London Irish author silenced
JOHN HEALY, author of The Grass Arena — an unflinchingly honest account of his alcoholism, homelessness and prison sentences for petty crime — will read from his book at Kinsale Arts Week on July 11.
Healy, 68, brought up in an impoverished Irish immigrant family in Kentish Town in North London, says he had “the status of a pop star” when his memoir was published in 1988 and was made into a film. The book, lauded by the likes of Irvine Welshs and Harold Pinter, attracted considerable media interest and, more recently, was the subject of a documentary shown on RTE. But a dispute between Healy and his publishers, Faber & Faber, led to the print run being stopped and Healy vanishing from public view in the early 1990s.
