St Mary's Academic Speaks on RTE Radio 1

Dr Keith Hopper, Research Fellow in the Centre for Irish Studies at St Mary’s University, Twickenham has contributed to an RTÉ Radio 1 Arena programme on Dermot Healy. The interview, which was broadcast on 18 November 2015, is devoted to discussing the literary achievements of the late Dermot Healy. A podcast of the programme can be found here. Until his untimely death in June 2014, Dermot Healy was frequently regarded as “Ireland’s greatest living writer”. Outside of Ireland, Healy is probably better known as a novelist, but he was also a prolific playwright, poet, screenwriter, actor, editor, and all-round literary enabler. Dermot Healy - Photo courtesy of Dallan Healy Dr Hopper has recently co-edited, with Prof Neil Murphy, Healy’s The Collected Short Stories and an edited reprint of his first novel, Fighting with Shadows, for Dalkey Archive Press. An edited volume of Healy’s Collected Plays, and a collection of essays about Healy’s work, The Writing in the Sky, will be published in 2016. Dr Hopper said, “Dermot Healy was an extraordinary but often under-appreciated writer. Our hope is that these four volumes, which constitute the first phase in an on-going research project, will help cement his reputation within the Irish literary canon and beyond. As such, this RTÉ radio programme marks the beginning of a critical reassessment of Healy’s career, which is long-overdue”. —Keith Hopper teaches Literature and Film Studies for Oxford University’s Department for Continuing Education, and is a Research Fellow in the Centre for Irish Studies at St Mary’s University, Twickenham. He is the author of Flann O’Brien: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Post-modernist (revised edition 2009) and general editor of the twelve-volume Ireland into Film series (2001–2007). He is the co-editor (with Neil Murphy) of Flann O’Brien: Centenary Essays (2011) and The Short Fiction of Flann O’Brien (2013).