Doireann Ní Ghríofa will be the featured speaker at the 21st annual Hassett Reading, scheduled for Tuesday, October 20 at 7:00 p.m. in the Montante Cultural Center.
Doireann Ní Ghríofa is an Irish writer devoted to exploring how the past makes itself felt within the present. Born in Galway and raised in County Clare, she is a bilingual writer and the author of seven critically acclaimed books of poetry.
Her prose debut, A Ghost in the Throat, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and was named a New York Times Notable Book and an NPR Best Book of the Year. The book, which explores the life and work of an 18th-century Irish poet through the perspective of a young mother, won the James Tait Black Prize and was named the overall Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards. It has been translated into more than 20 languages.
Ní Ghríofa's most recent book, Said the Dead, draws on hundreds of hours of archival research to create a polyphonic portrait of a 19th-century asylum, blending history and ghost story. The book has been praised by The Guardian as "widely imaginative" and by the Times Literary Supplement as "electrifying."