A literary win for Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum

Photo by Helen Bennett

Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum at Quinnipiac University’s second series of Famine Folios received first place in the American Alliance of Museums’ 2016 museum publication competition, according to a release.

"The AAM represents more than 30,000 museum professionals, institutions and corporate partners serving the museum field and is the lead organization for museums in the United States," the release noted.

“We are honored to receive this award from the AAM and delighted that the quality and scholarship of the Folios are being recognized by our peer institutions,” said Grace Brady, executive director of Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum, also in the release.

"The museum’s Famine Folio series are a unique resource for students, scholars, researchers and general readers. The essays are interdisciplinary in nature, and make available new research in Famine studies by internationally established scholars in history, art history, cultural theory, media history, political economy, literature and music. They are richly illustrated with works from the museum and related collections."

Photo by Helen Bennett

Also in the release: these award-winning authors and titles were published in fall 2015 and are available for purchase at www.ighm.org. L. Perry Curtis Jr., “Notice to Quit: The Great Irish Famine Evictions”; Michael Foley, “Death in Every Paragraph: Journalism & the Great Irish Famine”; Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh, “I mBéal an Bháis: The Great Famine & the Language Shift in Nineteenth-century Ireland”; and Robert Smart, “Black Roads: The Famine in Irish Literature.”

Further, "the third series of Famine Folios will be released in October, 2016. The authors and titles are: Angela Bourke, “Voices Underfoot: Memory, Forgetting, and Oral Verbal Art”; Tadhg Foley, “Death by Discourse? Political Economy and the Great Irish Famine”; Paschal Mahoney, “Grim Bastilles of Despair: The Poor Law Union Workhouses in Ireland”; Mick Moloney, “Across the Western Ocean: Songs of Leaving and Arriving” (including CD); and Vincent Woods, “Leaves of Hungry Grass: Poetry and Ireland’s Great Hunger.”

Ireland's Great Hunger Museum reopens to the public on Nov. 2. The museum’s hours are: Wednesday, Friday and Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Thursday 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., and Sunday 1 to 5 p.m. Admission is free.

Editor's note: All information and the photo in this post were contributed. Click one of the buttons below to share it.