NEI Digital Round Tables
“How the Story Travels: The Contemporary Irish Short Story” (October 14th) explores the state of the art of the short story in Ireland, as written for the printed media and radio, and the way the Irish short story has been changing, with the addition of voices such as those of Melatu Okorie and Oein DeBhairduin.
Participants: Vincent Woods, Melatu Uche Okorie, Oein DeBhairduin, Beatriz Kopschitz Bastos (PPGI/NEI/UFSC) and Eloísa Dall’Bello (PPGI/NEI/UFSC)
📅 October 14th
🕤 14:00-15:30 Brazil/18:00-19:30 Ireland
💻 Live on PPGI UFSC YouTube Channel
* This event offers a certificate of attendance. Click here to register.
NEI Digital Round Tables aim to discuss aspects of research by members of NEI (the Núcleo de Estudos Irlandeses of UFSC) in the field of Irish Studies, at undergraduate, MA, PhD and postdoctoral level, with scholars and artists from Ireland.
Vincent Woods is an award-winning Irish broadcaster and writer for the printed media and radio from Co. Leitrim. He hosted a number of arts programmes on RTÉ Radio 1 for many years and is one of the judges for the RTÉ Short Story Competition in 2020. He has published widely, has taught drama, creative writing and media studies at NUI Galway, and is currently based in Dublin. Woods visited Brazil in 2008, when his play A Cry from Heaven was staged as a rehearsed reading in Portuguese in São Paulo. He is a member of Aosdána.
Melatu Uche Okorie is a Nigerian-born Irish author and a member of the Arts Council of Ireland. Okorie moved to Ireland in 2006 and lived in the direct provision system for eight and a half years, when she began writing her short story collection This Hostel Life (2018). Okorie has an MPhil in Creative Writing from Trinity College Dublin and is a PhD candidate in the School of Education also at TCD. She has a strong interest in the rights of asylum seekers and migrant education in Ireland.
Oein DeBhairduin is an Irish writer with a passion for poetry, folk herbalism and preserving the beauty of Traveller tales, sayings, retellings and historic exchanges. He is the manager of an education centre and a long-time board member of several Mincéirí community groups. He seeks to pair community activism with cultural celebration, recalling old tales with fresh modern connections. His first collection of short stories, How the Moon Travels (2020), rooted in the oral tradition of the Irish Traveller community, has just been published. (Adapted from Skein Press website).
Beatriz Kopschitz Bastos is a permanent member of the Post-graduate Programme in English at UFSC, a founding member of the Núcleo de Estudos Irlandeses of UFSC, and an executive member of IASIL – The International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures. She has published articles and organized books in the field of Irish Studies and supervises research projects in Irish Studies at MA and PhD level at PPGI/UFSC.
Eloisa Dall’Bello has an MA from UFSC and is currently a PhD candidate at the Post-graduate Programme in English at UFSC. She is also a founding member of the Núcleo de Estudos Irlandeses of UFSC. Her research project analyzes the social agency of immigrant characters in the contemporary Irish short story, particularly in the work of Roddy Doyle, Roisín O’Donnell and Melatu Okorie.
