Tinteán

Tinteán‘s Editor-in-Chief, August 2007 until about 2021.

Irish-born Liz came to Australia in 1967 on her marriage to Tony Mara (whom she met working as an Aer Lingus reservation clerk in Dublin). In Australia, Liz studied and acquired an Arts Degree in 1973 and a Diploma of Education in 1974 after which she commenced a career of teaching primarily English Literature. After Tony’s death, she moved to Singapore where she spent 6 years teaching and then married Don McKenzie in 2003, whom she met when he was working in Singapore and she was teaching there. Don would become a supporter and copy editor for Tinteán, quietly, behind the scenes.

Liz was an (understated) stalwart of Irish Australia. She had worked as an editor on Tinteán’s predecessor magazine, Táin and, in her first issue of the re-started magazine, summed up the sense of disbelief when Val Noone and Mary Doyle announced that the mag, although popular with readers, and beloved of its many workers, was financially unsustainable and needed to be wound up :

She frequently returned to visit close family in Dublin, and she revelled in globalisation, sometimes being unsure of whether she was listening to the ABC or RTE, and of which end of the world she occupied. Her ashes will be interred alongside her sister, who predeceased her only in May 2025. Her life as a wife, sister and mother and her close links with her Dublin family were well outlineD in her son, Ciaran’s eulogy at the funeral.

… there was an instant and terrible silence. Surely he was joking? Of course, our first concern was for Val and Mary and their decision which we acknowledged we had to honour. …What would we do without Táin? (Tinteán No.1, August 2007-8).

As she would later put it:

(t)he initial motivation …seems to have been the craic we enjoyed as Val’s unruly editorial committee. Great conversations, heated debate, food wine and song….We progressed from a ‘gathering’ to a comfortable group around ‘the hearth’ (a play on the two different names of the magazine). 

Using  the Tinteán banner, Liz became the editor of the continuing print journal. It would, after 20 issues, boldly morph into the free, online monthly magazine you are reading, with an impressive print backlist as well. A brave new world for a committee of seniors, but Liz led the learning with the confidence of a born and bred educator. It was a brave move and one to which our worldwide readership is immensely indebted. This metamorphosis took courage, connections, and a formidable work ethic to surmount the inevitable challenges of being fully online. She was aided by Andrew Macdermid, our talented and longsuffering IT specialist, who had laid out the print magazine, and would go on to design the online version, but she it was who taught the largely ongoing team to power through. Her team at the point of takeover from Táin included Terry Monagle, Peter Kiernan and Rob Butler (all sadly deceased, and in memory each larger-than-life and much loved), Patrick McNamara, Meg McNena, Felicity Allen and me. She presided over a happy team, but occasionally needed to be feisty and firm to resolve issues. These qualities were in her remit. 

Liz’s spirituality, more obviously manifested occasionally in the Sunday Age religious affairs column where she was a regular columnist. She brought to her writing and her editorial activities a moral timbre and inclusivity. She was interested in how Australian Irish history was presented to subsequent generations, controversies within the Catholic church, relations with Indigenous Australians, and the ongoing challenges and achievements of Northern Ireland. And she loved to see Irish Australians celebrating their cultural affiliations with Ireland, even when their ancestors were rogues and thieves. She also enjoyed their survival stories. Her mission statement for Tinteán, expressed in issue 15 (2011), gives a good account of her respect for narrative and history. She saw the purpose of the magazine as being

to explore the big themes of exile, diaspora and settlement as well as telling the micro-stories that express narratives of individuals and families. The big historical events of the past enthral us and encourage a reassessment a new perspective on closely held opinions while the stories of individuals and families fascinate and inspire us.

She was not only an energetic editor but also wrote many a lengthy editorial and other contributions for Táin and Tinteán — profiling new Ambassadors, and reviewing books with wit and a sense of fun. I enjoyed her catalogue of the new satiric and colourful Celtic Tiger monikers in a review of David Macmillan’s The Generation Game, descriptors she bravely and amusedly owned as a representative of the target generation: ‘Bono Boomers, the Jagger and Juggler generations, the Botox Economy and permalescents’ (‘My Generation’, Tinteán,3:40). It was a joy to revisit Liz’s reviews as they go to all corners of the Irish diaspora, are well-informed, intelligently ‘meta’, and bespeak her love of the Irish language, something that Tinteán increasingly features. She also commissioned lots of articles and had good working relations with Irish Central and with Irish papers.

She has been sorely missed since the Covid years when her illness first manifested. Liz succumbed after a long illness on 10 August 2025 and was farewelled on 19 August.

For a fuller history of Táin/Tinteán, and for Liz’s perspective, see this transcript of a programme to celebrate both magazines, originally made for broadcast on the Irish Programme at ZZZ in 2020.

A life lived energetically, adventurously, with compassion and integrity. Rest in Peace, dear Liz.

Frances Devlin-Glass (with input from Patrick McNamara and Don McKenzie)

Frances continues as a member of the Editorial Collective of Tinteán.