Los Gatos Writers Festival, Evelyn Conlon will read a selection of her work at Spats, 1974 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, CA.