Book Launch: "Late Heaney" by Nicholas Allen

Nicholas Allen, Baldwin Professor in Humanities and director of the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts, will join Geraldine Higgins, associate professor of English and director of Irish studies at Emory University, for a conversation and audience Q&A about Allen's new book, Late Heaney. The celebration, hosted by the Willson Center, will include a public reception with refreshments.

Late Heaney will be published in January 2026 by Oxford University Press. The book follows Seamus Heaney through the landscapes, friendships and events that shaped his last four collections, The Spirit Level, Electric Light, District and Circle, and Human Chain, all set in conversation with his work at large. Heaney's later life was a time of transformative change and achievement. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995, after which he became a writer of global standing. This book grounds that experience in the history and geography of the places he wrote about, with an eye to the artists who influenced him and the people he knew.

Late Heaney draws a line from the waterlands of Lough Neagh to the olive groves of Greece, inviting the reader to think about time and belonging in context of art and memory. Later, Heaney began to imagine himself as a witness at the riverbank between life and death, an image that features powerfully in his final poems. Late Heaney follows the poet there, finding light in the dark, and company among the shades.

Find more details here: https://calendar.uga.edu/event/book-launch-late-heaney-by-nicholas-allen

You may also like the following events from Willson Center for Humanities and Arts:

• Next month, 25th March, 06:00 pm, Odum Environmental Ethics Lecture: David Walter Banks in Athens
• Next month, 27th March, 11:00 am, Phinizy Lecture: Rick Atkinson in Athens
• This April, 22nd April, 05:30 pm, Earth Day Lecture: David George Haskell - "How Flowers Made our World" in Athens

Also check out other Arts events in Athens, Literary Art events in Athens, Nonprofit events in Athens.