Susan Mc Kay will be interviewed tonight on RTÉ's Arena programme (RTÉ Radio 1, 7pm). Susan will deliver the Allingham Lecture on Thursday night in the Abbey Arts Centre, Ballyshannon.
Taking as her starting point the “No Man’s Land” that lies along either side of the Irish border, writer Susan McKay will explore No Woman’s Land, the somewhat larger territory which nonetheless remains to be fully mapped. Originally from the border town of Derry, and currently living near the border in Leitrim, she will look at questions to do with the crossing of lines, incursions. She will look at how women who are writers have negotiated frontiers into places where they were never expected to be, and where their voices are not always heard. She will draw on writings by poets Eavan Boland, Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, Rita Ann Higgins and Seamus Heaney, essayist Rebecca Solnit and Professor Mary Beard, as well as on her own experiences.