Latest news with #Anne-MarieKelly
Irish Examiner
12-07-2025
- General
- Irish Examiner
Books are my business: Dublin Unesco City of Literature director Anne-Marie Kelly
Anne-Marie Kelly is director of Dublin Unesco City of Literature. How did you become a librarian? I was a big reader, but there weren't many books in my house growing up in the 1970s and '80s, like most people of that generation. When I was about seven or eight, my dad took me down to the local library in Malahide; it was closed at the time for renovations, and there was a mobile library service instead, in a van beside the tennis club. I could not believe that a truck had books on it. I used to go in to the library after school, I would run up the stairs to see if I could get a Nancy Drew or Enid Blyton. When I left school, I didn't know what I wanted to do and I fell into the library service. I realised I liked it, especially dealing with the public. I worked in the busiest library in the country, the Central Library in the Ilac Centre in Dublin; I was sent there as a relief library assistant to sign up people when it opened to the public 40 years ago. In 2021, I was assigned to my current role. I had previously worked as a library manager assigned to the development section of the city libraries, with responsibility for programming events. I had experience of working with many partners, practical skills, in terms of understanding budgets and processes, and also an understanding of the cultural impact our services have on the local community, as readers, but also as users of public library spaces. What does your current role involve? I help to promote Dublin as a city of literature, support the literary community, and strengthen links between the partners. I also represent the city on the Unesco Creative Cities Network. The office celebrates our great writing traditions and heritage, but also brings the talents of writers to the readers as well. I'm well placed within the libraries, but I also have a city-wide bird's eye view of what's happening in other organisations, such as Poetry Ireland, the Irish Writers' Centre, the Museum of Irish Literature, and the National Library, which we involve in initiatives like the One Dublin One Book programme. Another one of my briefs is overseeing the Dublin International Literary Award. There is a lot of time involved in terms of events, organising programming, venues, capacity, ticketing, and so on. We try to identify themes that will make a programme interesting and attract an audience. We will select a book for One Dublin One Book during the summer, so I will always find time for reading, on the bus or train, on the way to work or going home. Today, we were linking in with the deputy lord mayor of Lyons in France, which is another Unesco City of Literature team. We are always looking at potential contacts and how those can benefit our own literary community. We also use our online platforms to promote what is available to our own writers and poets internationally, in terms of residencies and so on. What do you like most about what you do? Giving opportunities to writers. At the end of the summer, I will be contacting someone about being selected as the One Dublin One Book author next year. That is something that comes out of the blue for them and I love to see their reaction. What do you like least about it? What can be quite frustrating is when you get a programme together, people have booked in for events and they don't show up. It has made me more aware that when I book something, I will email if I can't make it. Three desert island books My favourite book of all time is a tiny paperback by Carson McCullers called The Member of the Wedding. It took her six years to write and there isn't a word out of place. It is set in the Deep South in the 1940s, and the main character is a young girl, who sees her older brother getting married and thinks that she can go off and live with him and his new wife. It is sweet, but also very knowing, capturing the turbulence of neither being an adult or a child. The next one would be Walk the Blue Fields, the collection of short stories by Claire Keegan, which are jewels of writing. I cannot believe her talent. The third one would be Solar Bones by Mike McCormack, another writer that I really love. The character is talking about his own life from the other side of the grave, and it's just wonderful, really original. Read More Books are my business: Librarian Mary Conway
Irish Independent
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
Dublin – One City, Many Stories: ‘Joyce's legacy washes over every writer like the waves at Sandymount'
A new six-part video series celebrates Dublin's literary talent The idea for Dublin, One City, Many Stories was sparked by an article in The Guardian that noted Ireland's 'outsized contribution to world literature'. It's a familiar sentiment – one that sometimes invites the question: 'What's in the water over there?' I feel that there is something in the water. And in terms of Dublin, it's in the Liffey and Dublin Bay and the life around it. But every idea needs an ignition point and ours landed after a conversation with Anne-Marie Kelly, director of Dublin Unesco City of Literature, who was eager to mark the 15th anniversary of Dublin's designation as a city of literature. From that chat came a vision: to showcase the depth and diversity of voices writing in and about Dublin today – voices rooted in the city's Viking past as well as those newly arrived to its shores.
RTÉ News
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- RTÉ News
30 years of the International Dublin Literary Award
Tomorrow marks the 30th anniversary of the prestigious International Dublin Literary Award when the winner of the €100,000 award is announced in Dublin. The award, which each year rewards a single work of international fiction, is sponsored by Dublin City Council. Nominations for the prize come from public libraries all over the globe. This year 71 titles have been nominated by 83 libraries in 34 countries from as far afield as Australia, Canada, Korea and Argentina. As Anne-Marie Kelly of Dublin City Library explains, "this award is different from other awards in that the libraries themselves have reader services teams that choose a book that is a favourite among their readers and they put forward a nomination based on what's the most popular or popularly read in their neck of the woods". She adds: "It's absolutely different from a publisher nominating a title. Publishers would have various reasons pushing a debut novelist or a well-know novelist. But this is quite a pure award. It's actually validating a reader's choice, not only the excellence of the written work." The 2025 award winner will be chosen from a diverse and international shortlist which includes two novels in translation, Not A River by Selva Almada and We Are Light by Gerda Blees. Also on the shortlist is the 2023 Booker winner Prophet Song by Irish writer Paul Lynch, James by Percival Everett, The Adversary by Michael Crummey and North Woods by Daniel Mason. The winner will be selected by a judging panel and announced in Dublin tomorrow. Previous Irish winners include the highly acclaimed Colum McCann, who won the award in 2011 for Let the Great World Spin. Reflecting on his win and the prize money of €100,000 he said: "It's a huge amount of money. Depending on your situation, it gives you a chance to kick back and spend a few years and write another book or to have some sort of financial security. "The thing that I love about the award is that it's coming from all sorts of different directions. There's a real global sense that this is an important award. So, when I received both the nominations and the award itself, it just felt like an embrace from many different places." Galway-based writer Mike McCormack won the award in 2018 for his novel Solar Bones. "I know I was nominated by two libraries, one was Galway and the other was Nottingham, and that just thrills me. You think, how did they choose my book above hundreds of other books, because I have absolutely no links with Nottingham? I am forever indebted to them for that." He retains a warm affection for the libraries of his childhood in Co Mayo and up to the present. "I can remember the mobile library and reading cowboy books and then moving to Louisburgh and there was a small single room library in that town hall. That was just enormous. I did serious reading: Aldous Huxley, Heinrich Boll. All the writers that I discovered in that library."
