Brian Griffin

"Brian Griffin's first work of fiction, Sparkman in the Sky, is like Hemingway's In Our Time in that it can be read either as a collection of short stories or as a discontinuous novel. From story to story, themes gather meaning until in the last one they are resolved or transposed into a new key. The first-person narrator may be named Hal or Ian or Victor, but by the end all these narrators have fused into a collective exemplar of how things go in a certain place in our time. . . . It's no knock on Brian Griffin to say that he has learned from Hemingway, among others. After all, Miles Davis was no less gifted a musician, no less original, for having learned from Dizzy Gillespie. And Griffin has his own original qualities, his own subtleties, his own sly humor-even a gift for farce. . . . This book is way beyond promising."-The New York Times Book Review Brian Griffin grew up in the country near Soddy-Daisy, Tennessee, in a family he describes as "infested by preachers, all Southern Baptists of the fundamentalist sort." He earned his B. A. in English from Middle Tennessee State University and his M. F. A. from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Griffin teaches creative writing at the University of Tennessee. He lives with his wife and children in Knoxville and works closely with a group there to promote interracial harmony in the inner city. Griffin's stories and poems have been well published in journals including Shenandoah, New Delta Review, Clockwatch Review, Snake Nation Review, and Southern Poetry Review. In addition to various short stories and poems, Griffin is currently at work on a novel.

Selected by Barry Hannah as the 1996 winner of the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction.

This book is the first to provide an in-depth discussion of crime in Ireland from 1870 to 1920. It looks afresh at the topic of crime in the 1870-1920 period, examining agrarian offences as one part of a more general study of lawbreaking by 'ordinary' Irish people and those whom the police categorised as Ireland's 'criminal classes'. While agrarian crime was an important and distinctive phenomenon, it is important to bear in mind that it was merely one aspect of Ireland's crime story in this period. Most crimes committed in Ireland were non-agrarian in nature, and in the countryside most offences were relatively minor in character: most of the country's serious or indictable crimes were committed in Ireland's towns and cities, with Dublin featuring especially highly in the annual crime statistics. Many crimes in urban areas were carried out by child or juvenile offenders, who sometimes formed themselves into gangs for their own protection. An examination of the crimes committed by the country's 'criminal classes' - prostitutes, drunkards, thieves and vagrants - and other offenders shows how unremarkable most Irish crime was by international standards.

On July 27, 2008, a man pulled a sawed-off shotgun from a guitar case and fired randomly into a crowded sanctuary during a youth-led worship service at Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee, where the Brian Griffin was director of Religious Education programming. The worship service was intended to be a production of the play Annie, Jr. produced by children of the church, under the tutelage of our Director of Music. Instead, just as a child spoke the opening words of the play, a man who hates liberalism opened fire. Two people were fatally wounded and seven others were also shot before church members wrestled the man to the ground, about five seconds after he opened fire. He got off three shots. After he was subdued, there were 73 unfired shotgun shells scattered across the floor. About one-hundred children and teens, many of them in his Religious Education program, witnessed this bloody scene. Some of the children were splattered with blood. One of the dead was the author's close friend who died in Sunday light after shielding others with his body. Many of the poems attempt to replicate some sense of the immediate horror and dissociation of trauma that that the author experienced as he watched things unfold in real time. Those constitute the first section, "Lens." Others, in the "Mirror" section, are reflections on the event and what it might mean, filtered through his anxiety and traumatic memories. Still others are an exploration of ideas of healing and renewal ("Image") to the extent that he has found such things to be possible. The author's intent throughout is to reflect honestly on his experience. He wants to approximate, for the reader, how mass murder disconnects and in other ways reconnects its survivors to and from the quotidian. He shows the reader what happened, and to do so in a way that simply telling the story cannot-to guide the reader through a facsimile of trauma. These are not "therapy" poems. These are attempts to share a glimpse into raw, hard horror, and the long struggle that ensues.

SPUD, a new book by Brian Griffin, inspired by a residency in Béthune-Bruay in Northern France, marks the centenary of the end of World War I. Last year, Griffin spent three weeks in the French town, near the site of the Battle of the Somme and, also a large McCain potato factory – one of the largest potato production plants in Europe, producing around 1700 tons of frozen chips each day. With the coincidence of `SPUD’, the informal British word for potato also being slang for low ranking British soldiers in World War I, Griffin explores the relationship between the potatoes grown in the soil and the soldiers who were killed in the very same place, over 100 years ago.

Laboratory Design Guide 3rd edition is a complete guide to the complex process of laboratory design and construction. With practical advice and detailed examples, it is an indispensable reference for anyone involved in building or renovating laboratories. In this working manual Brian Griffin explains how to meet the unique combination of requirements that laboratory design entails. Considerations range from safety and site considerations to instrumentation and special furniture, and accommodate the latest laboratory practices and the constant evolution of science. Case studies from around the world illustrate universal principles of good design while showing a variety of approaches. Revised throughout for this new edition, the book contains a brand new chapter on the role of the computer, covering topics such as the virtual experiment, hot desking, virtual buildings and computer-generated space relationship diagrams. There are also 10 new international case studies, including the Kadoorie Biological Sciences Building at the University of Hong Kong.

This book is essential reading for teaching staff and librarians to assist them in briefing the project design teams. It should also be a reference book for architects and interior designers. Student's need for social learning, collaborative and interactive facilities have had the greatest impact on the design of new teaching and learning spaces. The author, Brian Griffin, Architect researched this subject over many years and has included a large number of international Case Studies of successful designs. He is also the author of 'Laboratory Design Guide' 3rd Ed 2012 Routledge.

This book examines the social history of cycling in 19th-century Ireland. Drawing from the numerous Irish and British cycling journals and newspapers of the period, this book illustrates the profound impact which the introduction of the bicycle and the tricycle had on the lives of Irish men, women and children. It also features cartoons and photographs.

Laboratory Design Guide 3rd edition is a complete guide to the complex process of laboratory design and construction. With practical advice and detailed examples, it is an indispensable reference for anyone involved in building or renovating laboratories. In this working manual Brian Griffin explains how to meet the unique combination of requirements that laboratory design entails. Considerations range from safety and site considerations to instrumentation and special furniture, and accommodate the latest laboratory practices and the constant evolution of science. Case studies from around the world illustrate universal principles of good design while showing a variety of approaches. Revised throughout for this new edition, the book contains a brand new chapter on the role of the computer, covering topics such as the virtual experiment, hot desking, virtual buildings and computer-generated space relationship diagrams. There are also 10 new international case studies, including the Kadoorie Biological Sciences Building at the University of Hong Kong.