Michael J. Farrell readings: Dublin, Limerick and Cork

Life in the Universe author, Michael J. Farrell, is one of eighteen authors who will read in venues all across Ireland from October 18th to November 24th as part of the Irish Writers' Centre's ongoing Peregrine Reading series.

About Michael J. Farrell

Michael J. Farrell is the author of the highly acclaimed collection of short stories, Life in the Universe (The Stinging Fly Press, 2009).  He spent his middle years in the practice of journalism in the USA where he was an editor at the National Catholic Reporter. He also edited and contributed to books, while reviewing others for, among many, the Los Angeles Times. His novel Papabile won the Thorpe Menn Award in 1998. Since retiring to East Galway in 2003, his stories have appeared in Let's Be Alone Together (The Stinging Fly Press, 2008) and The Faber Book of Best New Irish Short Stories, 2006-2007, while another was runner-up for the RTE Francis McManus Award in 2006.

Praise for Life in the Universe

"This is a great collection. The stories surprise, and are full of surprises.  They are funny, provocative, clever, charming, and quite brilliantly written."

-Roddy Doyle

"It's always bracing to being a book with no expectations - no advance praise, no foreknowledge of the author - and then to find oneself irresistibly ensnared by its originality and wit. Life in the Universe is such a book."

-John Boland, Irish Independent

"Such a title in other hands might be facilely grandiose, but in Farrell's hands it is a glory [. . . ] these stories keep you looking up in a philosophical sense, looking beyond the immediate material world to speculative dimensions that are partly religious, and partly scientific."

-John Kenny, The Irish Times