Kevin McManus is an Irish writer and poet from Co. Leitrim whose work is rooted in place, memory, and the quiet emotional currents of everyday life. He has published several works of fiction and poetry, often focusing on crime fiction and the rural Irish landscape.
The Light at Evening is semi-autobiographical as it reflects experiences of his own over recent years: he works as a secondary school teacher, his wife is a cancer survivor and his father passed away in 2024.
- The Irish Bouzouki. A distinctive instrument that has become an important part of the sound of Irish folk and traditional music, but one that remains surprisingly unfamiliar outside that world.
- The Opening and Closing Lines of Irish Conversations. All those phrases that aren’t really questions and don’t require answers: “What’s the craic?” “What’s the story?”, “How are you?” “How are things?” And the elaborate ritual of leaving: “Right so”, “Sure look”, “Anyway”, “I’ll let you go”, and “We’ll talk to you.”
- “Martha” by Tom Waits. A beautiful song from his 1973 album Closing Time, in which a man contacts a woman he loved many years earlier. A remarkably moving little story about memory, lost love and the passing of time.
- The Slow Set at an Eighties Disco. That moment when the DJ put on a few slow songs and the whole atmosphere of the disco changed. A largely vanished social ritual from the days before mobile phones, social media and dating apps.
- The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973). A wonderfully understated crime film starring Robert Mitchum. Bleak, atmospheric and completely lacking in Hollywood glamour, it captures the gritty realism that made so many American films of the early 1970s special.
- The Talk of the Town by Ardal O’Hanlon. Ardal O’Hanlon is known primarily as an actor and comedian, particularly from Father Ted, but his novel The Talk of the Town deserves considerably more attention.
