HoCoPoLitSo’s guest for its annual Irish Evening McKeon is the award-winning writer and playwright Belinda McKeon. McKeon’s reading will be followed by Narrowbacks Eileen Korn Estes, Jesse Winch, Terence Winch, Linda Hickman, and Brendan Mulvihill in a concert of traditional Irish music, with stepdancers from the Culkin School. The Narrowbacks will be performing music from their newly released This Day Too: Music from Irish America with Terence Winch, Michael Winch, & Jesse Winch. Irish beverages and snacks will be offered for sale beginning at 7:00 p.m. and during intermission.

Belinda McKeon’s debut novel, Solace, won the 2011 Faber Prize and was voted Irish Book of the Year, as well as being shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Her second novel, Tender, was shortlisted for the Eason Book Club Novel of the Year at the 2015 Irish Book Awards. The Irish Book Awards website noted “Brave, moving and powerfully told, Tender confirms Belinda McKeon’s status as one of the most exciting contemporary voices in Irish fiction.” About her second novel, Kirkus (starred review) said “Exquisite…Captures something essential about vulnerability, love and longing.” A Kind of Compass: Stories on Distance, edited by McKeon, was published in 2015. Her essays and journalism have appeared in the Irish Times, the New York Times, the Paris Review, the Guardian, A Public Space and elsewhere. As a playwright, she has had work produced in Dublin and New York. Fiona Wilson, The Times (U.K.), noted “McKeon is a superb and sophisticated writer, who captures the barely articulable feelings between young people on the brink of adulthood.”

McKeon joins a long list of luminary Irish authors HoCoPoLitSo has brought to Howard County audiences, including Frank McCourt, Colm Tóibín, Anne Enright, Colum McCann, and Emma Donoghue. For 39 years, HoCoPoLitSo’s Irish Evening has celebrated the substantial impact of Irish-born writers on the world of contemporary literature.

Tickets purchased by January 15th include a free beverage.

Patrons requiring accommodations, please contact HoCoPoLitSo at 443.518.4568 or email [email protected] no later than January 27th.

In the event of inclement weather call 443-518-4568 or visit www.HoCoPoLitSo.org or www.twitter.com/hocopolitso