Public Lecture: Hereafter: The Telling Life of Ellen O’Hara: Vona Groarke and Kate Kennedy in Conversation


Registration will close at 14:30 on 14 October

In her award-winning memoir, Hereafter: The Telling Life of Ellen O’Hara, Ireland Professor of Poetry, Vona Groarke traces her great-grandmother’s journey from impoverished County Sligo to New York in July 1882. In this genre-bending work, Vona weaves newspaper clippings, passenger lists, and baptismal records with sonnets, speculative dialogue and ghostly visitations to examine not only her great-grandmother’s life, but the lives of the many ‘Ellens’ who traversed the Atlantic “and made such a difference, in the United States and at home”.

Vona will read from Hereafter and discuss her creative process with Kate Kennedy