Online Booking now open for
Mountains to Sea dlr Book Festival
11-14th September 2014
Fine Writing Fiction Poetry Workshops AND Picnics!!
Martin Amis / Lynn Barber / John Boyne / Lee Child / Eoin Colfer / Anthony Cronin / Sinéad Crowley / Vona Groarke / John Kelly / Paul Lynch / David Mitchell / Sinéad Morrissey / David Park / Don Paterson / Kamila Shamsie
These are a selection of authors appearing in the brilliant line up at this year’s Mountains to Sea dlr Book Festival incorporating the dlr Poetry Now International Poetry Festival.
Bert Wright, the primary curator of this year’s festival writes,
‘Book Festivals remind us that words emanate from a specific human source, a consciousness, an intellect that is right there in front of us. We see and hear them not through a digital scrim but up close and personal and both parties are immeasurably enriched in the process’.
‘Book Festivals remind us that words emanate from a specific human source, a consciousness, an intellect that is right there in front of us. We see and hear them not through a digital scrim but up close and personal and both parties are immeasurably enriched in the process’.
The 1st event will be a special pre-festival reading & public interview with Martin Amis on Wednesday 27th August. The festival weekend includes over 40 events running over 3 nights.
Friday 12th September includes poetry from Vona Groarke & Don Paterson as well as a cabaret event with dlr Writer in Residence Colm Keegan; Murderous Maths with Kjartan Poskitt; a teenage Dylan Thomas-themed workshop (including a visit to THE POETRY SHED) and a stellar reading with John Boyne and Man Booker Prize Longlisted David Mitchell.
Saturday 12th September has workshops on poetry with Don Paterson and on writing with Jane Casey, Anna Carey & Patrick Freyne plus Irish songs and film clips with students from TG Lurgan. Readings include John Kelly & Paul Lynch; Kamila Shamsie & Xiaolu Guo and a public interview with Lynn Barber. Family events include THE DAHL FACTOR, a superhero comic session with illustrator Alan Nolan AND the magical Great Teddy Bear Library Sleepover on Saturday night. THE IRISH TIMES POETRY NOW AWARD will also be presented that day and poet Michael Symmons Roberts makes his Irish debut shortly afterwards. Saturday’s finale event will be the LETTERS LIVE event in the Pavilion theatre where an array of actors, authors and musicians, will be reading ‘correspondence deserving of a wider audience’.
Workshops on Sunday 14th September include fiction with Mia Gallagher, a Haiku-writing walk with Anatoly Kudryavitsky and a masterclass on illustration with picture book artist Yasmeen Ismail. For the family, there’s a Where’s Wally Library Hunt; 2 Picture Book Picnics and a fun double Laureate event with Eoin Colfer & Aneirín Karadog. The SHINE/STRONG POETRY AWARD READING takes place, David Park & Sinéad Morrisey chat about poetry and it’s a big night for Crime Fiction fans! Liz Nugent, Jane Casey, Karen Perry, Sinéad Crowley & Lee Child will all be reading and TV fans get to meet screenwriters Jed Mercurio and Michael Hirst! For music and poetry fans, we round up a perfect weekend with Anthony Cronin reading his epic RMS Titanic poem with a thrilling music score, specially created and performed by Donal Lunny.
Tara Bergin was born and grew up in Dublin. She moved to England in 2002. In 2012 she completed her PhD research at Newcastle University on Ted Hughes’s translations of János Pilinszky. Her poetry was published in the bestselling Carcanet anthology New Poetries V and her debut collection This is Yarrow was published last year.
Nick Laird was born in 1975 in Co. Tyrone and studied English at the University of Cambridge, where he won the Quiller-Couch Award for creative writing. His debut collection, To a Fault (2005), won the Aldeburgh Poetry Prize; his second, On Purpose (2007), the Somerset Maugham Award and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. He is the author of two novels and lives in London. Photo credit: Mark Pringle
Sinéad Morrissey was born in 1972 and grew up in Belfast. She read English and German at Trinity College, Dublin, from which she took her PhD in 2003. Her five collections are There Was Fire in Vancouver(1996), Between Here and There (2002), The State of the Prisons (2005), Through the Square Window (2009) and the T S Eliot Prize-winning Parallax(2013) all of which are published by Carcanet Press. She has lived in Germany, Japan and New Zealand and now lectures in creative writing at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry, Queen’s University, Belfast. She is Belfast's inaugural Poet Laureate. Photo credit: Sam Russica
Conor O’Callaghan was born in Newry, County Down, in 1968, and grew up in Dundalk. The Gallery Press has published his four collections. The History of Rain, published in 1993, was shortlisted for the Forward ‘Best First Collection’ Prize and won the Patrick Kavanagh Award. Fiction(2005) was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. The Sun King was published in 2013. He has been co-holder of the Heimbold Chair in Irish Studies at Villanova University and from 2005-2010 was poet-in-residence at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. He has also been director of the annual Poetry Now Festival in Dublin (2000-2003). Photo credit: Eve O'Callaghan
Billy Ramsell was born in Cork in 1977 and educated at the North Monastery and UCC. Complicated Pleasures, his first collection, was published by the Dedalus Press in 2007. Well known for his spirited, memorable performances, he has read at poetry festival as far afield as San Francisco and Shanghai. He holds the Chair of Ireland Bursary for 2013 and has been shortlisted for several other prizes. He edits the Irish section of the Poetry International website and co-runs an educational publishing company. Photo credit: John Minihan
Paula Cunningham was born in Omagh and lives in Belfast where she works part-time as a dentist. Her chapbook A Dog called Chance was a winner in The Poetry Business Competition in 1999 and was published by Smith|Doorstop. She has also written drama and short fiction, and has thrice held awards from the Arts Council of NI. Her poems have been widely published and anthologised. Her first full poetry collection Heimlich's Manoeuvre was published by Smith|Doorstop in 2013. It was shortlisted for the Fenton Aldeburgh Best First Collection Prize 2013 and the 2014 Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry Prize for First Full Collection. Individual poems in the collection have also won awards. Paula is currently working towards her next collection.
Martin Dyar won the Patrick Kavanagh Award in 2009. Nominated by Dublin UNESCO City of Literature he was appointed a fellow of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa in 2013/14 and was the inaugural Ambassador for Irish Literature in Iowa City. Huckleberry Finn Day, a limited edition chapbook of his work, was published by the University of Iowa. He received his Ph.D. from Trinity College on the work of Wallace Stevens, Maiden Names was shortlisted by Carol Ann Duffy and John Boland for the inaugural Pigott Poetry Prixe in 2014. Martin is currently completing his debut novel.
Nicki Griffin grew up in Cheshire in the north west of England but has lived in East Clare since 1997. She completed an MA in Writing at NUI Galway in 2009. She won the 2010 Over the Edge New Poet of the Year prize and in 2012 was awarded a Literature Bursary by the Arts Council. She writes for Inland Waterways News and co-edits poetry magazine Skylight 47. Her first work of non-fiction, The Skipper and Her Mate, was published by New Island in 2013. Unbelonging, her debut poetry collection, was published by Salmon Poetry in 2013. Her second collection, due in 2016, will also be published by Salmon.
After graduating in Music and English from University College Dublin, Jim Maguire worked in journalism, writing mainly about the arts. He completed an M.Phil in Creative Writing at Trinity College Dublin in 1999. For many years he lived in Korea, the setting for his collection of short stories Quiet People (Lapwing, 2008). His poems have won several awards and prizes, including the Brendan Kennelly Award, the RTE/Rattlebag Poetry Slam, The Dromineer Poetry Prize and the Strokestown International Poetry Prize. He was the recipient of an Arts Council of Ireland Literature Bursary in 2010. His occasional work for radio includes a documentary on the letters of Leos Janacek for Lyric FM. His debut collection Music Field was published by Poetry Salzburg.