Irish Pages: A Journal of Contemporary Writing is a literary magazine

Literary magazine

A literary magazine is a periodical devoted to literature in a broad sense. Literary magazines usually publish short stories, poetry and essays along with literary criticism, book reviews, biographical profiles of authors, interviews and letters...

 published in Belfast

Belfast

Belfast is the capital of and largest city in Northern Ireland. By population, it is the 14th biggest city in the United Kingdom and second biggest on the island of Ireland . It is the seat of the devolved government and legislative Northern Ireland Assembly...

 and edited by Chris Agee

Chris Agee

Christopher Robert Agee is a poet, essayist and editor living in Ireland. He holds dual American and Irish citizenship, and has spent most of his adult life in Ireland...

 and Cathal Ó Searcaigh

Cathal Ó Searcaigh

Cathal Ó Searcaigh is an Irish poet who writes in the Irish language .Ó Searcaigh was born in Gort a' Choirce, a town in the Gaeltacht region of Donegal, and lives at the foot of Mount Errigal...

. It was launched in 2002 and appears biannually.

The journal regularly publishes articles related to Belfast and Northern Ireland generally, as well as works with a more international view. It prints both established and previously unpublished writers. According to the Irish Pages website

Its policy is to publish poetry, short fiction, essays, creative non-fiction, memoir, essay reviews, nature-writing, translated work, literary journalism, and other autobiographical, historical, religious and scientific writing of literary distinction. There are no standard reviews or narrowly academic articles. Irish Language and Ulster Scots writing are published in the original, with English translations or glosses.

Irish Pages has grown considerably since its inception in 2002, with a print run that has now risen to 2800, and an international audience. It receives subscriptions from all over Europe, Asia, Australia and North and South America.

Political outlook

Irish Pages does not associate itself with any political movements in Ireland or elsewhere. To quote from the journal's brochure:

"IRISH PAGES is a non-partisan, non-sectarian, culturally ecumenical, and wholly independent journal. It endorses no political outlook or cultural tradition, and has no editorial position on the constitutional question. Its title refers to the island of Ireland in a purely apolitical and geographic sense, in the same manner of The Church of Ireland or the Irish Sea. The sole criteria for inclusion in the journal are the distinction of writing and the integrity of the individual voice. Equal editorial attention will be given to established, emergent and new writers."

Regular Features

Each issue of Irish Pages contains a number of regular features, including "The View from the Linen Hall", an editorial on cultural or political issues, domestic or international; "From the Irish Archive", a biographical note on and work from a non-contemporary Irish writer; and "The Publishing Scene", a commissioned piece which examines issues and trends in the literary world of Ireland, Britain or the United States.

In Other Words

In Other Words features work in translation, with each issue featuring writing from a different country. This section has included translations from Arabic, Bosnian, Vietnamese, German, Russian, and Turkish.

Portfolio

Each issue also includes a set of 16-24 captioned photographs, appearing under the name "Portfolio." Previous photographic contributors have included Bobbie Hanvey

Bobbie Hanvey

Bobbie Hanvey is a Northern Ireland photographer. In 1985, 1986, and 1987 he won the Northern Ireland Provincial Press Photographer of the Year Award for himself and the Down Recorder newspaper of Downpatrick. In 1985 and 1987 he also won the Northern Ireland overall award for ‘Best People...

, John Minihan

John Minihan (photographer)

John Minihan is an Irish photographer, born in Dublin in 1946 and raised in Athy, County Kildare. At the age of 12 he was brought to live in London, and went on to become an apprentice photographer with the Daily Mail. At the age of 15 he won the Evening Standard amateur photography competition....

, and Paul Seawright

Paul Seawright

Paul Seawright is an artist born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 1965. He currently lives in Belfast and is Professor of Photography at the University of Ulster in Belfast.-Life and work:...

.

Contributors

Irish Pages draws on a wide range of international contributors. These have included:

Chris Agee

Chris Agee

Christopher Robert Agee is a poet, essayist and editor living in Ireland. He holds dual American and Irish citizenship, and has spent most of his adult life in Ireland...

, Gary Allen

Gary Allen

Gary Allen was an American conservative journalist.-Background:As a student, Allen was majoring in history at Stanford University and studied at California State University, Long Beach. He was a prominent member of the John Birch Society, of which he was a spokesman...

, Neal Ascherson

Neal Ascherson

Charles Neal Ascherson is a Scottish journalist and writer.- Background :He was born in Edinburgh and educated at Eton and King's College, Cambridge, where he read history. He was described by the historian Eric Hobsbawm as "perhaps the most brilliant student I ever had...

, John Berger

John Berger

John Peter Berger is an English art critic, novelist, painter and author. His novel G. won the 1972 Booker Prize, and his essay on art criticism Ways of Seeing, written as an accompaniment to a BBC series, is often used as a university text.-Education:Born in Hackney, London, England, Berger was...

,
Sven Birkerts

Sven Birkerts

Sven Birkerts is an American essayist and literary critic of Latvian ancestry. He is best known for his book The Gutenberg Elegies, which posits a decline in reading due to the overwhelming advances of the Internet and other technologies of the "electronic culture."Birkerts was born in Pontiac,...

, Wendell Berry

Wendell Berry

Wendell Berry is an American man of letters, academic, cultural and economic critic, and farmer. He is a prolific author of novels, short stories, poems, and essays...

, John Burnside

John Burnside

John Burnside is a Scottish writer, born in Dunfermline.-Background:Burnside studied English and European Languages at Cambridge College of Arts and Technology. A former computer software engineer, he has been a freelance writer since 1996...

, Angus Calder

Angus Calder

Angus Lindsay Ritchie Calder was a Scottish academic, writer, historian, educator and literary editor with a background in English literature, politics and cultural studies.-Education:...

, Moya Cannon

Moya Cannon

Moya Cannon is an Irish author.Cannon was born in 1956 in Dunfanaghy, County Donegal. She studied History and Politics at University College Dublin, and at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge....

,
Ciarán Carson

Ciaran Carson

Ciaran Gerard Carson is a Belfast, Northern Ireland-born poet and novelist.-Early years:Ciaran Carson was born in Belfast into an Irish-speaking family...

, Harry Clifton

Harry Clifton

Harry Clifton is an Irish poet. He was born in Dublin, but has lived in Africa and Asia, as well as more recently in continental Europe...

, Patricia Craig, Andrew Crumey

Andrew Crumey

Andrew Crumey is a novelist and former literary editor of the Scotland on Sunday newspaper. He was born in Kirkintilloch, north of Glasgow, Scotland. He graduated with First Class Honours from the University of St Andrews and holds a PhD in theoretical physics from Imperial College, London. In...

,
Gerald Dawe

Gerald Dawe

Gerald Dawe is a Northern Irish writer and poet.-Early life:Gerald Dawe was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland and grew up with his mother, sister and grandmother. He attended Orangefield Boys School across the city in East Belfast, a leading progressive liberal state school...

,
Michael Davitt

Michael Davitt

Michael Davitt was an Irish republican and nationalist agrarian agitator, a social campaigner, labour leader, journalist, Home Rule constitutional politician and Member of Parliament , who founded the Irish National Land League.- Early years :Michael Davitt was born in Straide, County Mayo,...

, Leontia Flynn

Leontia Flynn

Leontia Flynn is an Irish poet born in Downpatrick, Northern Ireland. Flynn grew up in Ballyloughlin, south County Down, between the towns of Newcastle and Dundrum, very close to the well known Murlough Nature Reserve...

, Brian Friel

Brian Friel

Brian Friel is an Irish dramatist, author and director of the Field Day Theatre Company. He is considered to be the greatest living English-language dramatist, hailed by the English-speaking world as an "Irish Chekhov" and "the universally accented voice of Ireland"...

, David Grossman

David Grossman

David Grossman is an Israeli author. His books have been translated into more than 30 languages, and have won numerous prizes.He is also a noted activist and critic of Israeli policy toward Palestinians. The Yellow Wind, his non-fiction study of the life of Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied...

, Michael Hamburger

Michael Hamburger

Michael Hamburger OBE was a noted British translator, poet, critic, memoirist, and academic. He was known in particular for his translations of Friedrich Hölderlin, Paul Celan, Gottfried Benn and W. G. Sebald from German, and his work in literary criticism...

, Hugo Hamilton

Hugo Hamilton

-Life:Hamilton's mother was a German who travelled to Ireland in 1949 for a pilgrimage, married an Irishman, and settled in the country. His father was a militant nationalist who insisted that his children should speak only German or Irish, but not English, a prohibition the young Hugo resisted...

,
Seamus Heaney

Seamus Heaney

Seamus Heaney is an Irish poet, writer and lecturer. He lives in Dublin. Heaney has received the Nobel Prize in Literature , the Golden Wreath of Poetry , T. S. Eliot Prize and two Whitbread prizes...

,
Julia Kristeva

Julia Kristeva

Julia Kristeva is a Bulgarian-French philosopher, literary critic, psychoanalyst, sociologist, feminist, and, most recently, novelist, who has lived in France since the mid-1960s. She is now a Professor at the University Paris Diderot...

,
Michael Longley

Michael Longley

Michael Longley, CBE is a Northern Irish poet from Belfast.-Life and career:Longley was educated at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution and subsequently read Classics at Trinity College, Dublin, where he edited Icarus...

, Medbh McGuckian

Medbh McGuckian

Medbh McGuckian is a poet from Northern Ireland.-Biography:She was born the third of six children as Maeve McCaughan to Hugh and Margaret McCaughan in North Belfast. Her father was a school headmaster and her mother an influential art and music enthusiast...

, Máire Mhac an tSaoi

Máire Mhac an tSaoi

-Background:Mhac an tSaoi was born as Máire MacEntee in Dublin in 1922. Her father, Seán MacEntee, a native of Belfast, was a founding member of Fianna Fáil, a long-serving TD and Tánaiste in the Dáil and a participant in the Easter Rising of 1916. Her mother, County Tipperary-born Margaret Browne...

,
John Montague

John Montague

John Montague may refer to:*John Montague , Irish poet and writer*John Montague , baseball relief pitcher*John Montague , golfer and con man...

, Paul Muldoon

Paul Muldoon

Paul Muldoon is an Irish poet. He has published over thirty collections and won a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the T. S. Eliot Prize. He held the post of Oxford Professor of Poetry from 1999 - 2004. At Princeton University he is both the Howard G. B. Clark ’21 Professor in the Humanities and...

, Mira Nair

Mira Nair

Mira Nair is an Indian film director and producer based in New York. Her production company is Mirabai Films.She was educated at Delhi University and Harvard University. Her debut feature film, Salaam Bombay! , won the Golden Camera award at the Cannes Film Festival and also earned the nomination...

,
Tom Paulin

Tom Paulin

Thomas Neilson Paulin is a Northern Irish poet and critic of film, music and literature. He lives in England, where he is the GM Young Lecturer in English Literature at Hertford College, Oxford.- Life and work :...

,
Tim Robinson

Tim Robinson

Tim Robinson is an English former cricketer, and current cricket umpire, who played in 29 Tests and 26 ODIs for England from 1984 to 1989....

,
Susan Sontag

Susan Sontag

Susan Sontag was an American author, literary theorist, feminist and political activist whose works include On Photography and Against Interpretation.-Life:...

.

Editorial Staff

Irish Pages is edited by Chris Agee

Chris Agee

Christopher Robert Agee is a poet, essayist and editor living in Ireland. He holds dual American and Irish citizenship, and has spent most of his adult life in Ireland...

, a poet and essayist who holds dual Irish and American citizenship. The Irish Language Editor, Cathal Ó Searcaigh

Cathal Ó Searcaigh

Cathal Ó Searcaigh is an Irish poet who writes in the Irish language .Ó Searcaigh was born in Gort a' Choirce, a town in the Gaeltacht region of Donegal, and lives at the foot of Mount Errigal...

, is an Irish poet who writes in the Ulster dialect

Ulster Irish

Ulster Irish is the dialect of the Irish language spoken in the Province of Ulster. The largest Gaeltacht region today is in County Donegal, so that the term Donegal Irish is often used synonymously. Nevertheless, records of the language as it was spoken in other counties do exist, and help provide...

 of the Irish language

Irish language

Irish , also known as Irish Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, originating in Ireland and historically spoken by the Irish people. Irish is now spoken as a first language by a minority of Irish people, as well as being a second language of a larger proportion of...

. Seán MacAindreasa is the Managing Editor.

The journal's staff also includes a number of interns who are currently students at Queen's University Belfast—Lynley Edmeades, Ben Maier, Ríonnagh Sheridan, Elizabeth Switaj, and Rachel Watterson—and an intern based in London, Brian Davey.

Other Publications from Irish Pages

This collection of essays includes the keynote contributions to The Hubert Butler

Hubert Butler

Hubert Marshal Butler was an Irish essayist who wrote on a wide-range of topics, from local history and archaeology to the political and religious affairs of eastern Europe before and during World War II.-Early life:...

 Centenary Celebration (October 2000) in original or revised form, together with two comprehensive
bibliographies and a selection of historic photographs.
The first major anthology of contemporary American poetry published in Ireland, this collection is part on an international literary exchange between the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and the National Endowment for the Arts

National Endowment for the Arts

The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...

 in the United States. It features Sherman Alexie

Sherman Alexie

Sherman Joseph Alexie, Jr. is a writer, poet, filmmaker, and occasional comedian. Much of his writing draws on his experiences as a Native American. Two of Alexie's best known works are The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven , a book of short stories and Smoke Signals, a film...

, Kazim Ali

Kazim Ali

Kazim Ali is an American poet, novelist, essayist and professor. His most recent books are The Disappearance of Seth and Bright Felon: Autobiography and Cities . His honors include an Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council...

, Craig Arnold

Craig Arnold

Craig Arnold was an American poet and professor. His first book of poems, Shells , was selected by W. S. Merwin for the Yale Series of Younger Poets...

, Quan Barry

Quan Barry

-Life:She was raised on Boston's north shore.She graduated from the University of Michigan, with an MFA, and was a Wallace Stegner fellow at Stanford University and the Diane Middlebrook poetry fellow at the University of Wisconsin...

, Stephen Burt

Stephen Burt

Stephen Burt is a literary critic, poet, and a professor who teaches at Harvard University.-Elliptical Poetry:Burt received significant attention for coining the term "elliptical poetry" in a 1998 book review of Susan Wheeler's book, Smokes, in Boston Review magazine...

, Dan Chiasson

Dan Chiasson

-Life:He graduated from Amherst College and Harvard University, with a Ph.D in English.He is currently an associate professor at Wellesley College. He lives in Sudbury, Massachusetts....

, Ben Lerner

Ben Lerner

Benjamin S. Lerner is an American poet, novelist, and critic. He was awarded the Hayden Carruth prize for his cycle of fifty-two sonnets, . In 2004, Library Journal named it one of the year's twelve best books of poetry...

, Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Aimee Nezhukumatathil is an Asian American poet, best known for her jovial and accessible reading style and lush descriptions of exotic foods and landscapes...

, Kevin Prufer

Kevin Prufer

Kevin D. Prufer is an American poet, academic, editor, and essayist. His most recent books are In A Beautiful Country and National Anthem...

, Mary Quade, Paisley Rekdal, Tracy K. Smith

Tracy K. Smith

Tracy K. Smith is an African American poet and educator. She has published three collections of poetry. About her most recent collection, Life on Mars , Joel Brouwer wrote: "Smith shows herself to be a poet of extraordinary range and ambition......

, Juliana Spahr

Juliana Spahr

Juliana Spahr is an American poet, critic, and editor. She is the recipient of the 2009 Hardison Poetry Prize awarded by the Folger Shakespeare Library to honor a U.S...

, A.E. Stallings, Donna Stonecipher

Donna Stonecipher

-Life:She grew up in Seattle and Teheran, and lived in Prague from 1994 to 1998. She graduated from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop,with an MFA in 2001....

, Mary Szybist

Mary Szybist

Mary Szybist is an American poet. She grew up in Pennsylvania, and earned her B.A. and M.T. from the University of Virginia and attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she was a Teaching-Writing Fellow....

, Natasha Trethewey

Natasha Trethewey

Natasha Trethewey is an American poet who won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in poetry for her 2006 collection, Native Guard.Trethewey was born in Gulfport, Mississippi. She earned the A.B. in English from the University of Georgia, an M.A. in poetry from Hollins University, and an M.F.A. in poetry from...

, Christian Wiman

Christian Wiman

Christian Wiman is an American poet and editor born in 1966 and raised in West Texas. He graduated from Washington and Lee University and has taught at Northwestern University, Stanford University, Lynchburg College in Virginia, and the Prague School of Economics...

, Kevin Young

Kevin Young (poet)

Kevin Young is an American poet and teacher of poetry. Young graduated from Harvard College in 1992, was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University , and received his MFA from Brown University. While in Boston and Providence, he was part of the African-American poetry group, The Dark Room Collective...

, Rachel Zucker

Rachel Zucker

Rachel Zucker is an American poet born in New York City in 1971. She is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently, Museum of Accidents . She also co-edited the book Women Poets on Mentorship: Efforts and Affections with fellow poet, Arielle Greenberg...

, and a number of lesser-known emerging writers.

Related Events

Irish Pages sponsors an annual lecture which occurs at a different venue each year. It has taken place in Dublin and Belfast. The invited speaker is always a past contributor to the journal. The 2010 lecture, "To Scullabogue Backwards from Belfast: Against Sectarian Preconceptions" was given by Patricia Craig

The journal also holds an annual Up-and-Coming Reading featuring new and emerging poets based in Belfast and participates in the annual Belfast Culture Night.

Global Literary Network

Begun as a collaboration between Irish Pages and Sarajevske Sveske, the Global Literary Network is a project bringing together literary journals from across continental and language divides. Participants thus far hail from Belfast, Sarajevo, New York, and New Delhi. The stated goal is

to foster the appreciation of outstanding writing across national barriers through translation, reprints, interviews, journal exchanges, international publicity, cultural dialogue and other forms of publishing and literary cooperation.

External Links

Review of Irish Pages Vol 5, No 2 at Newpages.com, Feb. 2011
Review of Irish Pages Vol 4, No 2 at Elevate Difference, Feb. 2011