On deck is Dermot's novel The Lion's Head Oral History: A Work in Progress.

The Lion's Head, which closed in 1996, was long known as the watering hole for drinkers with writing problems, the Head (As the regulars called it) also became a second home for a veritable “greatest generation” of Irish-American writers and raconteurs, not to mention poets, politicians and musicians.

Here is some background for The Lion's Head Oral History, written in the New York Times

Years After Last Call, Keeping a Bar's History Alive

By CLYDE HABERMAN

Published: April 4, 2011

They've been shooting at Dermot McEvoy's regiment for a while. Their aim is now getting distressingly good.

One by one, at an ever-faster pace, old Lion's Head regulars are dying. The Lion's Head was a bar, a few steps down from Christopher Street in Greenwich Village. Some bars are special. This one was.

For three decades before it, too, died, in 1996, it was a haven for writers and other wastrels who went there to drink, of course, but also to joke and argue and swap stories, some of which may have had the added advantage of being true. Mr. McEvoy said Jimmy Breslin once told him that "there's nothing better than going to a bar and lying to your friends."

The roster of the Lion's Head fallen has grown rapidly these.... Read On