Events

[LIT] Last week on St. Patrick’s Day, the federal Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney held a startling press conference outlining new priorities for spending. Donning a shamrock lapel pin and a green pocket square to honor a culture historically ravaged by hunger, disease, and poverty, Mulvaney went on to explain that international famine relief, Meals on Wheels, and lunch programs in schools could no longer be afforded. Over the weekend, thousands of the many Buffalonians of Irish descent celebrated the holiday by getting day-drunk on a Sunday.

This Friday, however, an heir-apparent to one of the world’s richest literary cultures in Edna O’Brien will appear at Kleinhan’s Music Hall this Friday, March 24 to give a talk on why literature matters, which of course becomes even more obvious when considering Mulvaney and green vomit in Allentown. And it’s not just that, at age 86 O’Brien brings an inordinately powerful voice to bear for the Just Buffalo Literary Center’s BABEL series. Called by Philip Roth as “the most gifted woman now writing in English,” O’Brien’s most recent novel, The Little Red Chairs was published in 2015 to wide critical praise. Joyce Carol Oates called it “boldly imagined and harrowing,” while Roth declared it her “masterpiece,” and James Wood for the New Yorker called it “a simply remarkable novel.” O’Brien’s visit coincides with Women’s History Month and O’Brien is certainly a feminist forerunner. It’s not everyday that a legend delivers a talk in your backyard, you owe it to yourself to be there.