Dan Barry is the This Land columnist for The New York Times, a national feature that he inaugurated in January 2007. He has also written three books: Pull Me Up: A Memoir published in 2004; City Lights: Stories About New York a collection of columns about New York City, published in 2007; and Bottom of the 33rd: Hope, Redemption, and Baseball’s Longest Game published in 2011.
He was born in Jackson Heights, Queens, in 1958, and raised in the New York City suburb of Deer Park. His mother, Noreen, grew up on a farm in County Galway, Ireland; his father, Gene, grew up in Depression-era New York.
After graduating from St. Bonaventure University with a bachelor’s degree in journalism, Barry dug ditches and worked in Long Island delicatessens before earning a master’s degree in journalism from New York University -- after which he dug some more ditches. He went on to work at the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn., and the Providence Journal, in Rhode Island, before joining the Times in 1995.
He has held several positions at the Times, including Long Island bureau chief, City Hall bureau chief, and, from June 2003 until November 2006, the About New York columnist. He was a major contributor to the newspaper’s coverage of the Sept. 11 catastrophe and its aftermath, as well as to its coverage of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
In 1992, Barry and two other Providence Journal reporters won a George Polk Award, and in 1994, he and the other members of the Journal’s investigative team won a Pulitzer Prize for a series of articles about Rhode Island’s court system. His other honors include the 2003 American Society of Newspaper Editors Award for deadline reporting, for his coverage of the first anniversary of Sept. 11; the 2005 Mike Berger Award, from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, which honors in-depth human interest reporting; and a 2011 Society of Professional Journalists award for best column.

http://www.nytimes.com/ref/us/bio-barry.html 

Pull Me Up  http://books.wwnorton.com/books/Author.aspx?id=7843

Christine Kinealy is Professor of Irish History at Drew University, USA. Since completing her PhD at Trinity College in Dublin, she has worked in educational and research institutes in Dublin, Belfast and Liverpool and, since 2007, New Jersey. Professor Kinealy has written and lectured extensively on the Irish Famine (An Gorta Mor). In 1997, the sesquicentenary of ‘Black ‘47’, she was invited to speak on this topic in both the American House of Congress and in the British Houses of Parliament. In 2003, Professor Kinealy was the Arlo Browne Visiting Professor at Drew University in the United States. While there, she undertook research on Irish-American nationalism in the 1840s, which is a central theme in Repeal and Revolution: 1848 in Ireland (Manchester University Press, 2009). Her most recent book, War and Peace: Ireland since the 1960s (Reaktion Books, 2010), was greeted with critical acclaim in Ireland and Britain. Further information can be found on her website: http://www.users.drew.edu/ckinealy/

 

Cormac Ó Gráda is professor of economics at University College Dublin. His most recent book is Famine: A Short History (Princeton, 2009).  Other monographs include: Ireland before and after the Famine (Manchester, 1988, 1993); Ireland: A New Economic History 1780-1939 (Oxford, 1994); An Drochshaol: Béaloideas agus Amhráin (Dublin, 1994); Black ’47 and Beyond: the Great Irish Famine in History, Economy and Memory (Princeton, 1999); Jewish Ireland in the Age of Joyce: A Socioeconomic History (Princeton, 2006), and Ireland’s Great Famine: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Dublin, 2006). Cormac has also co-edited several books and authored or co-authored over a hundred journal articles or book chapters. In 2010 he was awarded the Royal Irish Academy’s Gold Medal in the Humanities. His current research is mainly on the economic and demographic history of pre-industrial England. http://www.ucd.ie/economics/staff/profcormacograda/home/

 

Stephen Watt Professor of English, as well as Theatre and Drama, has taught at Indiana since 1985. His major research interests include drama and theatre of the 19th and 20th centuries, Irish Studies, and the contemporary university. He has recently finished a book Beckett and Contemporary Irish Writing, which discusses such writers as Samuel Beckett, Brian Friel, Marina Carr, John Banville, Paul Muldoon, Derek Mahon, and others. While doing research for those sections of the book that deal specifically with Northern Ireland, he became intrigued by the internment of political prisoners, not only the specific histories and effects of internment during the "Troubles," but also their representation in film and on stage. His next project will move in these directions. Select Honors and Awards include; President, Midwest Modern Language Association, 1999-2000; Executive Committee, American Conference for Irish Studies, 1999-2001; National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Collaborative Research Fellowship, 1999; NEH Fellowship (1998-99); Howard Fellow (Brown University), 1992-93

http://www.indiana.edu/~engweb/faculty/profile_sWatt.shtml