Princeton University’s Fund for Irish Studies continues its 2025-2026 series with a reading by bestselling writer and editor Sinéad Gleeson on October 3 at 4:30 p.m. at the James Stewart Film Theater at 185 Nassau Street. The event is free and open to the public; free tickets are required and are available to reserve in advance through University Ticketing. The theater is an accessible venue, and guests in need of access accommodations are invited to contact the Lewis Center at LewisCenter@princeton.edu at least one week prior to the event date.
Gleeson’s debut novel, Hagstone, was published in 2024 by 4th Estate and was longlisted for the 2025 Dublin Literary Award. Hagstone tells the story of a remote island steeped in folklore and mystery, where artist Nell is commissioned by the reclusive Iníons women’s commune to create an art piece celebrating their legacy. As she delves into the project, Nell discovers unsettling truths about herself and the island’s supernatural undercurrents, along with hidden histories of the women who call it home. Called “original and captivating” by the BBC, Hagstone was named “a most-anticipated debut” by Sunday Independent, Irish Times, and the Irish Examiner, among others.
Sinéad Gleeson. Photo credit: Bríd O’Donovan
Gleeson’s essay collection, Constellations: Reflections from Life, won Non-Fiction Book of the Year at the 2019 Irish Book Awards and the Dalkey Literary Award for Emerging Writer. It was shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and the Michel Déon Prize, and it has been translated into several languages. She is the editor of four anthologies including The Art of the Glimpse, the award-winning The Long Gaze Back: An Anthology of Irish Women Writers, and The Glass Shore: Short Stories. Gleeson has collaborated with artists and musicians on performance and sound installations, including commissions from The Wellcome Collection, the RHA Gallery, BBC, Rua Red Gallery, and Frieze. Her short stories have featured in Being Various: New Irish Short Stories, and she is co-editor with Kim Gordon of This Woman’s Work: Essays on Music.
Gleeson will read from her work and books will be available to purchase and to have signed.
The 2025-26 Fund for Irish Studies Series is co-chaired by Jane Cox, Professor of the Practice in Theater and Director of the Program in Theater & Music Theater at the Lewis Center, and Robert Spoo, Princeton’s Leonard L. Milberg ’53 Professor in Irish Letters.
The Fund for Irish Studies affords all Princeton students, and the community at large, a wider and deeper sense of the languages, literatures, drama, visual arts, history, and economics not only of Ireland but of “Ireland in the world.” The lecture series is co-produced by the Lewis Center for the Arts.
The Fund for Irish Studies website lists more information about the lecture series. Additional events scheduled for the year include:
- October 30 (Thursday) — Award-winning film and television director Aoife Kelleher
- November 14 — Acclaimed actor and writer/director Olwen Fouéré, visiting through a continued partnership with the Abbey Theatre
- February 8, 2026 (Sunday) — Musician Matt Molloy, member of traditional Irish folk band The Chieftains
- March 20 — Author, critic and scholar Fintan O’Toole delivers the annual Robert Fagles Memorial Lecture
- April 10 — Biographer and editor Merlin Holland on “Oscar Wilde between the li(n)es”
The Fund for Irish Studies is generously sponsored by the Durkin Family Trust and the James J. Kerrigan Jr. ’45 and Margaret M. Kerrigan Fund for Irish Studies.
Visit the Lewis Center website to learn more about the more than 100 public performances, exhibitions, readings, screenings, concerts, lectures, and special events, most of them free, presented each year by the Lewis Center for the Arts.
