Between Books and Paradises: John Connolly, Nancy Morejón, Jackelina Pando Kelly

Exceptional guests for unusual times: John Connolly, Irish writer and creator of detective Charlie Parker, speaks to the audience in Spanish. Followed by Nancy Morejón, award winning Cuban poet who will be reading in Spanish a poem by President Michael D. Higgins. Peruvian-Irish paediatric Doctor, Jackelina Pando Kelly, talks about the Covid-19 lockdown from her personal experience.

John Connolly is the author of more than thirty books, including the award-winning Charlie Parker mysteries, the acclaimed fantasy novel The Book of Lost Things, and he, his fictional account of the life of comedian Stan Laurel. He has written two collections of supernatural stories, Nocturnes and Night Music, many of which have been broadcast as readings by the BBC, and recently published a non-fiction study of the 1972 film Horror Express, directed by the Spanish filmmaker Eugenio Martín. He also presents a weekly music show, ABC to XTC, on Irish radio. His latest novel published in Spanish is La mujer del bosque (The Women in the Woods).

Nancy Morejón (Havana, Cuba, 1944) is a translator and essayist. As one of the foremost Cuban writers and intellectuals, she has received the National Literary Award 2001. In 1999 she became a member of the Academia Cubana de la Lengua (A Cuban Division of the Royal Academy of Spanish Language) which directed between 2012 and 2016. Morejón was elected President of Cuban Writers at UNEAC (2008-2012) and has been advisor at Casa de las Américas in Havana. Her poetry has been translated into several languages, anthologized in many collections, and become the subject of numerous critical studies. Her lyrical verse, shaped by an Afro-Cuban sensibility and a feminist consciousness, evokes the intimacy of family, the ephemerality of love, and the significance of Cuban history. She has published more than twenty collections of poetry, three monographs, a dramatic work, and four critical studies of Cuban history and literature. Her first poetry book, Mutismos, was published in 1962. Her published books include Piedra pulida (1986) and Botella al mar (1997). The poet is best known in the English-speaking world through the bilingual anthology Where the Island Sleeps Like a Wing, translated by Kathleen Weaver and published in the United States by The Black Scholar Press in 1985. An anthology of her poems (Richard brought his flute) edited by Mario Benedetti, Visor Books, was published in Madrid during the Spring of 2000. A new anthology, Before a Mirror, the City (White Pine Press de Buffalo, NY, translated by David Frye and edited by Juanamaría Cordones-Cook) has been published in 2020.

Dr. Jackelina Pando Kelly was born in Lima, daughter of a Peruvian doctor and an Irish mother. Currently, she is Lecturer in the Department of Pediatrics at University of Cork (UCC) and works in the Outpatient Service of the Pediatric Service of the University Hospital of Cork. Every year she collaborates as a volunteer doctor at the Mama Ashu Hospital, located in the town of Chacas, department of Ancash, in Peru, where she brings medical students from UCC whom she teaches while carrying out her healthcare work. She belongs to the voluntary group called Irish Pilgrimage Trust (IHCPT), which, once a year, takes children with disabilities or those with chronic and/or terminal illnesses on a trip to the city of Lourdes, in France.  In 2018, she published the book Hello in There, a collection of poems written by Cathal Cregg and photos taken by her and her medical students during their trips to Chacas, in order to obtain funds for the Hospital. She has been the recipient of the President’s Awards for Excellence in Teaching 2016/17, awarded by UCC; and the Teaching Award from the UCC Faculty of Medicine, as the Best Hospital Tutor in Cork,<&l