Declan O'Rourke: The Pawnbroker's Reward

Award-wining artist Declan O’Rourke has been crafting songs since his teens. Performing extensively through the United States, Europe, and Australia, O’Rourke’s growing status is of a significant global artist. He has released seven studio records, five of which have enjoyed top five status in the national charts of Ireland. Arrivals (April 2021), reached number two and was nominated for International Album of the Year by the Americana Music Association, UK. His literary debut, The Pawnbroker’s Reward (November 2021), reached number two in the hardback fiction bestseller’s chart and remained in the top five for eight weeks.

Photo credit: Joe Geoghegan

Professor Christine Kinealy is the founding director of Ireland’s Great Hunger Institute at Quinnipiac University. She has published extensively on Ireland’s Great Hunger and the Irish Abolition movement, including the award-winning This Great Calamity. She has recently edited two volumes, Heroes of the Great Hunger (2021) and More Heroes of the Great Hunger (2022), which were inspired by the selflessness of front-line workers during the COVID-19 pandemic and the parallels with the forgotten front-line workers of Ireland’s Great Famine. Christine is also a director of the African American Irish Diaspora Network. In 2018, she published Frederick Douglass and Ireland: In His Own Words and, in 2020, Black Abolitionists in Ireland. This research has led to the creation of Frederick Douglass Walking Trails in Belfast, Cork and Dublin. 

In 2014, Christine was inducted into the Irish America Hall of Fame and, in 2017, received an Emmy for The Great Hunger and the Irish Diaspora documentary.