Tag Archives: Irish Writers

Books & Authors

Dublin Book Festival Programme Released

February 14, 2011 – 11:49 am

The Dublin Book Festival has launched its full program in PDF and online.

Running from 2 March through to 6 March 2011, the programme opens with Dublin, Its Place I Literature moderated by Eileen Battersby and featuring Anthony Cronin and Dermot Bolger.

The programme also features discussions about; Ireland’s future with Mark Little, Shane Coleman, Justine McCarthy, Stephen Kinsella and Ken Foxe; Ireland’s crime problems with John Mooney, Barry Cummins, Abigail Rieley and Emer Connolly; Careers and personal finance with Colm Rapple, Brendan Foley and Jane Downes; a session on writing for young children with Sarah Webb, Kevin Stevens and chaired by Mags Walsh; and The Past is Now: Lessons for today from Ireland’s past, a discussion about Irish history with Ryan Tubridy, Diarmaid Ferriter and Susan Cahill.

The festival will also feature book launches for The Boy In The Gap by Paul Soye, The Last Irish Plague: The Great Flu Epidemic in Ireland 1918-19 by Catriona Foley and October Moon by Michael Scott

The Good Room in the Mercantile bar will feature a tea party extravaganza, Lady-dee nov’lists swanning about in all their glory, literary heads having cosy chats with cuddly writer Brian Leyden and Good Room games such as ‘Bring Your Girl/Boyfriend to Meet The Mammy’ and silent scrabble with the Child Who Can Be Seen and Not Heard. Irish Publishing News will host a Pecha Kucha session in the Good Room at 4pm on Saturday 5 March.

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Books & Authors

UNESCO City Of Literature Writers’ Forum For Dublin

February 2, 2011 – 8:47 am

The UNESCO City of Literature Office is to host a Writers’ Forum designed to engage with writers and to gather their opinions on how to develop the City of Literature designation.

The Forum will take the format of informal engagement through a World Café style event, to capture your views on a range of issues.

There will be two sessions (see details below) and writers are asked to contact elizabeth.cuddy@dublincity.ie or tel: (01) 6744873 before Monday 7th February to request a space at ONE of them:

Monday 21 February, 6.30pm – 8.30pm National Library of Ireland, Kildare Street, Dublin 2
Wednesday 23rd February 10am -12noon, Dublin City Library & Archive, 138-144 Pearse Street, Dublin 2

The City Of Literature is a permanent designation which is awarded by UNESCO in recognition of the city’s literary heritage and its ongoing vitality in Dublin.

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News

Young Adult Writing Competition For Dublin Book Festival

January 17, 2011 – 2:32 pm

The Dublin Book Festival has launched a new writing competition for young writers aged between 12 and 14.

The teenagers are being asked to write and submit a story between 500 and 1000 words in length for the chance to win a creative writing workshop with the Roddy Doyle!

The story must be submitted by 11 February and judges will pick eight winners will be chosen to attend the workshop on 26 February 2011.

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News

Inkwell First Chapters Competition Winners Announced

December 21, 2010 – 11:04 am
Louise Hogan has won the Inkwell First Chapters Competition which was judged by Patricia Deevy, Editorial Director  with Penguin Ireland,and Ger Nichol of the Book Bureau.
This is the first year of the competition which is run by Vanessa O’Loughlin of Inkwell Writers Workshops.
Hogan’s entry, Now or Never was described as having, ’lots of potential, with writing that was fresh and direct’ and both judges were, ‘keen to see
the full manuscript when it is ready.’
The runner up was, The Sea Between Us by Carole Craig, described as a, ’crisply written with potential for a juicy historical tale with a bit of Pride and Prejudice style tension between the two main characters.’
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Books & Authors

Christmas Preview 2010 | Children’s Books

December 21, 2010 – 8:44 am

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When it comes to such a broad category the list of potential inclusions grows pretty radically. However, sense and time suggest we limit the number of titles selected and so, within reason I’ve done so.

First, a seasonal selection beginning with Bob Burke‘s The Ho Ho Ho Mystery (Harry Pigg, book 2), a riot of a read feature Santa Claus and a variety of well-known characters in new and interesting situations. A great way to get in the spirit.

In picture book terms I’m inclined to agree with the Irish Book Awards voters and suggest that Niamh Sharkey’s On the Road with Mavis and Marge is a lovely book for kids. For reading aloud and even slightly older though the beautiful illustrations by Sara Baker and the wonderful stories by Patricia Lynch in Mercier’s Tales Of Irish Enchantment are hard to beat.

One of the problems with children’s book round ups is that they often become mere bandwagoning excercise, however, The Heart and the Bottle by Oliver Jeffers and published by HarperCollins deserves a mention in the younger category.

Skulduggery Pleasant: Mortal Coil by Derek Landy from HarperCollins couldn’t but get a mention this year when the author won Book Of The Decade and a Irish Book Award. Garret Carr is back with the sequel to his wonderful The Badness of Ballydog, Lost Dogs and it’s well worth a read both published by Simon & Schuster Childrens with a third on the way.

Little Island, the now stand alone imprint has a number of fine books out this year, but by far my favourite is Tom O’Neill’s, Old Friends:The Lost Tales of Fionn Mac Cumhaill .

Collins Press have a gripping historical Fiction for older children (and even young teens) in Age 14 which was first published in Belgium but deals with the story of an Irish boy fighting in World War One.

Also for an older audience is Dermot Poyntz’ Curse Of Cromwell: The Siege (available here) a retelling of the siege of Clonmel in graphic novel. It’s as good a read for adults, but a really engaging way to read about history for older children and young adults.

Finally, the final part of Celine Kiernan’s Moorehawk trilogy, The Rebel Prince, is out from O’Brien Press and brings what has been a great series, a huge success for all involved.

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News

Easons Top Ten Ebooks ~ November 2010

December 16, 2010 – 5:51 pm
Good to see Emma Donoghue doing well in ebooks as well as in print. I’m intrigued to see Amanda Brunker sitting so high in the ebook charts and that she has two books there. Perhaps the most interesting feature of the top ten this month however is that Irish authors dominate the list, five out of ten titles being writing by Irishmen or women.
1) Room by Emma Donoghue
2) 61 Hours by Lee Child
3) The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
4) Champagne Babes by Amanda Brunker
5) A Football Man by John Giles
6) Come What May by Donal Og Cusack
7) The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson
8) Body Double by Tess Gerritsen
9) Champagne Secrets by Amanda Brunker
10) The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas
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News

Publishing NI Launches in Belfast

December 16, 2010 – 3:12 pm

A new company has been launched to promote Northern Irish writers, publishers and books.

The new organisation is supported initially by three publishing houses in Northern Ireland – Blackstaff Press, Guildhall Press, Lagan Press – along with the Verbal Arts Centre and will receive public funding from the Creative Industries Innovation Fund via the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and the Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure (DCAL).

The company will launch a website in February and a series of touring events in arts and tourism centres around northern Ireland with a goal of  not just providing literary programing but also selling books from the venues.

Bronwen Williams, Co-ordinator of PublishingNI, said:  ’PublishingNI has been established as a valuable network for publishers in Northern Ireland, aiming to reach out to new readers and to create more opportunities for writers here.  Through our programme of mini tours, we hope to stimulate sales of Northern Irish books and to increase public awareness of our excellent home-grown writers and their work.’

Damian Smyth, Head of Drama and Literature, Arts Council of Northern Ireland added: ‘The launch of PublishingNI is an important new development for writers, publishers and readers in Northern Ireland.  The Arts Council is working with PublishingNI to develop the shape of the literature infrastructure here, through regular tours, readings and engagement with arts venues.  We wish PublishingNI every success and look forward to working together in building the literature economy in the years ahead.’

Patsy Horton of Blackstaff Press will be the chair of the new company.

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News

Arts Council Faces 5% Cut

December 8, 2010 – 8:47 am

The Arts Council will have to shift its programs and funding to accommodate a 5% cut in exchequer funding.

The 2011 budget for the council is €65.2million down from€ 69million in 2010. The budget puts the council back to 2005 levels of funding.

In previous year the Council has shown a preference for strategic cuts rather than across the board cuts.

Literature has seen organisations like The Irish Writers Centre lose all its funding. However, the Centre has recently been awarded funding under the Touring and Dissemination scheme.

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Books & Authors

Briefly Noted | Emma Donoghue’s The Room And William Trevor’s Selected Stories Make The NY Times 10 Best Books of 2010

December 3, 2010 – 12:50 pm

ROOM
By Emma Donoghue.
Little, Brown & Company, $24.99.

Donoghue has created one of the pure triumphs of recent fiction: an ebullient child narrator, held captive with his mother in an 11-by-11-foot room, through whom we encounter the blurry, often complicated space between closeness and autonomy. In a narrative at once delicate and vigorous — rich in psychological, sociological and political meaning — Donoghue reveals how joy and terror often dwell side by side.

SELECTED STORIES
By William Trevor.
Viking, $35.

Gathering work from Trevor’s previous four collections, this volume shows why his deceptively spare fiction has haunted and moved readers for generations. Set mainly in Ireland and England, Trevor’s tales are eloquent even in their silences, documenting the way the present is consumed by the past, the way ancient patterns shape the future. Neither modernist nor antique, his stories are timeless.

via The 10 Best Books of 2010 – NYTimes.com.

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News

The Club Wins The 2010 William Hill Irish Sports Book Of The Year

December 2, 2010 – 3:24 pm

Penguin Ireland published The Club, by journalist Christy O’Connor has won the William Hill Irish Sports Book of the Year.

The book beat number one bestseller, John Giles:A Football Man (Hachette Ireland) as well as  Declan Lynch’s Days of Heaven (Gill & Macmillan), which took second and third place respectively.

The Club follows O’Connor’s club, St. Joseph’s Doora-Barefield hurling club, for whom he was goalkeeper, through a season in 2009 as they looked to revive past glories spurred on through personal losses and tragedy.

O’Connor said; ‘I am absolutely thrilled and honoured to have won this award, particularly when you look at all the excellent sports books written this year. It is also a privilege when you consider some of the outstanding books to have won the William Hill award in the past and I would like to take this opportunity to thank the judges and public for their votes. When I decided to write this book, I wanted to pay tribute to my daughter Róisín and former team-mate Ger Hoey, both of whom passed away in the space of a week. I also wanted to portray the essence of what defines us in the St Joseph’s Doora-Barefield club, which required me to be as honest as I possibly could be. I would like to thank my family, the Hoey family and everyone in the Doora-Barefield club, especially my team-mates.’

Tony Kenny, William Hill Ireland PR Manager, said; ‘The Club is certainly the best sports book in Ireland this year and according to many of our judges, one of the best sports books they have ever read. The book will resonate, not only with GAA fans but sports fans in general and communities across the country. It depicts the triumphs and tragedy of one season for a hurling club but also looks at how important communities can be and gives a fantastic insight into the impact sport can have. Christy’s book is an excellently told story and is a very deserved winner of the William Hill Irish Sports Book of the Year.’

This year’s judging panel was made up of eleven of Ireland’s best sports commentators and experts. The panel includes RTE rugby pundit and Newstalk presenter George Hook, RTE’s Eamon Dunphy, Today FM and TV3 presenter Matt Cooper and Setanta Sports’ Paul Dempsey.

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