Public Lecture: ‘Hereafter: The Telling Life of Ellen O’Hara: Vona Groarke and Kate Kennedy in Conversation’

£0.00

Date: 14 October 2025

Time: 5:30-7:00pm

Location: The Leonard Wolfson Auditorium, Wolfson College

Join us for an evening with Vona Groarke, Ireland Professor of Poetry, who will be in conversation with biographer Kate Kennedy.  

I am going to tell your life and you are going to help me, Ellen O’Hara, of whom I am a sort of thin‑veined proof.

In her award-winning memoir, Hereafter: The Telling Life of Ellen O’Hara, Vona Groarke traces her great-grandmother’s journey from impoverished County Sligo to New York in July 1882. In this genre-bending work, Vona weaves newspaper clippings, passenger lists and baptismal records with sonnets, speculative dialogue and ghostly visitations to examine not only her great-grandmother’s life, but the lives of the many ‘Ellens’ who traversed the Atlantic “and made such a difference, in the United States and at home.”

There will be fact and doubt and speculation. There will be imagining.

Vona will read from Hereafter and discuss her creative process with Kate Kennedy. A Q&A will follow their conversation, with audience members invited to ask questions about Vona’s research and approach to life-writing. 

Reading Hereafter: The Telling Life of Ellen O'Hara prior to this event is desirable but not necessary.

Speaker Details:

Vona Groarke has been described in Poetry Ireland Review as ‘one of the best writers in Ireland today’. Her ninth poetry collection, Infinity Pool, was published in May 2025 by The Gallery Press, with poems from it having appeared recently in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Poetry (Chicago), The Poetry Review, Poetry London and The TLS. In 2022, New York University Press published Hereafter: The Telling Life of Ellen O’Hara – a mixed-genre account of Irish women domestic servants in 1890s New York, which arose out of her time as a Cullman Fellow at the New York Public Library 2018-19. Of it, The Spectator predicted: ‘Groarke’s lyrical act of historical investigation will surely become a classic of Irish literature’. Hereafter won the 2024 Michel Déon Award and was cited by the judges as ‘truly powerful, enchanting and singular’. She is a member of Aosdána, the Irish Academy of the Arts, and of the Royal Literary Society, and is the current Writer in Residence at St. John’s College, Cambridge. From September 2025, she will take up a three-year term as Ireland Professor of Poetry

Dr Kate Kennedy is a writer, cellist, and BBC broadcaster. Her work combines words and music, in performance, on the radio, and on the page. She is a Research Fellow in Life-Writing at Wolfson College, Oxford, and Director of the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing. Her most recent book, Cello: A Journey Through Silence to Sound (2024) is part memoir, part biography, and her previous biography Dweller in Shadows (2021) explored the life of British poet-composer Ivor Gurney. She is a regular presenter for BBC Radio.

Further Details and Contacts:

This event is free and open to all; however, registration is recommended.

This is an in-person event, but it will be recorded and made available on the OCLW website soon after. Registration is not required to access the recording.

Registration will close at 14:30 on 14 October 2025.

Any queries regarding this event should be addressed to OCLW Events Manager, Dr Eleri Anona Watson.

Date: 14 October 2025

Time: 5:30-7:00pm

Location: The Leonard Wolfson Auditorium, Wolfson College

Join us for an evening with Vona Groarke, Ireland Professor of Poetry, who will be in conversation with biographer Kate Kennedy.  

I am going to tell your life and you are going to help me, Ellen O’Hara, of whom I am a sort of thin‑veined proof.

In her award-winning memoir, Hereafter: The Telling Life of Ellen O’Hara, Vona Groarke traces her great-grandmother’s journey from impoverished County Sligo to New York in July 1882. In this genre-bending work, Vona weaves newspaper clippings, passenger lists and baptismal records with sonnets, speculative dialogue and ghostly visitations to examine not only her great-grandmother’s life, but the lives of the many ‘Ellens’ who traversed the Atlantic “and made such a difference, in the United States and at home.”

There will be fact and doubt and speculation. There will be imagining.

Vona will read from Hereafter and discuss her creative process with Kate Kennedy. A Q&A will follow their conversation, with audience members invited to ask questions about Vona’s research and approach to life-writing. 

Reading Hereafter: The Telling Life of Ellen O'Hara prior to this event is desirable but not necessary.

Speaker Details:

Vona Groarke has been described in Poetry Ireland Review as ‘one of the best writers in Ireland today’. Her ninth poetry collection, Infinity Pool, was published in May 2025 by The Gallery Press, with poems from it having appeared recently in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Poetry (Chicago), The Poetry Review, Poetry London and The TLS. In 2022, New York University Press published Hereafter: The Telling Life of Ellen O’Hara – a mixed-genre account of Irish women domestic servants in 1890s New York, which arose out of her time as a Cullman Fellow at the New York Public Library 2018-19. Of it, The Spectator predicted: ‘Groarke’s lyrical act of historical investigation will surely become a classic of Irish literature’. Hereafter won the 2024 Michel Déon Award and was cited by the judges as ‘truly powerful, enchanting and singular’. She is a member of Aosdána, the Irish Academy of the Arts, and of the Royal Literary Society, and is the current Writer in Residence at St. John’s College, Cambridge. From September 2025, she will take up a three-year term as Ireland Professor of Poetry

Dr Kate Kennedy is a writer, cellist, and BBC broadcaster. Her work combines words and music, in performance, on the radio, and on the page. She is a Research Fellow in Life-Writing at Wolfson College, Oxford, and Director of the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing. Her most recent book, Cello: A Journey Through Silence to Sound (2024) is part memoir, part biography, and her previous biography Dweller in Shadows (2021) explored the life of British poet-composer Ivor Gurney. She is a regular presenter for BBC Radio.

Further Details and Contacts:

This event is free and open to all; however, registration is recommended.

This is an in-person event, but it will be recorded and made available on the OCLW website soon after. Registration is not required to access the recording.

Registration will close at 14:30 on 14 October 2025.

Any queries regarding this event should be addressed to OCLW Events Manager, Dr Eleri Anona Watson.