Writers' Night begins fourth season at York Public Library this Thursday
Áine Greaney
Greaney returns to the podium by popular demand with a new short-story collection, "The Sheepbreeders Dance," published by Flume Press, which awarded the author their fiction chapbook prize. Set in her native Ireland, the stories evoke the changes to the new, Celtic-tiger Ireland as well as the universal themes of family, loss and parochialism. Now living and writing in Newburyport, Mass., Greaney has won three writing awards, including the prestigious Frank O'Connor Prize for the Short Story. A frequent and lively public speaker, she has lectured and taught creative writing at schools, libraries and museums in Ireland and the United States.
Appearing with Greaney will be Martin Goldman, a York novelist with a newly-published political thriller called "Affirmative Reaction." Goldman is also an award-winning journalist who has written four nonfiction books: "Nat Turner and the Southampton Revolt of 1831," "John F. Kennedy: Portrait of a President," "Crazy Horse: War Chief of the Oglala Sioux," and "Richard M. Nixon: The Complex President." He has appeared on The O'Reilly Factor and Good Morning America and has written frequently for many Boston newspapers and other publications. Goldman lives in York and Naples, Fla.
Moody resident and 50-year veteran writer Norman Abelson rounds out this Writers' Night program. Having worked as a journalist and editorial columnist, a speechwriter and press secretary for a U.S. senator, a public radio commentator and author, he has also written "Snapshots From a Love Affair," a prize-winning volume of poems; "Right Place, Right Time," a memoir, and "Dina's Final Journey," a remembrance of his late wife and her long, fatal illness.
Abelson has taught memoir writing at a number of venues, including Brandeis University, where he originated the course, and at writing groups, libraries and historical societies in Maine and New Hampshire. Currently, he is at work on a volume of short stories, as well as a book based upon wartime stories told to him by survivors of the Holocaust. He is in the process of forming new classes for a new writing course.
Admission is free and refreshments will be served. For more information, call 363-2818.
