FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

BEST-SELLING IRISH AUTHOR AND JOURNALIST NUALA O'FAOLAIN TO SPEAK AT MANHATTAN COLLEGE LITERARY EVENT

RIVERDALE, N.Y. – Nuala O’Faolain, author of the best-selling autobiography Are You Somebody? will discuss her latest book and memoir, Almost There (Riverhead Books, 2003) on Wednesday, April 14 at 5:45 p.m. as part of an event to promote the release of the 14th volume of Manhattan Magazine, the College’s student-run literary and arts publication.  O’Faolain also will spend time discussing the writing lifestyle and techniques of writing.  This program will be held in the Alumni Room located in O’Malley Library on the College’s campus.  A reception is scheduled to follow the program.

O’Faolain, a former television and radio producer for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), has spent the past 12 years as a columnist and features writer for Ireland’s leading newspaper The Irish Times.  In 1996, a small Irish publisher approached Ms. O’Faolain to write the introduction to a book on a collection of her best opinion columns.  That particular introduction later grew into her first published book, Are You Somebody?, which tells the story of her lonely, chaotic life as a neglected daughter of a never-present father and alcoholic mother.  Are You Somebody? spent several weeks on the New York Times best-seller list including reaching the No. 1 spot.

In Almost There, O’Faolain begins her story from the moment her life began to change in all manner of ways – subtle, radical, predictable and unforeseen.  The publisher calls the memoir a provocative meditation on the “crucible of middle age” – a time of life that forges the shape of the years to come, that clarifies and solidifies one’s relationships to friends and lovers (past and present), family and self.

O’Faolain, who also is the author of a fiction novel, My Dream of You, earned a post-graduate degree in 19th century literature from the University of Oxford.  She spent several years living and working in London, primarily for the BBC, and eventually moved back to her hometown, Dublin, Ireland, where she continues to write. 

Copies of Almost There will be available for sale at the event.  For further information about this program, please contact Joseph Lennon, assistant professor of English and world literature, at (718) 862-7112 or e-mail joseph.lennon@manhattan.edu.  If you are a member of the press and would like to cover this event, please contact Melanie A. Farmer at (718) 862-7232.   Manhattan College is located at West 242nd Street near Broadway in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, one mile from the Westchester County line and accessible by MTA subway lines 1 and 9.

Manhattan College was founded in 1853 upon the Lasallian tradition of excellence in teaching, inspired by St. John Baptist de La Salle.  Manhattan College is an independent, Catholic, coeducational institution of higher learning offering more than 40 major programs of study in the areas of arts, business, education, engineering and science. 

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