American Irish Historical Society Annual Gala

AIHS Archives Intern Presentations
2026-04-24 15:00 - 20:00 UTC | American Irish Historical Society, 991 5th Ave, New York, NY, 10028, United States
The American Irish Historical Society runs an archival internship program every semester. Undergraduate and graduate students select a collection and/or focus from our archives and write a research paper to be published and preserved. These research topics are shared in a final presentation at the end of the semester. This year, our presenters range from history and politics to arts and athletics! Come learn from our wonderful students in two fantastic panels of Irish research.
Open to the public.
https://form-usa.keela.co/intern-presentations

Sophie Catches her Breath
2026-04-21 19:00 - 21:00 | American Irish Historical Society, 991 5th Ave, New York, NY, 10028, United States
Please join us for a concert reading of a brand new Irish musical.
“SOPHIE catches her breath”
by Eamon O’Tuama
It’s 1995 and Sophie returns to Cork after 5 years in New York City living the life of a struggling musician. Sophie’s Uncle has died and left her his small farm causing an uproar in the household. Sophie’s sister, Noreen, is angry and feels passed over. Her Father is suspicious and her Mother is distant. On top of this Sophie discovers her boyfriend has a secret and her best friend is resentful. The Irish economy is booming, people are insufferable and Riverdance has changed everything. Sophie has decisions to make.
CAST: Annalisa Chamberlin, David Foley,Jr. Francesca Garry, Jo Kinsella, Katherine Laheen, Reed Lancaster, Soph Metcalf, Emma O’Donnell, Michael Winther
Director: John Keating
Music Director: Jake Turski
Guitar: Tony Calabro
Click the links for more information and tickets.
Tuesday April 21st 7:00pm

Isabelle O’Connell: Cocteau album release concert
2026-04-16 19:30 - 2026-05-17 21:30 | American Irish Historical Society, 991 5th Ave, New York, NY, 10028, United States
Internationally acclaimed pianist Isabelle O’Connell celebrates the release of her new solo album ‘Cocteau’ on the Divine Art Records label, with a concert exploring the musical connections of artist Jean Cocteau in 1920’s Paris. The concert will feature music by Satie, Stravinsky, Poulenc, Darius Milhaud, Tailleferre and the rest of Le Groupe des Six, along with a more recent work by Irish composer Rhona Clarke, also inspired by Cocteau.
Ticket holders will receive a copy of the ‘Cocteau’ album and enjoy a wine reception after the concert

Described by the New York Times as ‘one of the finest, busiest pianists active in New York’s contemporary-classical scene’ Dublin-born pianist Isabelle O’Connell’s international career as soloist and chamber musician has taken her around the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and across Europe, to venues such as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, Chicago Cultural Center, the Gilmore Keyboard Festival, Die Stadthalle Wuppertal, St David’s Hall, Cardiff and the National Concert Hall, Ireland. A dynamic interpreter and energetic advocate of 20th and 21st century composers, Isabelle regularly commissions and premieres new works and has worked with some of the leading composers of our time. She recently gave the New York premiere of Viet Cuong’s piano concerto Stargazer with conductor David Bloom, and is cofounder of Grand Band, a piano sextet dubbed ‘the Traveling Wilburys of the city’s new-music piano scene’ by the New York Times. Isabelle also regularly performs with Irish ensemble Evlana, led by composer Siobhán Cleary. Isabelle is the current recipient of a 2025 Fulbright Alumni Project Award and serves on the piano faculty as Artist-in-Residence at Bard College and Conservatory of Music in New York.
Tickets – https://www.eventbrite.com/e/isabelle-oconnell-cocteau-album-release-concert-nyc-tickets-1983009022367?aff=oddtdtcreator

How to Read a Poem
2026-04-08 17:30 - 19:30 | American Irish Historical Society, 991 5th Ave, New York, NY, 10028, United States
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Since 2023, Pulitzer Prizewinning poet and former Poetry Editor of The New Yorker Paul Muldoon has led his extraordinary “How to Read a Poem” discussions at literary festivals and universities all over the world. At these very special gatherings, participants meet to discuss poems published only that week in literary journals and magazines, not just to glean their individual meanings but to reflect on where poetry as an art form has been – and where it’s going.
For nearly forty years, Paul Muldoon has been Howard G. B. Clark Professor at Princeton, teaching creative writing, Irish literature, songwriting and translation. He served as Oxford Professor of Poetry from 1999 to 2004 and Ireland Professor of Poetry from 2022 to 2025. His fifteen major collections of poetry, published in America by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, include MOY SAND AND GRAVEL (winner of the Pulitzer Prize) and JOY IN SERVICE ON RUE TAGORE, a New York Times Notable Book of 2024. He is the editor of many anthologies of poetry, including, most recently, SCANTY PLOT OF GROUND: A BOOK OF SONNETS.
Poems for discussion will be distributed at the session. No preparation or knowledge of poetry is necessary. The only prerequisite? An open mind.
Presented by BOOKTHEWRITER, Class limited to 80 participants, running time two hours with a ten minute break.
Register at Humanitix, $45
We are happy to offer discounted tickets of $35 to members of the American Irish Historical Society. Please use the code AIHS

Anna Frances Levins: 150 Years
2026-03-24 12:00 - 13:00 | Virtual
Trailblazing photographer, publisher, artist and Irish independence activist Anna Francis Levins (1876-1941) has fallen into undeserved obscurity, which independent scholar Eve M. Kahn has set out to remedy based on archival treasures including in the American Irish Historical Society’s collection. This heavily illustrated talk will cover Levins’ work combating xenophobia, documenting Irish Americans dating back to Revolutionary War heroes, running her own publishing house, globetrotting to photograph remotest Ireland as well as eminences including Pope Pius X, serving as the American Irish Historical Society’s official photographer, and improbably metamorphosing in middle age into a baroness while confiding secrets to priest friends.
Eve M. Kahn, former Antiques Columnist at The New York Times, contributes to the Times among other publications. She wrote an award-winning biography of the 19th-century artist Mary Rogers Williams (Wesleyan U. Press, 2019). Her new book, Queen of Bohemia Predicts Own Death: Gilded-Age Journalist Zoe Anderson Norris(Fordham U. Press), is a finalist for a Sarton Award from the Story Circle Network and has been called “beautifully written and meticulously researched.”
This event is virtual. Please register at this link.

Literary Evening with Vincent J Quealy and Cauvery Madhavan
2026-02-26 18:00 - 19:00 | American Irish Historical Society, 991 5th Ave, New York, NY, 10028, United States
We are excited to welcome Vincent J Quealy Jr and Cauvery Madhavan for a literary discussion of their impressive books ‘Reflections of an Irish Grandson’ and ‘The Inheritance’.
Vincent Quealy, Jr. was born in Boston, MA, one of six children of Vincent and Anne Quealy. His grandparents were both born in Ireland and lived there into early adulthood, eventually emigrating to the United States in the early 1900’s and settling, for a time, in Lowell, MA. Vincent is the author of ‘Reflections of an Irish Grandson’, a poignant and heartfelt story of his family’s Irish history. Blending personal stories with vivid reflections on Ireland’s past, this beautifully written memoir captures what it means to be Irish-American. It’s been called “A moving tribute to Irish roots, family and the stories that shape us.” Vincent is a graduate of Boston College, Class of 1975, and remains deeply engaged with many university programs and initiatives, including the Boston College Ireland Business Council. He lives in Scituate, MA with his wife, Joanie, and very nearby their three children and six grandchildren.
Born in India, Cauvery Madhavan moved to Ireland 40 years ago. Her books Paddy Indian and The Uncoupling were published to critical acclaim. Her last novel, The Tainted, was chosen by Laureate Sebastian Barry for his Laureate Picks 2020. It was one of An Post Irish Book Awards’ Top Summer Reads. The book was chosen by The Times for their list of top 40 Historical Fiction novels and won the runner-up prize for the SAHR Prize for Military Fiction.
Her new book, The Inheritance, has been widely hailed as a sumptuous, moving evocation of landscape, history and the human spirit. A very keen golfer and cook, she has three children and lives with her husband in County Kildare.
Please register to attend this event here

From Drumlins to the New World - The 1764 Exodus of a Scots- Irish community from Co. Monaghan to upstate New York - A Living Legacy.
2026-02-23 18:00 - 20:00 | American Irish Historical Society, 991 5th Ave, New York, NY, 10028, United States
In 1764 the Rev. Thomas Clark gathered his congregation at the Cahans meeting house, near Ballybay Co. Monaghan. Answering “the call” from America, Clark then led some 300 men, women and children on foot to the port of Newry, and boarded ship for New York. From New York they travelled up the Hudson; first to Albany, then Stillwater before finally settling in today’s Salem, Washington County NY. Their journey has become known as the “Cahans Exodus” Anthony Anderton first became aware of the “Cahans Exodus” during a 2015 visit to Ballybay – his mother’s hometown. He researched the history of the Exodus, and contacted the Cahans Heritage Committee. In 2023 and 2024 he visited Ballybay and retraced the overland “Exodus” route, making photographs of sites and locations in Monaghan, Down and Louth. In early February 2026 he will visit Salem NY to continue his project research and he will include this material in the presentation to the AIHS.
Reserve your complimentary tickets here

Writing Home The Letters of Irish Emigrants to America, c. 1815–1994 Breandán Mac Suibhne University of Galway
2026-02-19 18:00 - 20:00 | American Irish Historical Society, 991 5th Ave, New York, NY, 10028, United States
Breandán Mac Suibhne is a historian of modern Ireland at the University of Galway. His publications include The End of Outrage (Oxford, 2017), which was Irish Times Irish Nonfiction Book of the Year. Mac Suibhne is one of the directors of Imirce, a project that makes thousands of Irish emigrant letters available through an online database. He is currently completing a book on the actual people on whom characters in Brian Friel’s Dancing at Lughnasa (1990) are, more or less, based, and he is a member of an international team that has edited and annotated the correspondence (1798–1846) of the Moore family of Derry and Baltimore, Maryland, for publication by the Irish Manuscript Commission.
The great leave-takings from Ireland for North America constitute one of the largest movements of population in the modern era. In 1845–55 alone, some 2 million Irish people crossed the Atlantic, that is, almost a quarter of Ireland’s 1845 population of 8.5 million. And another 4 million left for America by 1929. There were more Irish-born people living in New York in 1890 than in Dublin. In an illustrated talk, University of Galway historian Breandán Mac Suibhne gives an overview of changing patterns of emigration from Ireland, from the 1600s through the late 1900s, and provides an update on the Imirce project that is making thousands of Irish emigrant letters publicly available through an online database.
RSVP to this free event here

AIHS celebrates President’s Day
2026-02-16 18:00 - 20:00 | NY
The American Irish Historical Society and www.IrishAmerica250.org invite you to celebrate our national holiday Presidents Day Monday, February 16, 2026
We seek to recognize the twenty-three American Presidents with Irish roots whose leadership gave us hope and courage throughout the last 250 years .
To commemorate this unique occasion the distinguished Irish poet Micheal O’Siadhail will do a first reading of his new poem ” Irish America 250″ and author Niall O Dowd will be talking about his new book “George Washington and the Irish”.
Please register to attend here

AIHS & National Library of Ireland: Cooking the Books Across the Ocean
2026-01-28 10:00 - 12:00 | NY
10:00 AM 12:00 PM
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10-12 New York Eastern (1500-1700 Irish Time)
This event is an extension of the National Library of Ireland’s Cooking the Books series, bringing this work to an American audience. NLI’s series (run by Archivists Nora Thornton and Joanne Carroll) involves reading of archival recipes and recreating them for a public audience. This event encourages the public to engage with archives through culinary practices. To bring this event to our audience at AIHS, we are hosting a combined virtual and physical event, presented by Dublin and New York. AIHS and NLI archivists will share versions of traditional recipes that exist in some form in both of their collections. Both will share these versions (with tastings at AIHS) and present on the differences through a shared talk.
Food is included in ticket price.
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Tickets cost $20 for general audiences, $15 for AIHS members. Reserve at this link

Exhibit Launch: Irish America 250: That the World May Know
2026-01-06 18:00 - 2026-01-26 20:00 | American Irish Historical Society, 991 5th Ave, New York, NY, 10028, United States
6:00 PM 8:00 PM
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This exhibit, running through the course of 2026, uses the archives of the American Irish Historical Society to display the history of Irish America. 250 years after 1776, we look back on the contributions and stories of Irish emigrants and their descendants in American history. In collaboration with Irish America 250, this is part of a series of events and exhibits throughout 2026.
This launch will feature a brief lecture on the planned exhibit–featuring 12 themes for 2026–and a view of the January exhibit theme, “Revolutionary Heroes.”
