Listowel literary festival's fresh start

Irish Times

02-05-2025

In The Irish Times this Saturday, Madeleine Thien tells Edel Coffey about her new novel, The Book of Records. And there is a Q&A with Shane Tivenan about his debut short story collection, To Avenge a Dead Glacier.
Reviews are Diarmaid Ferriter on Mary MacSwiney by Leeann Lane; Tony Clayton-Lea on the best new music books; Vona Groarke on the finest new poetry collections; Neil Hegarty on Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane; Helen Cullen on Audition by Katie Kitamura; Anne Griffin on The Correspondent by Virginia Evans; Kristen Malone Poli on The Gatsby Gambit by Claire Anderson-Wheeler; Oliver Farry on Robert Ferguson, Norway's War: A People's Struggle Against Nazi Tyranny, 1940–1945; Adrienne Murphy on Rebel Angel: The Life and Times of Annemarie Schwarzenbach by Padraig Rooney; Pat Carty on The Illegals: Russia's Most Audacious Spies and the Plot to Infiltrate the West by Shaun Walker; Mei Chin on Last Acts by Alexander Sammartino; Brigid O'Dea on Rembrandt's Promise by Barbara Leahy; and Brian Hanley on Rebel Notes: Popular Music and Conflict in Ireland By Stan Erraught.
This weekend's Irish Times Eason offer is Guilty By Definition by Susie Dent, just €5.99, a €6 saving.
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Listowel Writers' Week proudly reaffirms its place at the heart of Irish literature festivals in 2025, embracing this year's theme, Strength in Unity. In that spirit, Listowel Writers' Week is working in partnership with Kerry Writers' Museum and St John's Theatre and Arts Centre to present the Listowel Literature Festival.
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Among the highlights is the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award, one of Ireland's most esteemed literary honours. The winner will be announced on the festival's opening night, continuing Listowel Writers' Week's longstanding tradition of recognising excellence in Irish fiction.
Listowel Writers' Week is also delighted to reveal the shortlist for the 2025 Pigott Poetry Prize, Ireland's largest monetary prize for a poetry collection. Poetry lovers can enjoy an evening of readings and music with actor Mark O'Regan, former RTÉ weather presenter Jean Byrne, and guest appearances by Christine Dwyer Hickey and others.
This year's programme features a wide range of events, including Nature Boy, an illustrated talk by ornithologist Seán Ronayne, and a special conversation with authors Rónán Hession (Ghost Mountain) and John Boyne (Air), novels which explore resilience and redemption.
In poetry, milestone birthdays of celebrated poets Paul Durcan and Rita Ann Higgins will be marked with events recognising their outstanding contributions to Irish literature.
Another key event is the Frank Hayes Memorial Lecture, Memory and Forgetting: The Use and Abuse of the Past, featuring Fergal Keane, Lindsey Hilsum, Conor Brosnan and Gail McConnell.
Following a period of change, Listowel Writers' Week has embraced a fresh start. A new board bringing together both returning and new members is working collaboratively with neighbouring cultural organisations to ensure Listowel remains a place where writers, readers and the general public are warmly welcomed and invited to celebrate all that is best in local, national, and international writing.
The full programme is available at
writersweek.ie
Gallery poet on Ondaatje Prize shortlist
Kelly Michels' American Anthem, published by The Gallery Press, has been shortlisted for the prestigious Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize, an annual award of £10,000 for a distinguished work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry, evoking the spirit of a place
Also shortlisted are Clear by Carys Davies; Night Train to Odesa by Jen Stout; No Small Thing by London-Irish author Orlaine McDonald; Private Revolutions: Coming of Age in a New China by Yuan Yang; and The Catchers by Xan Brooks.
This year's judges are Ruth Gilligan (chair), Charlie Craggs and Roy McFarlane. Gilligan won in 2021 for The Butchers.
The winner will be announced at a special event celebrating the award later this month.
Bullaun Press on EBRD Literature Prize shortlist
Forgottenness by Tanja Maljartchuk, translated by Zenia Tompkins and published by Ireland's Bullaun Press, has been selected as one of the three finalists for the EBRD Literature Prize 2025. Also shortlisted are The Empusium by Olga Tokarczuk and Sons, Daughters by Ivana Bodrožić.
Bullaun Press, Ireland's first and only publisher dedicated exclusively to literary translation, is funded by the Arts Council.
Chair of the judges Maya Jaggi said: 'Resurrecting the past through an imaginative act of will, Tanja Maljartschuk's Forgottenness, translated from the Ukrainian by Zenia Tompkins, moves between two lives a century apart to explore a land carved up between empires, and the persistence of inherited trauma.'
Forgottenness was also last month shortlisted for the inaugural
Tadeusz Bradecki Prize 2025
, to be awarded annually for 'a book in which story-telling fiction and non-fiction writing combine in an original and exciting way'. It was one of six chosen from 97 submissions, which the judges described as 'a brilliant array of books that cross subjects, genres and cultures in provoking and free-ranging ways'.
Two tales intertwined in a profound double portrait, Forgottenness painstakingly traces parallels between the historical and the contemporary, the collective and the individual. The narrator, a writer grappling with her growing anxiety and obsessive thoughts, becomes fixated on Viacheslav Lypynskyi (1882–1931), a once-significant but now forgotten figure in the struggle for Ukrainian independence.
Maljartschuk is an acclaimed contemporary Ukrainian writer, now working in both German and Ukrainian. Her work has been translated into more than 10 languages, and recent accolades include the Theodor Kramer Prize for writing in Resistance and Exile (2023) and the Usedom Literature Prize (2022).
Zenia Tompkins, founder of the Tompkins Agency for Ukrainian Literature in Translation (TAULT), has previously translated Maljartschuk's A Biography of a Chance Miracle (2018) and The Ukraine by Artem Chapeye (shortlisted for the EBRD Literature Prize 2025).
The
EBRD Literature Prize
celebrates outstanding literary works in English translation by writers from countries where the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development invests.
The other judges are writer and editor Selma Dabbagh; translator and Associate Professor in Ukrainian and East European Culture (UCL), Uilleam Blacker; and writer and BBC correspondent, Fergal Keane.
The winner will be announced at an awards ceremony on June 24th at the sponsor's headquarters in London. The prize of €20,000 is divided equally between author and translator.
Irish Folklife Collection inspires new poetry trail
The meaning of objects in the Irish Folklife Collection is being reinterpreted and reimagined this summer through a unique new poetry initiative at the National Museum of Ireland in Turlough Park, Castlebar.
The poetry trail at Turlough Park was launched yesterday to celebrate National Poetry Day.
Poets Sean Borodale, Martina Evans and Geraldine Mitchell were commissioned for the project. Each selected objects from the Irish Folklife Collection to work with, including a 'ghost' potato lamp; a red woollen cardigan; a sheep shears and a súgán rope.
The poets created new works which will now be displayed for visitors alongside the objects in the museum galleries, offering new perspectives about the meaning and stories they represent.
The poetry trail, Silent Objects/Spoken Lives, was created for the annual 'OnSight' arts initiative, the commissioning of new works of art across various mediums, providing creative responses to the Irish Folklife Collection.
Lynn Scarff, director of the National Museum of Ireland, said: 'The folklife objects on display here at Turlough Park tell us many rich stories about how our ancestors lived in Ireland over centuries. This poetry trail offers us a new way to discover and imagine those stories - and what they might mean in terms of our past and our present.
The poetry trail is now on display at the National Museum of Ireland at Turlough Park, Castlebar, or visit
museum.ie
to read and listen to the poems online.
Lyndsy Spence, left, Carlo Gébler and Rosalind Mulholland at the launch of Ballyscullion Park Book Festival
Ballyscullion Park Book Festival line-up
Ballyscullion Park Book Festival takes place from Saturday to Sunday, May 10th and 11th, in the beautiful setting of a stately home in Bellaghy, Co Derry. A celebration of writing, music and art in the heart of Seamus Heaney country, highlights include author Louis de Bernières, artist and 2023 Sky Portrait Artist of the Decade Gareth Reid, Martina Devlin, Roy Foster, Carlo Gébler, Ramita Navai, Lyndsy Spence, Owen O'Neill, John Goodall, Heidi Edmundson, Dr Caroline Campbell, Director of the National Gallery of Ireland.
Rosalind Mulholland, festival director, said:'It is a privilege to host such a wide range of incredibly gifted writers across the festival weekend. From internationally renowned authors, playwrights and artists, it is shaping up to be an unforgettable two days. We also hope the festival will attract visitors from near and far as well as showcase our beautiful region as a must visit NI destination.'
Tickets from £60. For further details, visit
here
.
Female detective book launch
Sara Lodge launches her book about Victorian female detectives,
The Mysterious Case of the Victorian Female Detective
at Hodges Figgis bookshop in Dublin at 6pm on Wednesday, May 7th, with free wine and snacks, and all are welcome.
She will be in conversation with Clare Clarke, of Trinity College Dublin, who is also a doyenne of Victorian women sleuths. The book was published by Yale University Press last yeasr and will be out in paperback in August.
Global Book Crawl Passport
For one week, hundreds of Independent bookshops in over 50 cities around the world from Westport to Brooklyn will distribute 'The Global Book Crawl Passport' to book lovers. Over 1,000 passports will be distributed in Ireland for the inaugural global event this year. The initiative will run on for the summer – inviting readers 'to take their bookshop on holiday with them this summer'. There are also spaces for stamps from participating international bookshops when book lovers visit Malaga or Florence for example.
Events will be held to celebrate the passport holders during Independent Book Week on 14th -21st June and Irish Book Week 18th-25th October.
Bríd Conroy of Tertulia Bookshop believes this is just the beginning 'we know the importance of bookshops as community and cultural spaces. This is our first worldwide event, all celebrating the Global Book Crawl on the same week in April, but it will grow and grow each year as bookshops want to be part of it. In Ireland we have over 100 independent bookshops and can't wait to have them all on board'.
The campaign is spreading on Instagram @globalbookcrawl #globalbookcrawl; building a global literary map, one bookshop and one post at a time.