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Dr Keith Hopper, Research Fellow in the Centre for Irish Studies at St Mary’s University, Twickenham has contributed to an RTÉ Radio 1 Arts Tonight programme. The special hour-long documentary, which was broadcast on 18 May 2015, is devoted to discussing the literary achievements of the late Dermot Healy.
Until his untimely death in June 2014, Dermot Healy was frequently regarded as “Ireland’s greatest living writer”. Outside of Ireland, Healy is probably better known as a novelist, but he was also a prolific playwright, poet, screenwriter, actor, editor, and all-round literary enabler.
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Dermot Healy[/caption]
Dr Hopper is currently co-editing, with Prof Neil Murphy, Nanyang Technological University, a volume of Healy’s Collected Short Stories and an edited reprint of his first novel, Fighting with Shadows, for Dalkey Archive Press, both scheduled for publication in 2015. An edited volume of Healy’s Collected Plays, and a collection of essays about Healy’s work, will be published in 2016.
Dr Hopper said, “Dermot Healy was an extraordinary but often under-appreciated writer. Our hope is that these four volumes, which constitute the first phase in an on-going research project, will help cement his reputation within the Irish literary canon and beyond. As such, this RTÉ radio programme marks the beginning of a critical reassessment of Healy’s career, which is long-overdue.”
—Keith Hopper teaches Literature and Film Studies for Oxford University’s Department for Continuing Education, and is a Research Fellow in the Centre for Irish Studies at St Mary’s University, Twickenham. He is the author of Flann O’Brien: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Post-modernist (revised edition 2009) and general editor of the twelve-volume Ireland into Film series (2001–2007). He is also the co-editor (with Neil Murphy) of Flann O’Brien: Centenary Essays (Dalkey Archive Press, 2011) and The Short Fiction of Flann O’Brien (Dalkey Archive Press, 2013).
![Dermot Healy](http://www.stmarys.ac.uk/news/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Dermot-Healy-1947-2014-photo-by-Dallan-Healy-223x300.jpeg)