Award-winning Irish novelist John Banville delivers the keynote address, “Fiction and the Dream,” of the (De)Destabilizing Nabokov international conference on writer Vladimir Nabokov being held at Princeton University, organized by the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures. Banville’s address will be presented via Zoom. Free registration for the conference is required to receive the Zoom link.
The address is cosponsored by and a part of the 2025-26 Fund for Irish Studies Series, co-chaired by Jane Cox, Director of Princeton’s Program in Theater & Music Theater, and Robert Spoo, Princeton’s Leonard L. Milberg ’53 Professor in Irish Letters.
Presented by Princeton University’s Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures.
Admission & Details
The event and conference are free and open to the public. Registration required.
After Oscar: The Legacy of a Scandal by Merlin Holland
Biographer and editor Merlin Holland, the only grandson of Oscar Wilde, gives a lecture entitled “After Oscar: Wilde between the li(n)es.” Holland is author of the recently published book After Oscar: the Legacy of a Scandal in which he shares more details regarding Wilde’s relationships, reputation and family history. In his talk, Holland will give an account of the extraordinary posthumous ‘life’ of Oscar Wilde, exploring many of the myths, exaggerations and inventions which have been created on his account for more than a century after his death. At the event, books will be available to purchase and have signed.
The Fund for Irish Studies Series is co-chaired by Jane Cox, Director of Princeton’s Program in Theater & Music Theater, and Robert Spoo, Princeton’s Leonard L. Milberg ’53 Professor in Irish Letters.
About Merlin Holland
Photo courtesy Merlin Holland
Merlin Holland, the only grandson of Oscar Wilde, is an author living in France. For the last forty years he has been researching his grandfather’s life and works and writes, lectures and broadcasts regularly on the subject. His publications include Irish Peacock and Scarlet Marquess, the first complete, verbatim record of the libel trial which ultimately brought Oscar Wilde to ruin and social disgrace, and The Wilde Album, a pictorial biography of Oscar Wilde which has now been translated into seven European languages. He is also the co-editor of The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde as well as the editor of an abridged and commentated version of Oscar’s letters, Oscar Wilde: a Life in Letters and author of Conversations with Oscar Wilde, a series of imaginary conversations between Holland and his grandfather. He has just published an account of his grandfather’s ‘posthumous life’, After Oscar: the Legacy of a Scandal showing how Oscar has caused even more trouble dead than alive. It traces the extraordinary fluctuations in his reputation, the history of his surviving family and the quarrels between his friends and enemies for decades after his death. After Oscar’s conviction in 1895, his wife, Constance, and their two sons were forced to move abroad and change their name to Holland. The family has never reverted to the name Wilde.
Tickets & Details
The event is free and open to the public. Free tickets are required through University Ticketing. There will be a wait line at the event to fill any empty seats.
The James Stewart Film Theater is an accessible venue. Visit our Venues and Studios section for accessibility information at our various locations. Guests in need of access accommodations are invited to contact the Lewis Center at 609-258-5262 or email LewisCenter@princeton.edu at least one week in advance of the event date.
Co-authors Fintan O’Toole and Sam McBride debate the points in their recent book, For and Against a United Ireland, as the annual Robert Fagles Memorial Lecture.
Co-authors Fintan O’Toole and Sam McBride debate the points in their recent book, For and Against a United Ireland, as the annual Robert Fagles Memorial Lecture. Part of the 2025-26 Fund for Irish Studies Series. The Fund for Irish Studies Series is co-chaired by Jane Cox, Director of Princeton’s Program in Theater & Music Theater, and Robert Spoo, Princeton’s Leonard L. Milberg ’53 Professor in Irish Letters.
About the Guests
Photo credit: Nick Bradshaw / The Irish Times
Fintan O’Toole, one of Ireland’s leading public intellectuals, is a columnist for The Irish Times and advising editor of The New York Review of Books. He also writes for The New York Times, The New Yorker, Granta, The Guardian, The Observer, and other international publications. From 2012 to 2024, he was Leonard L. Milberg Visiting Lecturer in Irish Letters at Princeton. His books on theater include works on William Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and Thomas Murphy. His books on politics include the bestsellers We Don’t Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland (which was named by the New York Times as one of the ten best books of 2022); Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain; and Ship of Fools. He has received the A.T. Cross Award for Supreme Contribution to Irish Journalism, the Millennium Social Inclusion Award, the Orwell Prize, the European Press Prize and the Robert Silvers Prize for Journalism. He has recently been appointed official biographer of Nobel Prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney. In 2023, O’Toole was named an International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 2024 he was elected to the American Philosophical Society.
Photo credit: Conor Mulhern
Sam McBride is an author and journalist specialising in Northern Irish politics. He is Northern Ireland Editor of the Belfast Telegraph and the Dublin-based Sunday Independent. He also writes on Northern Ireland for the Economist. He is a former political editor of the Belfast News Letter and has made a documentary film for the BBC on the Northern Bank robbery.
Sam’s first book, Burned: The Inside Story of the ‘Cash-for-Ash’ Scandal and Northern Ireland’s Secretive New Elite, became a Sunday Times bestseller and was shortlisted for the Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize.
His second book, For and Against a United Ireland, co-written with Fintan O’Toole, was published in October 2025 by the Royal Irish Academy and was shortlisted in the An Post Irish Book of the Year Awards.
Sam is a regular broadcaster, providing analysis for local, national and international audiences on developments in Northern Ireland. He lives in Belfast with his wife and two young children.
Tickets & Details
Free tickets required. Should the event sell out, there will be a wait line at the event to fill any empty seats.
The James Stewart Film Theater is an accessible venue. Visit our Venues and Studios section for accessibility information at our various locations. Guests in need of access accommodations are invited to contact the Lewis Center at 609-258-5262 or email LewisCenter@princeton.edu at least one week in advance of the event date.
Olwen Fouéré, an award-winning Irish actor, writer and director of theater, film, music, and visual arts, and frequent collaborator with Ireland’s Abbey Theatre, will perform two monologues and be in conversation with Jane Cox, Director of Princeton’s Program in Theater and Music Theater.
Olwen Fouéré, an award-winning Irish actor, writer and director of theater, film, music, and visual arts, and frequent collaborator with Ireland’s Abbey Theatre, will perform two monologues and be in conversation with Jane Cox, Director of Princeton’s Program in Theater and Music Theater. Fouéré will discuss her career as an actor onstage, as well as in film and television, and other aspects of her work.
The Fund for Irish Studies Series is co-chaired by Jane Cox, Director of Princeton’s Program in Theater & Music Theater, and Robert Spoo, Princeton’s Leonard L. Milberg ’53 Professor in Irish Letters.
The James Stewart Film Theater is an accessible venue. Visit our Venues and Studios section for accessibility information at our various locations. Guests in need of access accommodations are invited to contact the Lewis Center at 609-258-5262 or email LewisCenter@princeton.edu at least one week in advance of the event date.
About Olwen Fouéré
Olwen Fouéré. Photo by Rich Gilligan.
Olwen Fouéré is an actor, writer and director in theatre, film, music and the visual Arts. Her most recent stage appearances include The Boy by Marina Carr at the Abbey Theatre and the highly acclaimed production of The President by Thomas Bernhard at the Gate Theatre in Dublin co-produced by Sydney Theatre Company, iGirl (Abbey Theatre); Nous l’Europe, Banquet des Peuples (Avignon Festival); Blood Wedding (Young Vic Theatre); Ballyturk (Abbey Theatre, St Ann’s Warehouse). Other work of note includes riverrun — her adaptation of the voice of the river in Finnegans Wake — which premiered at the Galway International Arts Festival 2013 and toured internationally; Lessness (Barbican International Beckett Festival); and a legendary production of Oscar Wilde’s Salomé directed by Steven Berkoff (Gate Theatre, Dublin 1988-93).
In 1980 she formed Operating Theatre, an avant-garde theatre company and band, with composer Roger Doyle. They recently staged a reunion concert at the National Concert Hall as part of Musictown 2025 produced by Foggy Notions.
Her film and television credits include The Watchers; All You Need is Death; The Actor; The Northman; The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022); Violet Gibson The Woman Who Shot Mussolini; Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindlewald; Sea Fever; Mandy; This Must Be The Place; The Survivalist; The Tourist S2; The Crown S5; Holding; Derry Girls S3.
Her numerous awards include an Irish Times Special Tribute Award, the Edinburgh Festival Archangel, and an Honorary Doctorate from Dublin City University for her outstanding contribution to the arts in Ireland.
Award-winning filmmaker, writer, and lecturer Aoife Kelleher will screen her feature documentary Mrs. Robinson. Unfolding a story about female leadership, human rights activism and climate action, Mrs. Robinson tells the inspirational life story of change-maker Mary Robinson: Ireland’s first female President, a pioneering U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the successor of Nelson Mandela as Chair of The Elders. The film was nominated for the George Morrison Feature Documentary Award at the 2025 Irish Film & Television Awards. A Q&A with the filmmaker will follow the screening.
Award-winning filmmaker, writer, and lecturer Aoife Kelleher will screen her feature documentary Mrs. Robinson. Unfolding a story about female leadership, human rights activism and climate action, Mrs. Robinson tells the inspirational life story of change-maker Mary Robinson: Ireland’s first female President, a pioneering U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the successor of Nelson Mandela as Chair of The Elders. The film was nominated for the George Morrison Feature Documentary Award at the 2025 Irish Film & Television Awards. A Q&A with the filmmaker will follow the screening.
The Fund for Irish Studies Series is co-chaired by Jane Cox, Director of Princeton’s Program in Theater & Music Theater, and Robert Spoo, Princeton’s Leonard L. Milberg ’53 Professor in Irish Letters.
Tickets & Details
Free tickets required. Should the event sell out, there will be a wait line at the event to fill any empty seats.
The James Stewart Film Theater is an accessible venue. Visit our Venues and Studios section for accessibility information at our various locations. Guests in need of access accommodations are invited to contact the Lewis Center at 609-258-5262 or email LewisCenter@princeton.edu at least one week in advance of the event date.
About Aoife Kelleher
Photo credit: Rachel Lysaght
Aoife Kelleher is a distinguished filmmaker, writer, and lecturer from Dublin, Ireland.
Her debut film, One Million Dubliners, about Glasnevin Cemetery, Ireland’s celebrated necropolis, received numerous awards and screened internationally.
She has worked in current affairs programming for RTÉ, Ireland’s national broadcaster, and made documentaries for RTÉ, Sky, ARTE, and the British Film Institute.
Her feature documentary Mrs. Robinson, about former Irish President and current Chair of The Elders, Mary Robinson, was nominated for the George Morrison Feature Documentary award at the 2025 Irish Film & Television Awards. Her most recent film, Testimony, about the Justice For Magdalenes campaign on behalf of the survivors of Ireland’s institutions, premiered at the 2025 Dublin International Film Festival, where it won the award for Best Human Rights Film.
She lectures in Film & Broadcasting and Journalism in the School of Media at Technological University Dublin.
Bestselling writer and editor Sinéad Gleeson (Hagstone, Constellations) reads from her work as part of the 2025-26 Fund for Irish Studies Series. Books will be available to purchase and have signed at the event, which is cosponsored by Labyrinth Books.
Bestselling writer and editor Sinéad Gleeson (Hagstone, Constellations) reads from her work as part of the 2025-26 Fund for Irish Studies Series. Books will be available to purchase and have signed at the event, which is cosponsored by Labyrinth Books.
About Sinéad Gleeson
Photo credit: Brid O’Donovan
Sinéad Gleeson’s debut novel, Hagstone, was published in 2024 by 4th Estate and longlisted for the 2025 Dublin Literary Award. Her 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. Translated into several languages, Constellations was also shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and the Michel Déon Prize. 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 engaged in multi-disciplinary collaborations with artists and musicians, including commissions from The Wellcome Collection, the RHA Gallery, BBC, Rua Red Gallery and Frieze. She is co-editor with Kim Gordon of This Woman’s Work: Essays on Music.
The Fund for Irish Studies Series is co-chaired by Jane Cox, Director of Princeton’s Program in Theater & Music Theater, and Robert Spoo, Princeton’s Leonard L. Milberg ’53 Professor in Irish Letters.
The James Stewart Film Theater is an accessible venue. Visit our Venues and Studios section for accessibility information at our various locations. Guests in need of access accommodations are invited to contact the Lewis Center at 609-258-5262 or email LewisCenter@princeton.edu at least one week in advance of the event date.
Award-winning writer Anne Enright reads from her latest novel, The Wren, The Wren, to kick off the 2025-26 Fund for Irish Studies Series.
Award-winning writer Anne Enright reads from her latest novel, The Wren, The Wren, to kick off the 2025-26 Fund for Irish Studies Series. Enright is the author of 8 novels, 2 short story collections and a selection of essays, forthcoming in April 2026. Books will be available for purchase at the event, which is cosponsored by Labyrinth Books.
The Fund for Irish Studies Series is co-chaired by Jane Cox, Director of Princeton’s Program in Theater & Music Theater, and Robert Spoo, Princeton’s Leonard L. Milberg ’53 Professor in Irish Letters.
About Anne Enright
Photo credit: Ruth Connolly
One of Ireland’s leading writers, Anne Enright lives in Dublin, where she was born in 1962. The author of eight novels, two books of short stories and many essays, Enright was the first Laureate for Irish Fiction (2015-2018). Awards include the Man Booker Prize (2007), The Andrew Carnegie Medal for Fiction (2011), The Seamus Heaney Award for Arts and Letters (2025) and The Windham Campbell Prize (2025). A contributor to The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books and The London Review of Books, her selected essays Attention will be published in April 2026 by W.W. Norton. She is currently Professor of Fiction at University College Dublin.
The James Stewart Film Theater is an accessible venue. Visit our Venues and Studios section for accessibility information at our various locations. Guests in need of access accommodations are invited to contact the Lewis Center at 609-258-5262 or email LewisCenter@princeton.edu at least one week in advance of the event date.
The James Stewart Film Theater is an accessible venue. Visit our 
The James Stewart Film Theater is an accessible venue. Visit our 
Award-winning filmmaker, writer, and lecturer Aoife Kelleher will screen her feature documentary Mrs. Robinson. Unfolding a story about female leadership, human rights activism and climate action, Mrs. Robinson tells the inspirational life story of change-maker Mary Robinson: Ireland’s first female President, a pioneering U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the successor of Nelson Mandela as Chair of The Elders. The film was nominated for the George Morrison Feature Documentary Award at the 2025 Irish Film & Television Awards. A Q&A with the filmmaker will follow the screening.
The James Stewart Film Theater is an accessible venue. Visit our 