On Tuesday, April 7, Catawba College’s English and music departments will host an evening of Irish poetry and music, beginning at 7 p.m. in Tom Smith Auditorium in Ketner Hall. The evening, which is free and open to the public, will feature performances by an Irish couple who live in London, poet Anne-Marie Fyfe and poet/musician/critic Cahal Dallat.

Fyfe will read from her latest poetry collection, while Dallat will combine his own performance on the accordion with a talk on Irish music. As part of the evening, Catawba music students, led by Shaun Cammack and including members of the Vernaculars Roots group, will hold an open jam session with Dallat.  Musicians are welcome to join in.

Fyfe has published four collections of poetry including “Understudies: New and Selected Poems” and a fifth collection, “House of Small Absences,” due from Seren Books in 2015. Winner of the Academi Cardiff International Poetry Prize, she has run Coffee-House Poetry’s readings and workshops at London’s leading live literature venue, the Troubadour, since 1997.  She was chair of the UK-wide Poetry Society from 2006-2009.

Dallat has reviewed literature and the arts for the TLS and Guardian among others and has been a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4’s Saturday Review since its inception in 1998. His first poetry collection, “Morning Star,” was published in 1998. He won the Strokestown International Poetry Competition in 2006. His latest collection is “The Year of Not Dancing” (Blackstaff Press, 2009).

Margaret Maron at Pfeiffer

Pfeiffer University Friends of the Library welcomes North Carolina author Margaret Maron to its annual spring luncheon. Maron will discuss her latest book, “Designated Daughters,” Tuesday, April 14, 11 a.m.-1 p.m., Misenheimer campus, Stokes Student Center, 48380 U.S. Hwy 52N.

Maron is the author of two short story collections and 29 mystery novels, including a series that features the character Sigrid Harald, an NYPD lieutenant whose policeman father was killed in the line of duty when she was a child, and The Deborah Knott series, about an attorney and daughter of an infamous North Carolina bootlegger. The latter provides the backdrop for Designated Daughters (2014, Grand Central Publishing), the most recent story in the collection.

Born in North Carolina on a farm where “the Piedmont meets the Sandhills,” Maron lived for several years in Brooklyn, N.Y., where her husband is from, before they returned to her native state, specifically to her family’s farm near Raleigh. North Carolina is the setting for most of her writing.

“When I first chose this genre, it was because I thought I had nothing to say and the classic mystery novel had a form that would let me write without any burden of trying to be profound,” said Maron in a quote from her website (margaretmaron.com). “But once I began writing about North Carolina, I realized there was nothing I couldn’t say in this most flexible form.”

Among the many literary awards Maron has received or been nominated for are the Agatha, Anthony, Edgar and Macavity Awards (1993) as well as Lifetime Achievement Award/ Malice Domestic Convention (2004), The R. Hunt Parker Award for Significant Contributions to the Literature of North Carolina (2013), Honorary Doctor of Letters, UNC Greensboro (2010), North Carolina Award for Literature (2008), Magnolia Award (SE Chapter, MWA 2008), Order of the Longleaf Pine (2006) and Sir Walter Raleigh Award (2004). She has served as president of the American Crime Writers League (1997-98) and is a founder of and past president for Sisters in Crime (1989-90).

Reservations and tickets ($25 for Friends of the Library members; $30 for non-members) are required for the luncheon and discussion. For reservations, call (704) 463-3035 or email advance@pfeiffer.edu by April 7.