Playwright and Novelist Patrick McCabe to Speak at Pitt

PITTSBURGH-Playwright and novelist Patrick McCabe, the 2006-07 William Block Sr. Writer, will give an evening reading at the University of Pittsburgh as part of the Pittsburgh Contemporary Writers Series at 8:30 p.m. March 22 in the Frick Fine Arts Building Auditorium, 650 Schenley Dr., Oakland. This event is free and open to the public.

This event is a prelude to a film conference on adaptation, titled "The Virtues of Fidelity: Film Adaptation as Literary Truth," to be held the following day.

McCabe is the author of five novels, including "The Dead School" (Picador, 1995), "Breakfast on Pluto" (Picador, 1998), and "The Butcher Boy" (Picador, 1992), which won the "Irish Times'" Irish Literature Prize for fiction and was adapted into a 1996 film directed by Neil Jordan. Author of the children's book "The Adventures of Shay Mouse" (Raven Arts Press, 1985), McCabe also wrote the play "Frank Pig Says Hello" (Methuen, 1998), which was first performed at the Dublin Theatre Festival in 1992 and has been published in the compellation "Far from the Land: Contemporary Irish Plays" (Methuen, 1998). The British Broadcasting Company has aired McCabe's work and his short stories have been published in the "Irish Times" and the "Cork Examiner."

Born in Clones, County Monaghan, Ireland, in 1955, McCabe was educated at St. Patrick's Training College in Dublin and began teaching at Kingsbury Day Special School in London in 1980. He lives in Sligo, Ireland, with his wife and two daughters.

The Pittsburgh Contemporary Writers Series is cosponsored by the Wyndham Garden Hotel-University Place and Pitt's Book Center, University of Pittsburgh Press, and Creative Nonfiction and Film Studies Programs.

For more information, call 412-624-6505 or visit www.english.pitt.edu.

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