As a celebration of our alumni, each month we will highlight a new book written by one of
Oxford's North American-based alumni.
Our June 2022 book is "Stewart Parker: A Life" by Marilynn Richtarik (Jesus, 1988).
Marilynn Richtarik, who completed MPhil and DPhil degrees in English at Oxford, is a Professor of English at Georgia State University in Atlanta and the author of Acting Between the Lines: The Field Day Theatre Company and Irish Cultural Politics 1980-1984 (Oxford University Press, 1994) and Stewart Parker: A Life (Oxford University Press, 2012). In 2017, she taught and conducted research at Queen’s University Belfast as a US Fulbright Scholar. She’s currently working on a book about literary reactions and contributions to the peace process in Northern Ireland that culminated in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.
Her biography of Stewart Parker, our featured title this month, took her nearly twenty years to research and write. Born in 1941 to working-class Protestant parents in Belfast, Parker’s story is in many ways the story of his generation. Steeped in American popular culture as a child and young adult, he spent five years teaching in New York State before returning to Belfast in August 1969, the same week British troops were deployed there in an effort to quell sectarian violence. Parker had developed a sense of writing as a form of political action in the highly charged atmosphere of the United States in the late 1960s, and his work throughout the worst years of the Troubles expressed his own socialist and secular vision of Northern Irish potential. Stewart Parker: A Life explores Parker’s writing in the context of his life and times and thus contains within it a history of the Troubles as they affected one individual.
You can purchase Stewart Parker: A Life here.
Are you an alumni author?
If you have written a book which was published within the last three years, or is due to be released soon, please email us the following information.
Your full name
A high-quality headshot
A short bio
Alumni number (or college/year of matriculation)
Title of book
Date of publication
ISBN
Link to purchase the book online
We thank you for sharing your books with us, and will let you know if you are selected for a feature in the coming months.
Please visit our archive page to look back at previous Alumni Authors