Silas House is a beloved and celebrated Kentucky author, music journalist, and activist who has focused nearly all his work on Appalachia and its culture. His groundbreaking writings across genres have captured and catalogued Appalachian life while defying the harmful stereotypes which have labeled the region throughout American history. House's characters are diverse and complex in their racial and social backgrounds, their financial status, their religiosity, their sexuality, and other manners. Such characters represent the complex moral issues entangled throughout the history of this region, otherwise known as the "shimmering knot" before him. In Silas House and the "Shimmering Knot" Before Him, Shurbutt and the seven contributors will weave together a comprehensive analysis on House's work focused on Appalachia and demonstrate the different methods he has used to overcome the standard portrayals of Appalachian families and culture. Though nationally recognized, this collection will be the first instance of critical essays on House's work. The authors will explore and explain House's complex, often odic approach to his works of fiction and non-fiction. Contributors will interpret House's use of music, lyricism, and metaphor in his works and demonstrate the ever-present theme of breaking the adverse and often untrue stereotypes of Appalachians. The essays will focus on House's characters in his novels which are described by the dominate culture as "others." The collection reveals both the broadness of House's writing and the intersections of the fictional and nonfictional worlds House creates as he portrays the "shimmering knot before him," a vision of the complexity of the moral issues that thread throughout his writing and make the award-winning author one of the most comprehensive and engaging voices in Appalachian and American literature today. Silas House and the "Shimmering Knot" Before Him will provide insightful examinations of House's works and promote a deeper understanding and more accurate portrayal of the complexity of Appalachian people and places.

The National University of Ireland has played a key role in Irish life since its foundation in 1908. This beautifully illustrated book celebrates its centenary by looking at its origins in the Royal University, and further back in the Queen's Colleges, the Catholic University and St Patrick's College, Maynooth. A distinguished group of contributors examines formative influences, especially the role of the Irish language movement and the campaign to include women; the relationship between the NUI and its Constituent Colleges (more recently Constituent Universities); the contribution of its four Chancellors that have presided over its affairs, and the evolving roles of the Senate, the Registrar, the Recognised Colleges and the graduates body, or Convocation. The challenges posed by the transformation of Irish education since 1967, and particularly by the 1997 Universities Act are analysed. The valuable NUI Archive is listed and a series of Appendices provide details of office-holders, members of Senate, and of NUI Awards and Scholarships.

Essays by leading academic, political and media figures in honour of Brian Farrell, the well-known political interviewer and former member of the Department of Politics, in celebration of his 75th birthday in 2004. The essays cover aspects of history of Irish democracy, the role of government institutions and their relations with Europe, government finance, the party system, political campaigning for elections and referendums, the lobby system and government relations with the media.

Untitled and unpunctuated, the seventy poems in this acclaimed collection seem to cascade from one page to another. Maurice Manning extolls the virtues of nature and its many gifts, and finds deep gratitude for the mysterious hand that created it all.

that bare branch that branch made black

by the rain the silver raindrop

hanging from the black branch

Boss I like that black branch

I like that shiny raindrop Boss

tell me if I'm wrong but it makes

me think you're looking right

at me now isn't that a lark for me

to think you look that way

upside down like a tree frog

Boss I'm not surprised at all

I wouldn't doubt it for

a minute you're always up

to something I'll say one thing

you're all right all right you are

even when you're hanging Boss

Welcome to "Fog Town Holler," Pulitzer Prize finalist Maurice Manning's glorious rendering of a landscape not unlike his native Kentucky. Conjuring this mythical place from his own roots and memories -- not unlike E. A. Robinson's Tilbury Town or Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County -- Manning celebrates and echoes the voices and lives of his beloved hill people.
In Fog Town Holler men have "funny names," like Tiny Too and Eula Loom. A fox is known as Redleg Johnny. A neighbor issues a complaint against an early-rising rooster; another lives in the chicken coop. "Lawse," a woman exclaims, "the sun can't hardly find this place " But they feel the Lord watching, always, as the green water of Shoestring Branch winds its way through hillbilly haunts and memories.
The real world no longer resembles the one brought so vividly to life in the poems in these pages, but through his meditations on his boyhood home, Manning is able to recapture what was lost and still, yet, move beyond it. He brings light to this place the sun can't find and brings a lost world beautifully, magically, once again into our present.