Emer Martin's Blog

We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland, and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible. The long usurpation of that right by corporations, banks merged with state, Church, and corporate power has not extinguished the right, nor can it ever be extinguished except by the destruction of the Irish people…“

And so states the new proclamation in Emer Martin’s wildly original ‪#‎secondrising‬. It’s a fresh, fierce and funny imagining of a second 1916 Rising amidst the 2016 commemorations in Dublin. With vivid and striking illustrations by Ashling McKeever, this is a truly revolutionary piece to mark the centenary of the Easter Rising.

http://thewildword.com/secondrising/

catherinetexier:

Russian Lessons Chapter 1

My new book: Russian Lessons out now.

catherinetexier.com

Why is the Moon Following Me?

tiredofthesilence:

Stealing some questions about books from The Irish Times:

What was the first book to make an impression on you?

Heidi

What was your favourite book as a child?

The Adventure Series by Enid Blyton

And what is your favourite book or books now?

top 10:

Ulysses by James Joyce, 

Letters of Katherine Mansfield Vol. 2 (ed. Middleton Murry)

EM Forster - Where Angels Fear To Tread + Howards End

Edith Wharton - The Age of Innocence + The House of Mirth + Ethan Frome

Next by James Hynes

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout 

Last Night at the Lobster by Stewart O’Nan.

What is your favourite quotation?

Last paragraph of The Dead by James Joyce.

Who is your favourite fictional character?

Leopold Bloom

Who is the most under-rated Irish author?

Emer Martin

Which do you prefer - ebooks or the traditional print version?

I do both - as a bedtime reader, Kindle is often preferable to heavy books. Experientially, reading feels the same on both, though I enjoy the tactile pleasures of a stack of books.

What is the most beautiful book you own?

What book changed the way you think about fiction?

Miss Brill by Katherine Mansfield was my gateway to the classics.

What book influenced you the most?

Loved the James Stephens story A Glass of Beer so much I had to share it, thus beginning my short librivox career.

What book would you give to a friend’s child on their 18th birthday?

Mansfield’s collected stories.

What book do you wish you had read when you were young?

The Age of Innocence.

What lessons have you learned about life from reading?

Whatever gets you true.

Which writers, living or dead, would you invite to your dream dinner party?

Vonnegut & Joyce.

What is the funniest scene you’ve read?

The Citizen in Ulysses - throwing a biscuit tin at poor Bloom:  

 -ByJesus, says he, I’ll brain that bloody jewman for using the holy name.

What is your favourite word?

Dyoublong

If you were to write a historical novel, which event or figure would be your subject?

A party at Garsington - Woolf, Lawrence, Strachey, Huxley, Mansfield.

Exploring all the avenues that are now open on the internet through digital publishing can be disorientating. As an experiment I put an excerpt of Baby Zero up on Issuu.com and was blown away that they featured my book as the novel of the week and informed me that it goes out to 10 million viewers. Probably a good thing.

micdotcom:

President Obama after Oregon shooting: “Our thoughts and prayers are not enough.”

Hours after today’s massacre in Oregon, President Obama took the podium for the 15th time after a mass shooting. Sounding stern and appearing frustrated, Obama challenged Americans to respond more forcefully to this shooting. His full, impassioned statement is one every American needs to hear. 

       My friend and neighbor Valerie Sabbag is one of those teachers. An educator who is always pushing herself and trying new things to make her class fun and engage the kids way that they don’t notice they’re being taught. They think they’re just having fun. I called into her classroom last August and she was standing there with big pots of special white paint, painting all her desks in whiteboard paint so her incoming students could write on the desks and take pictures on their ipads of their work and save them in folders. Not only does it save paper, but also the kids get to write on the furniture and mess around with technology.

We do run therapy together. Which consists of removing ourselves from our families in the evenings and bitching over the course of five miles. I had just released my first kids’ book Why is The Moon Following Me? with illustrator Magdalena Zuljevic, and scientist Dr. Suzana Tulac. While we were out running one evening, we hatched a plan to have her class adapt my kid’s book on the history of early astronomy into a play.  It was just a wild idea, but with Valerie those ideas can become reality before you fully have time to assess the sanity of them.  Our book is about the danger of ideas.          

The kids took to it immediately.Every Friday for the next few months I worked with the class to adapt the book into a play. The kids themselves took notes and filmed the process for a classroom blog they created. They asked me how I would choose the parts, everyone wanted to be Aristotle for some reason, even though he was wrong about the planet positions, he still was Aristotle.  Then everyone wanted to be Tycho’s cousin who doesn’t have to speak but gets to cut off Tycho’s nose with a sword. I told them to bring cash in envelopes. 

They learned what would work dramatically and what we’d have to cut, they learned to speak in the voices of the past, they learned that you can be a girl and play Kepler, they learned that being smart doesn’t make you right, that being right doesn’t mean anyone will listen to you, that truth can take  thousands of years to discover, that people in power hate new ideas, that every scientist builds on the knowledge that goes before. They learned the names and ideas of Aristotle, Aristarchus, Ptolemy, Copernicus, Galileo, Tycho, and Kepler.

Then the kids teamed up with a kindergarten class and had them dressed as the planets. Valerie adapted Taylor Swift’s Shake it Off, to the book, and they all sang their hearts out.

After months of work Room 23 5th Grade, got to perform their play in front of the whole school at assembly.

And all along they thought they were having fun!

Tell me and I will forget,

Show me and I will remember

Involve me and I will understand – Confucius

Silicon Valley Irish Fleadh May 9th 1pm reading

Great Day with the Discovery 2 Charter School in San Jose.  They were avid fans of Why is the Moon Following Me? We did presentations, readings, illustration workshops with kids from First Grade to Second Grade.  Was worried at first that they might be too young, but they soon outstripped us in knowledge of the stars and enthusiasm.  We were hosted by parent volunteers who never cease to amaze me with the work they do for education. They were organized, had ordered copies of the books for all the kids and made book marks for kids who didn’t order.  We sent those instructions but this time they listened! My favorite moment of the day was when a seven year-old girl came up to us during the signing:

“Are you famous?” 7 year old asks me.

“No, I’m not,” I said and pointed at Magi the illustrator, “But she is.”

“I’m famous because I wrote a book last week and all my class read it.”

“That’s great,  keep on writing.”

She shrugs, “I will,  I just want my books to live in the world. That’s all.”

“Us too.”  I said.

emermartin:

Having a great time with the kids as Magdalena the illustrator of Why is the Moon Following Me? teaches them to draw.  I asked the kids what they thought the book was about and one girl said ‘mouses and their people’. Almost (that’s the sequel)