A personal account of the NORTHERN IRELAND CONFLICT IN THE 80S-90s
through the eyes of award-winning fiction writer, Jan Carson.
We all experience varying degrees of familial, communal, cultural, and
systemic conflict. How can we be makers of peace? What does healing
require? How can healthy community be restored?
Jan Carson grew up in a Protestant market town of Northern Ireland
during the 1980s and 90s—decades characterized by political violence
and religious conflict, commonly known as The Troubles. The 1998 peace
agreement fell just one month after her 18th birthday.
As a writer, Jan does not shy away from addressing the uncomfortable
and ugly realities of a conflict-laden culture. In fact, Jan has spent
her entire adult life involved in facilitating community arts
projects, many of which involve conscious acts of reconciliation,
bringing Protestant and Catholic communities together.
Through an illustrated and personal presentation, Jan will give an
overview of the Troubles, tracing the history of Northern Ireland into
peace time. She will also offer insights from her own experiences of
living, working, and writing in Northern Ireland as a person of faith.
Examining her own community, Jan will reflect on the role the
evangelical church played in the Troubles and post-conflict healing,
and consider what might be learned from what happened in this "very
troubled wee bit of the world."
Lunch is provided with your ticket purchase.
SPEAKER BIO
Jan Carson is an award-winning author and community arts facilitator
based in East Belfast. Her most recent novel, _The Fire Starters
_(Doubleday 2019), won the EU Prize for Literature for Ireland in
2019. She is also the author of_Postcard Stories_ (Emma Press 2017), a
micro-fiction collection; _Children’s Children_ (Liberties Press,
2016), a short story collection; and the novel, _Malcolm Orange
Disappears_ (Liberties Press, 2014). Jan has been shortlisted for the
Sean O’Faolain Short Story Prize and in 2016 won the Harper’s
Bazaar Short Story Prize.
Her work has appeared in journals such as Banshee, The Tangerine,
Winter Papers and Harper’s Bazaar and on BBC Radio 3 and 4. She is
currently working on her first television screenplay for BBC3 and has
recently presented a radio documentary for BBC Radio 4. In 2018, Jan
was the Irish Writers Centre’s inaugural Roaming Writer in Residence
on the trains of Ireland.
As an arts facilitator, Jan has curated the CS Lewis Festival, the
Hillsborough Festival of Literature and Ideas, and the inaugural
Belfast Lit Crawl. She specializes in arts engagement with older
adults and people living with Dementia and has received funding
through Queen’s University Belfast to carry out a research project
into the representation of Dementia in literature. She has facilitated
creative writing workshops for the University of Ulster, Irish Writers
Centre, Dublin, John Hewitt Summer School, West Cork Literary Festival
and many other universities, festivals and organizations.
music
2069
Views
08/04/2020 Last update