On March 16, 2002, Thomas Flanagan reviewed a history of St. Patrick’s day for The Irish Times and was identified by the paper’s literary editor as “a novelist and scholar…currently working on a book about Irish-American writers.” These novels, covering the history of Ireland from the 1798 Rebellion to the War of Independence and Civil War, have earned Flanagan a place in Irish literature alongside the writer friends he knew and loved: Frank O’Connor, Benedict Kiely, and many others. During those migrant weeks, he took to the country and the country took to him as if he were a bard on his circuits. ♦_______________ You can read Niall O’Dowd interview with Thomas Flanagan here. The piece by Seamus Heaney on Thomas Flanagan was reprinted with permission from The New York Review of Books.