Cormac O'Malley

Cormac Kevin Hooker O'Malley (born 20 July 1942, Dublin) is an Irish-American author and historian. The third child of Irish republican Ernie O'Malley and American sculptor Helen Hooker,[1] O'Malley was brought up in County Mayo and later educated in England before moving to the United States to live with his mother after his father's death in 1957. He attended Harvard, enrolled in the US Navy and later graduated from Columbia Law School.[2] O'Malley resides in Stonington, Connecticut. He was married to Moira Kennedy from 1971 until her death in 2018 and they had two children, daughter Bergin (1977) and son Conor (1979).[3][4]

Although he was unaware of his father's militant past until after the latter's death in 1957,[5] O'Malley has edited his father's three memoirs on the militant Irish nationalist struggle from 1916 to 1924: On Another Man’s Wound, The Singing Flame and Raids and Rallies, and owns the copyright to these works. The second and third of these works were published when, in 1972, he was given his father's manuscript on the civil war period.[6] In 2021 he co-authored a biography on his father, Ernie O'Malley: A Life.[7][8]

He is also the custodian of the many papers left by his father and mother and has been active in promoting his family's heritage through books, film, seminars and lectures.[9][2][10] He has entrusted his father's nationalist struggle papers to UCD Archives and those of a non-nationalist nature to NYU Archives of Irish America.[11]

A former research associate at Trinity College Dublin,[4] O'Malley has been prominent in Irish American cultural exchange, including serving as Glucksman Ireland House Board of Advisors President. He was organiser of the 2014 symposium on Ernie O'Malley and Modern Ireland and Revolution at Glucksman Ireland House. He was also the producer for A Call to Arts, a 2020 documentary on his parents' journey through the arts.[12]

Of O'Malley a colleague observed: "Cormac O’Malley has enabled a dynamic corpus of scholarship on Ireland and on the transatlantic ties that bind Ireland and the U.S."[2]

Publications

  • Cormac O'Malley and Richard English (ed.), Prisoners: The Civil War Letters of Ernie O’Malley (Swords, Poolbeg, 1991)
  • Cormac O'Malley and Richard English (ed.), No Surrender Here!: The Civil War Papers of Ernie O’Malley, 1922-1924 (Dublin, Lilliput Press, 2007)
  • Cormac O'Malley (ed.), Rising Out, Sean Connolly of Longford, 1890-1921 by Ernie O’Malley (Dublin, UCD Press, 2007)
  • Cormac O'Malley and Nicholas Allen (ed.), Broken Landscapes: Selected Letters of Ernie O’Malley, 1924-1957 (Dublin, Lilliput Press, 2011)
  • Cormac O'Malley and Tim Horgan (ed.), The Men Will Talk to Me: Kerry Interviews by Ernie O’Malley (Dublin, Mercier, 2012)
  • Cormac O'Malley and Cormac Ó Comhraí (ed.), The Men Will Talk to Me: Galway Interviews by Ernie O’Malley (Dublin, Mercier, 2013)
  • Cormac O'Malley and Vicent Keane (ed.), The Men Will Talk to Me: Mayo Interviews by Ernie O’Malley (Dublin, Mercier, 2014)
  • Cormac O'Malley and Juliet Barron (ed.), Western Ways: Remembering Mayo Through the Eyes of Helen Hooker and Ernie O'Malley (Dublin, Mercier, 2015)
  • Cormac O'Malley (ed.), Modern Ireland and Revolution, Ernie O'Malley in Context (Kildare, IAP, 2016)
  • Cormac O'Malley and Róisín Kennedy (ed.), Nobody's Business: The Aran Diaries of Ernie O'Malley (Dublin, Lilliput Press, 2017)
  • Cormac O'Malley and Harry Martin, Ernie O'Malley: A Life (Newbridge, Merrion Press, 2021)
  • Cormac O'Malley and Patrick Mahoney, The Enchanted Bay: Tales and Legends from Ernie O’Malley’s Irish Folklore Collection (Newbridge, Merrion Press, 2024)

References

  1. ^ 'Cormac O'Malley: Revolutionary's Son Helps NYU Focus on the "Possibilities"'. The Wild Geese, 8 February 2014. Retrieved 7 October 2024
  2. ^ a b c Peter McDermott, 'Ernie's war stories, 100 years on'. The Irish Echo, 6 July 2020. Retrieved 11 March 2025
  3. ^ 'Moira Kennedy O’Malley Obituary: First executive director of the Ireland Funds'. The Irish Times, 12 January 2019. Retrieved 31 May 2025
  4. ^ a b 'O'Malley Family // Connecticut & Mayo'. Photo Album of the Irish, undated. Retrieved 31 May 2025
  5. ^ Emily Hourican, 'Life did change after my mother left and after she took my brother and sister' - Ernie O’Malley’s son Cormac'. Irish Independent, 15 December 2024. Retrieved 13 May 2025
  6. ^ Peter McDermott, 'A family at war'. The Irish Echo, 16 March 2023. Retrieved 13 May 2025
  7. ^ Patricia Harty, 'Son of a Rebel: A Conversation with Cormac O'Malley'. Irish America, 2021. Retrieved 7 October 2024
  8. ^ 'Ernie O'Malley: His life according to Harry F Martin and Cormac KH O'Malley'. Eolas, September 2022. Retrieved 7 October 2024
  9. ^ 'Ernie O'Malley: A Life'. Irish Academic Press, October 2021. Retrieved 7 October 2024
  10. ^ ‘Cormac O'Malley on "Ernie O'Malley (1897-1957), A Life Fighting Against the Pale: Rebel, Author and Artist"’. University of Notre Dame, 16 February 2018. Retrieved 13 May 2025
  11. ^ 'Cormac K. H. O'Malley Papers'. NYU Libraries, undated. Retrieved 7 October 2024
  12. ^ Christopher Kepple, 'Call to Arts: a Helen Hooker and Ernie O'Malley Documentary'. Irish Central, 13 August 2020. Retrieved 7 October 2024
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