Mark Holan's Irish-American Blog

I am a journalist of Irish descent residing in Boston. Thanks to my maternal grandparents from County Kerry, I have Irish citizenship and an Irish/EU passport. I have traveled to both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland 10 times, including a journalism fellowship with the German Marshall Fund.

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Reporting Matt Talbot’s life and death, then and now

6 days ago | markholan.org | Mark Holan

Matt Talbot, a role model for many people battling alcoholism and addiction, died June 7, 1925, in a Dublin alleyway. He was on his way to Mass; an austere Catholicism being key to his sobriety. Then an anonymous ascetic, today Talbot is considered for sainthood.
A trio of Irish miscellany from May

1 week ago | markholan.org | Mark Holan

Here are three unrelated items about Ireland during the merry, merry month:UCC exhibitI was delighted to contribute some research and materials to “The Irish Revolution in the African American Press” exhibition at University College Cork.
Irish performance poet Paul Durcan is dead at 80

2 weeks ago | markholan.org | Mark Holan

Irish poet Paul Durcan has died in Dublin. He was 80. His “contribution to the performed poem was of enormous importance to the appreciation of poetry in Ireland,” Irish President Michael D. Higgins said.
Revisiting William Brayden’s 1925 ‘survey’ of Ireland

3 weeks ago | markholan.org | Mark Holan

Journalist William H. Brayden produced in the summer of 1925 what he called “a survey of the newly constructed institutions of the self-governing Irish people.” The country’s violent revolutionary period had ended two years earlier. As Brayden set about his assessment, an intergovernmental commission considered whether to adjust the border that partitioned the six-county Northern Ireland from the 26-county Irish Free State, today’s Republic of Ireland.
Following US correspondents in Ireland, Part 3

1 month ago | markholan.org | Mark Holan

My April 4-14 trip to Ireland allowed me to explore several places visited by American journalists in their late 19th or early 20th century travels to the country. Below are a few more of my travel photos of these places, plus some of the correspondents’ original reporting and my work about them. This the last post of this series.
Following US correspondents in Ireland, Part 2

1 month ago | markholan.org | Mark Holan

My April 4-14 trip to Ireland allowed me to visit several places that American journalists wrote about during their late 19th or early 20th century travels to the country. Below are more of my travel photos, plus some of the correspondent’s original reporting and my work about them. MH***“It is seldom that reporters can sit in a hotel room and by peeping through drawn blinds see revolutionary history being made, as I am doing today and did yesterday.” — Arthur S.
Zoom presentation on Michael J. O’Brien begins 6 tonight

1 month ago | markholan.org | Mark Holan

As historiographer of the American Irish Historical Society, County Cork-born Michael J. O’Brien focused on Irish contributions to colonial America. In 1919, as the Irish War of Independence heated up, he published A Hidden Phase of American History: Ireland’s Part in America’s Struggle for Liberty. The book was deployed to help make the case for why America should support Ireland’s struggle for liberty.
Following US correspondents in Ireland, Part 1

1 month ago | markholan.org | Mark Holan

My April 4-14 trip to Ireland allowed me to visit several places that American journalists wrote about during their late 19th or early 20th centuries travels to the country. Over the next few weeks I will publish some of my travel photos, plus links to the correspondent’s original reporting and my work about them. MH***“(Traveling into County Donegal we) entered upon great stone-strewn wastes of land seemingly unreclaimed and irreclaimable.
BULLETIN: McIlroy masters the Masters

1 month ago | markholan.org | Mark Holan

Rory McIlroy, of Holywood, Northern Ireland, has become only the sixth golfer to will all four of the sport’s major tournaments and the first from Europe to join the elite Grand Slam club. His playoff victory at the Augusta National course in Georgia was has first major tourney win in 11 years. The Journal.ie reports reactions from political leaders on both side of the Irish border.
New(ish) Dublin museum focuses on Irish literature

2 months ago | markholan.org | Mark Holan

DUBLIN–The Dublin Writers Museum opened in 1991 inside an 18th-century Georgian townhouse at 18 Parnell Square. It was dedicated to the county’s literary giants, including Samuel Beckett, Brendan Behan, Brian Friel, Seamus Heaney, James Joyce, Patrick Kavanagh, George Bernard Shaw, Bram Stoker, Jonathan Swift, Oscar Wilde, William Butler Yeats, and others.