Who are we? What interests us, in this age of plague? To understand the world today, let s look at the non-fiction books coming in 2021. A pattern of transformation runs through next year s non-fiction releases: the pandemic has changed the human race. We have new priorities and a different perspective. Where do we go from here?
Feminist titles focus on the power of female independent living; and writers on race look at harnessing the energy of the Black Lives Matter movement to turn protest into progress. Working-class voices rise.
Parenting gets a reality check, with new releases providing the unvarnished truth, and mental health books have a no-nonsense edge in challenging times. Other themes in 2021 are the internet, medicine, women s histories, nature, Northern Ireland, and the fight for Irish independence.
At the beginning of May 2020, I received an email from Kathy Gilfillan, an old friend and neighbour from the Wicklow hills. In April, John Boorman told Kathy that he was writing a nature diary, and as a director of the Lilliput Press, Kathy suggested he publish it. John agreed to continue the diary through the months of April, May and June, the duration of the national lockdown, and I was asked to illustrate it.
This would be our second collaboration of words and images. John had collected my paintings over the years and was particularly fond of a large watercolour of a beech tree I had painted around 1999. He rang me one day to tell me he was writing some poems about his trees and had written one about the painting. That led to him asking me to illustrate all the tree poems for Conclusions, his memoir published by Faber & Faber in February.
Film Maker Bob Quinn & the Atlantean Docu, Part of Galway Film Fleadh’s Solstice Festival
24th December 2020
Filmmaker and Aosdána member Bob Quinn
Credit: Kieran Slyne
Atlantean conjures up images of sea serpents, mythical peoples living under the sea and it is also the title of a fascinating project which Aosdána member and filmmaker Bob Quinn embarked on in the early 1980s.
The outcome was three documentaries, entitled Atlantean, which are now being screened as part of Galway Film Fleadh’s Solstice festival until January 21st.
Quinn also wrote a book entitled The Atlantean Irish published in 2005 by Lilliput Press which dismissed as myth the popular belief in “Celtic” origins.