Cuirt Programme 2017

23-30 April, 2017

www.cuirt.ie

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Cúirt International Festival of Literature

Welcome to Cúirt International Festival of Literature The 2017 Cúirt Festival aims to excite and engage its audience and provide a platform for some of the most innovative and loved writers across venues in Galway City and County.

Each year the festival continues to grow: this year we are proud to introduce LABS as Gaeilge, a day of workshops for children through Irish. There are two new masterclasses in sports writing and writing for a young adult audience. The Anne Kennedy Memorial Lecture has evolved to become a mentored residency, platforming and nurturing emerging poets. While growing bigger we still nurture our roots. Poetry readings open and close the Town Hall Theatre programme. Established and début writers are presented side by side.

On behalf of the Galway Arts Centre Board of Directors and the Cúirt team, we would like to thank all of the participating writers, the funding bodies, sponsors and the Cúirt audience in city and county, in schools and theatres, in kitchens and libraries. It is the dedication of the audience that continues to support this festival into its 32nd year.

Maeve Mulrennan, Programmer Tara O’Connor, Manager Paraic Breathnach, Producer April 2017

Booking Information Book online at: www.cuirt.ie or www.tht.ie

Box Office

Town Hall Theatre, Courthouse Square Galway, Ireland 00353 (0) 91 569777

Early Bird Tickets

Early bird tickets available until Tuesday 20 March. (Early bird price does not apply to Simon Armitage & Terrance Hayes).

Daytime Readings Ticket Bundle

Attend 4 daytime readings (before 8.00pm) for the price of 3.

4

Contents Official Opening

6

Début Panel 29

Cúirt Table Quiz

6

Conor O’Callaghan & A. L. Kennedy

Anne Kennedy Writers’ Salon and Residency

7

Digital Literature & Art:

In Person: World Poets

8

Interface as Creative Device

30

Launch: Song of Songs 2.0

8

Damon Galgut & Eimear McBride

31

Seisiúin na Cúirte 9

Elaine Feeney & Josh Idehen

32

Fruition 9

Claire-Louise Bennett & Mia Gallagher

33

Found in Translation?

Songs from a room: My Fellow Sponges

34

France, Ireland and the legacy of Michel Déon

11

An Focal: Grá 35

Launch of Horseman, Pass by!

11

Dermot Healy: Writing the Sky

Film: Un taxi mauve / The Purple Taxi

11

Claire Hennessy, Shirley Anne McMillian

36

Frédéric Vitoux 11

& Dave Rudden 37

Launch: Rise 12

Jay Griffiths, Richard Hamblyn,

Calasanctius College Book Launch

12

Gaia Vince & Paul Kingsnorth

38

The Sacrificial Wind

13

An interview with Rick O’Shea

39

Consensual 13

Sophie Hannah & Denise Mina

40

Cúirt/Over the Edge New Writing Showcase

Stephen Burt, Theresa Muñoz & Jacob Polley

41

ROPES Launch 15

City Lit Talks Back

41

Persona 15

Simon Armitage & Terrance Hayes

42

David Butler, Yrsa Daley-Ward & Kerrie O’Brien 16

Bardic Brunch 43

Martina Evans, Vona Groarke & Mary O’Malley

17

Sara Baume, Jenni Fagan & Paul Kingsnorth

Songs from a room: Sive

18

Fermata 45

Merlin Coverley & Michael Winter

19

Far From Literature We Were Reared

46

Oisín Fagan & Ross Raisin

20

An Evening with William McCarthy

47

Jami Attenberg, Sinéad Gleeson & Cheryl Tan

21

Cúirt Labs 48

Spoken Word Platform

22

Workshops 52

Ó Íochtar Mara – Saothar Chaitlín Maude

23

Pop-up Literature 54

No Childhood Back in Our Day

23

Exhibitions 55

John Boyne & Kit de Waal

24

Library Events 56

Launch: Poems for Patience

26

Plaque Unveilings 58

Songs from a room: Lasairfhíona Ní Chonaola

27

Poetry Ireland and Cúirt Bursary

14

Pete Mullineaux, Mark Wagenaar & William Wall 28

www.cuirt.ie

30

44

58

Day by day 62 Map 64

Cover design by Marielle MacLeman

5

Cúirt International Festival of Literature

Official Opening Venue

Hotel Meyrick

Date

Sunday 23 April

Time 7.00pm Price Free

Come along to the official opening of Cúirt 2017. Be entertained with music from Galway Youth Jazz Orchestra and the musings of some special guest speakers.

Refreshments are provided and a great night is guaranteed!

Join us for a night of quizzing and craic in the Galway Arms with Quiz Masters Vinnie Browne and Gerry Hanberry overseeing proceedings on the night.

It promises to be a night of fun and entertainment with some friendly rivalry thrown in to keep us on our toes!

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Venue

The Galway Arms

Date

Thursday 06 April

Time 8.00pm Price

€40 per table of four

(Includes a complimentary drink and finger food)

The Writers’ Salon is an afternoon of poetry readings and audience participation. Each guest will read from their work, followed by a panel discussion about writing. The audience is invited to join the discussion with an opportunity for questions. The Salon is a relaxed environment where writers from all walks of life can discuss aspects of writing with a panel of published writers who will share their pearls of wisdom.

The Anne Kennedy Residency was developed to support writers by creating a platform to mingle in a social arena, and promote the exchange of ideas, guidance and encouragement. Sarah Clancy has been acting as a mentor to emerging writer Daniel Mulcahy as part of the Anne Kennedy Residency.

www.cuirt.ie

Anne Kennedy Writers’ Salon and Residency Venue: Nun’s Island Theatre Date:

Monday 24 April

Time: 2.00pm Price: €5 Refreshments provided.

The event is open to everyone, and will particularly benefit those pursuing a career in writing.

Jenna Clake is studying for a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Birmingham; her research focuses on the feminine and feminist Absurd in twenty-first century British and American poetry. She is the Arts and Poetry Editor of the Birmingham Journal of Literature and Language.

Her debut collection is forthcoming from Eyewear in 2017.

Sarah Clancy is a page and performance poet from Galway. She has published three collections of poetry, the most recent The Truth and Other Stories from Salmon Poetry in 2014. Her work has been published in the US, Canada, the UK and in translation in Mexico, Poland, Slovenia and Italy. She is slowly working on a new collection.

Elaine Cosgrove’s work has been published in The Stinging Fly Magazine (Featured Poet, Winter 2015), The Penny Dreadful, The Bohemyth, and New Binary Press.

Elaine was selected for the 2017 Fifty Best New British & Irish Poets Anthology (Eyewear Publishing), and longlisted for the 2016 London Magazine Poetry Prize. Her debut collection of poetry will be published

by Dedalus Press in 2017.

Antony Huen is a PhD student at the University of York, researching contemporary poets’ appropriation of artistic material. His recent publications include a poem in Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, a book review in Eborakon, and a chapter in the edited volume, Exploring Creative Writing (Cambridge Scholars Publishing). He is one of Eyewear Publishing’s Best New British and Irish Poets 2017.

Daniel Mulcahy is a third year student of Creative Writing at NUI Galway. Recently he has had poems published in The Galway Review, with more work set to be published in the near future. Daniel earnestly hopes to continue to develop as a writer, performer and human being for as long as he is able.

Paul Nash studied at Trinity College Dublin, where he received a PhD in modern literature and film.

After contract lecturing in TCD, Maynooth University, and the National College of Art and Design he taught in London state schools.

He returned to Dublin during the Celtic Tiger to work in a software company. He is also an active songwriter and has written and self-published a novel Whispering Crates.

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Cúirt International Festival of Literature

In Person: World Poets Launched at Cúirt, In Person: World Poets is an international collaboration between Bloodaxe Books and award-winning film-maker Pamela RobertsonPearce, who worked with Bloodaxe editor Neil Astley on this sequel to In Person: 30 Poets (2008), the world’s first poetry DVD-anthology. Her style of filming combines directness and simplicity, sensitivity and warmth – the perfect combination for the intimate readings by poets from around the world included in this highlights film. It’s as if the poets were sitting in a room with you, giving informal, one-to-one readings to you in person.

Venue: Nun’s Island Theatre Date:

Monday 24 April

Time: 5.30pm Price: €5

This hour-long film features a selection from the nine hours of footage on In Person: World Poets. All of the poems are included in the book which comes with three DVDs. The project covers poets from many parts of the world, including America, Australia, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Guyana, India, Italy, Jamaica, Korea, Lithuania, Macedonia, Malawi, the Netherlands, Pakistan, Poland, Romania and Sweden, as well as from Britain and Ireland.

Pamela Robertson-Pearce’s films include IMAGO: Meret Oppenheim (1996), winner of the Swiss Film Board’s Prize for Outstanding Quality and the Gold Apple Award at the National Educational Film and Video Festival in America. Bloodaxe editor and founder Neil Astley’s many books include the Staying Alive trilogy of anthologies.

Book Launch:

Song of Songs 2.0: New & Selected

Poems by Kevin Higgins

Song of Songs 2.0: New & Selected Poems is published by Salmon and includes a substantial number of new poems as well as selections from his six previous poetry collections.

Kevin Higgins is co-organiser of Over The Edge literary events in Galway. He teaches poetry workshops at Galway Arts Centre, Creative Writing at Galway Technical Institute, and is Creative Writing Director for the NUI Galway Summer School. Kevin has published four collections of poetry with Salmon, The Ghost In The Lobby (2014), Frightening New Furniture (2010), Time Gentlemen, Please (2008), and his best-selling first collection, The Boy With No Face (2005), which was short-listed for the 2006 Strong Award for Best First Collection by an Irish poet. His poetry is discussed in The Cambridge Introduction to Modern Irish Poetry and features in the generation defining anthology Identity Parade –New British and Irish Poets (Ed. Roddy Lumsden, Bloodaxe, 2010) and in The Hundred Years’ War: modern war poems (Ed. Neil Astley, Bloodaxe, April 2014). A collection of Kevin’s essays and book reviews, Mentioning The War, was published by Salmon Poetry in 2012 and 2016 - The Selected Satires of Kevin Higgins was published by NuaScéalta in early 2016. The Stinging Fly magazine recently described Kevin as “likely the most read living poet in Ireland.”

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Venue: The House Hotel Date:

Monday 24 April

Time:

7.30pm

Price:

Free

The Cúirt session this year will celebrate musician Seán Tyrrell. Seán has been recording music for over forty years. During the 1960s, he performed with Johnny Mulhearn, Davy Graham, Rambling Jack Elliot and Paul Simon.

In 1992 he produced a traditional operatic version of Cúirt An Mheán Oíche (The Midnight Court) by Brian Merriman, which was regarded by critics as the hit of Galway Arts Festival. In 1994 his first solo project Cry of a Dreamer was released worldwide and voted Best Folk Album of the Year by Folk Roots and Hotpress. He has performed at major festivals and concert halls and on TV and radio in Ireland, England, Europe, Australia and the USA.

Venue:

The Crane Bar

Date:

Monday 24 April

www.cuirt.ie

Seisiún na Cúirte Seán Tyrrell Time: 8.00pm Price: €10/€8

Seán will be joined by Ronan Browne, Johnny Mulherne, Liam Lewis, Steve Hanks and Fergus Feeley.

Fregoli presents

Fruition: A New Plays Project Last October Fregoli Theatre released an open call for short original plays, five pieces from four new writers were selected. These works were selected for brilliantly conceived characters, imaginative use of language, and the potential to create a world that an audience can become immediately immersed in. We are very excited to debut the following five pieces for performance. The performance of all five pieces is approximately 70 minutes, and suitable for those aged 14 years plus.

Find me in Spring

by Rory O Sullivan Billy Duffy, a 10 year old aspiring hunter with an overactive imagination, sees his father throw the body of a rotten deer off a cliff.

Or so he was told it was a deer.

What repercussions can a child’s misunderstanding bring?

Afterimage

by Jonathon Ryan A window, a sink, a bookshelf, three items taken for granted, three items that dictate three characters.

Afterimage is a short exploration of the small victories, the big losses and the surreality in between.

Wristbands

by Orla McGovern Smuggling cans, messers and banter at the gate - all part of a normal day for Jimmy and Jono, two bouncers.

But for Jono, today is different.

Today is when there is no way to keep a lid on it.

Venue:

Nun’s Island Theatre

Date:

Monday 24 April

Time: 8.30pm Price:

€10 / €8

The Streets are Ours

by Robert Higgins Two ageing boy racers gather in the car park of a local Tesco on the evening their old friend is due to return from abroad.

Tick Tock

by Orla McGovern A mother and daughter with a strained relationship. A realisation of time. A last chance to speak in between the moments.

9

Cúirt International Festival of Literature

This year Cúirt, in collaboration with the French Embassy and NUI, Galway, pays tribute to the memory of Michel Déon, renowned French writer, and resident of Tynagh, Co. Galway from the late 1960s until his death on 28 December 2016. In recognition of his major contribution to French literature, and of his generosity to NUIG, the Galway City Library and other local bodies, the events organised for Tuesday, 25 April are dedicated to his memory.

Michel Déon

Michel Déon was born in Paris in 1919. He began studying law there in 1937, but was mobilised during WW2. In 1942, he remained in the free zone, returning to Paris in 1944, where he worked as a journalist and began his first novel. In the following decades he continued to write, while frequently living abroad. From 1963 to 1968, he lived in Greece, but eventually settled in Tynagh, Co. Galway with his wife and children. A member of the Académie française since 1978, he is the author of more than 50 works, which have received many prizes, among them the Prix Interallié for Les poneys sauvages (1970) and the Grand Prix du Roman de l’Académie française for Un taxi mauve (1973).

He leaves an enduring literary legacy as one of the leading voices of the ‘lost generations’ of the 1930s and 1940s and as an independent observer of late twentieth-century society.

Michel Déon est né en 1919, à Paris. En 1937 il s’inscrit en droit à Paris, mais est mobilisé au début de la deuxième guerre mondiale. Après 1942 il reste en zone sud jusqu’en 1944, puis regagne Paris où il travaille comme journaliste et prépare son premier roman. À partir de 1946 il séjourne souvent à l’étranger et publie régulièrement des romans. De 1962 à 1968 il habite en Grèce, mais finit par s’installer à Tynagh, Co. Galway avec sa femme et leurs deux enfants. Membre de l’Académie française depuis 1978, il est l’auteur de plus de 50 ouvrages et a reçu de nombreux prix, parmi lesquels le Prix Interallié pour Les poneys sauvages (1970) et le Grand prix du roman de l’Académie française pour Un taxi mauve (1973).

Il nous laisse un héritage littéraire de grande valeur, et est maintenant considéré comme l’une des voix les plus importantes des ‘générations perdues’ des années 1930 et 40.

“Our lives would be all the richer if we read a Michel Déon novel”.

William Boyd

“Déon is an outrageous storyteller”.

Times Literary Supplement

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Also on Tuesday 11.00am Pop-up with Miquel Barceló & Sarah Maria Griffin: Bell, Book and Candle 3.00pm Pop-up with Miquel Barceló & Sarah Maria Griffin: The Dough Bros 4.00pm Paul Durcan Plaque Unveiling: Grattan Road 4.00pm Pop-up with Miquel Barceló & Sarah Maria Griffin: Sonny Molloy’s 7.00pm Placing The Word Exhibition Opening: Black Gate Cultural Centre

Venue:

Moore Institute Seminar Room, Hardiman Research Building, NUI Galway

Date:

Tuesday 25 April

Time: 9.30am Price: Free To register email karen@cuirt.ie Speakers are: Sarah Berthaud (on theoretical aspects of translation), Marie Blom (on translating humour in Roddy Doyle’s writing), Gavin Bowd (on translating Michel Houellebecq), and Clíona Ní Ríordáin (on translating Michel Déon).

Film: Un taxi mauve / The Purple Taxi Venue:

An Taibhdhearc

Date:

Tuesday 25 April

Time: 4.00pm Price: Free Director: Yves Boisset. Cast: Charlotte Rampling, Fred Astaire, Philippe Noiret, Peter Ustinov, David Kelly, Niall Buggy et al. Filmed in the west of Ireland in 1977, based on the 1973 novel by Michel Déon.

The film rapidly became a point of reference for the French vision of Ireland, like Man of Aran or The Quiet Man. Against a backdrop of magnificent scenery and local life, it recounts the drama which brings together an assortment of individuals, including the French narrator, who for various reasons find themselves in a remote part of Ireland.

Frédéric Vitoux Book Launch: Venue: An Taibhdhearc Horseman, Pass by!

Date: Tuesday 25 April

by Michel Déon, translated Time: 8.00pm Price: €10/€8

by Clíona Ní Ríordáin Venue:

Aula Maxima, NUI Galway

Date:

Tuesday 25 April

Time: 2.00pm Price: Free These reflective essays about Déon’s life and experiences in the west of Ireland describe the colourful and varied personalities that he came across since he and his family settled there in the mid 1970s. From his friendship with John McGahern and Ulick O’Connor to Tim, the sturdy old postman who prefers his wind-blown country round to retirement in sunny California, Horseman, Pass By! is alive with fascinating characters and encounters.

The book launch will be accompanied by a display of Michel Déon’s books.

“Horseman, pass by! is filled with nostalgia, humour, colour, and ghosts. It is a declaration of love for Ireland”.

Le Magazine Littéraire

The reading will be in French, with translation of extracts available, and discussion in French and English.

French writer, novelist and essayist, Frédéric Vitoux was born in Paris in 1944. In addition to his novels and biographical writing, he was for many years a film critic and literary columnist. In 2001, he was elected to the Académie française. His work has been widely translated, and has won many awards, including the Goncourt Prize for Biography for his Vie de Céline (1988), and the Grand Prix du Roman de l’Académie française for La Comédie de Terracina (1994). Recent publications include Jours inquiets dans l’île SaintLouis (2012), Les Désengagés (2015), set in Paris in May ’68, and Au Rendez-vous des Mariniers (Fayard, 2016).

Frédéric Vitoux. Écrivain français, romancier et essayiste, né le 19 août 1944. Longtemps critique cinématographique et chroniqueur littéraire à l’hebdomadaire Le Nouvel Observateur. Élu à l’Académie française en 2001. Ses ouvrages ont été traduits en une dizaine de langues, et ont été couronnés de nombreux prix, y compris le prix Goncourt de la Biographie pour La Vie de Céline (1988) et le Grand Prix du Roman de l’Académie française pour La Comédie de Terracina (1994). Parmi ses derniers ouvrages parus : Jours inquiets dans l’île Saint-Louis (2012), Les Désengagés (2015) et Au Rendez-vous des Mariniers (Fayard, 2016).

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www.cuirt.ie

Conference: Found in Translation? France, Ireland and the legacy of Michel Déon

Cúirt International Festival of Literature

Book Launch:

Rise

by Elaine Feeney “An absolutely extraordinary poet… in the world of Kate Tempest meets Warsan Shire and we’ll throw in Tom McIntyre for the rural influences.

Brilliant.” RTÉ Radio 1’s Arena Elaine Feeney is an award-winning poet. She was born in Galway in 1979. She has published three collections of poetry, Indiscipline (Maverick Press, 2007), Where’s Katie? (Salmon Poetry, 2010) and The Radio was Gospel (Salmon Poetry, 2013). Most recently, her work has appeared in Stonecutter Journal (US), The Wide Shore (US), The Stinging Fly (IRE), The Manchester Review (UK), Solas Nua (US), New Writing (Canada), Pilgrimage Magazine (US) and Oxford Poetry (UK). Elaine was recently commissioned by Liz Roche Company to write the poetic narrative to Wrongheaded, a feature stage production accompanied by a film directed by Mary Wycherley. It premiered at the 2016 Tiger Dublin Fringe Festival. The piece is included in her new collection, Rise (Salmon Poetry, 2017).

Venue:

Bite Club

Date:

Tuesday 25 April

Time: 6.00pm Price: Free

Calasanctius College Book Launch

At Calasanctius College the students have come together to launch their annual book, a collection of their skills, talents, and creative ability. Here you will find fact and fiction, art and photography, poetry and opinion.

Our book explores the experiences of adolescents as they move towards adulthood. These young artists bring a clarity and freshness to familiar artistic forms that must be seen to be believed.

Music, art and readings will complement each other in a fantastic evening of creativity, refreshments and entertainment.

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Venue:

Calasanctius College, Oranmore

Date:

Tuesday 25 April

Time: 7.00pm Price: Free

The Sacrificial Wind

by Lorna Shaughnessy

“Blame is a coin passed down from hand to hand: it starts off hidden in the fists of powerful men” This spoken word poetry performance event uses movement, rhythm, masks, words and music. It explores the blame game, the engine and machinery of war, and examines our seeming helplessness in the wake of catastrophe, through the characters surrounding the start of the Trojan War. The audience becomes judge and jury not just of the characters but of themselves too. This project emerged from a section in Lorna Shaughnessy’s most recent work, Anchored, published by Salmon.

The performers are Catherine Denning, Michael Irwin and Orla Tubridy.

A post-performance discussion will take place on Thursday, 27 April.

Venue:

The Town Hall Studio

Date:

Tuesday 25 – Fri 28 April

www.cuirt.ie

Directed by Max Hafler

Time: 8.00pm Price: €10/€8 Lorna Shaughnessy was born in Belfast and lives in Co. Galway. She has published three poetry collections, Torching the Brown River, Witness Trees and Anchored (Salmon Poetry), and a chapbook, Song of the Forgotten Shulamite (Lapwing). Her work was selected for the Forward Book of Poetry, 2009.

Max Hafler is a theatre tutor, director and writer who now specialises primarily in Michael Chekhov Technique and Voice. His book, Teaching Voice, was published by Nick Hern Books in 2016. He recently set up Chekhov Training and Performance Ireland to make the West of Ireland a hub for the acting technique.

Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance, NUI Galway present

Consensual

by Evan Placey

An explosive play that explores what happens when buried secrets catch up with you. Diane, Head of Year 11, hasn’t seen Freddie since that night six years earlier when he was fifteen. She thinks he took advantage of her. He thinks she groomed him for months. Neither is sure. But when it comes to sex and consent, are there really any blurred lines?

Directed by Andrew Flynn.

Venue

Nun’s Island Theatre

Date

Tuesday 25 - Sat 29 April

Time 8.00pm Price €14/€12

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Cúirt International Festival of Literature

Also on Wednesday 11.00am Pop-up with Miquel Barceló & Sarah Maria Griffin: Hewlett Packard Enterprise 11.00am Reading & Discussion with Michael Winter: Ballybane Library 12.00pm Kitchen Reading with Alan McMonagle & Kerrie O’Brien: Tuam 12.00pm Kitchen Reading with Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan & Pete Mullineaux: Ballinasloe 1.00pm Little John Nee Plaque Unveiling: Threadneedle Road 3.00pm Pop-up with Miquel Barceló & Sarah Maria Griffin: Sheridans Cheesemongers 4.00pm Pop-up with Miquel Barceló & Sarah Maria Griffin: Dock 1 Seafood Bar & Restaurant 8.00pm The Sacrificial Wind: Town Hall Theatre Studio 8.00pm Consensual: Nun’s Island Theatre

Joyce’s Love Letters to Nora Venue

Tigh Nora, Cross St.

Date

Wed 26 to Friday 28 April

Time 3.00pm

Cúirt/ Over the Edge New Writing Showcase Highlighting emerging talent in Venue: Town Hall Theatre poetry and fiction, The New Writing Showcase features readers and Date: Wednesday 26 April winners from the popular Over the Time: 3.00pm Edge Literary Series in Galway and the 2017 Cúirt New Writing Prize.

Price: Free This event is a firm favourite amongst Cúirt audiences, and one not to be missed. Winners of the 2017 Cúirt New Writing Prize (to be announced on www.cuirt.ie) will join the showcase line-up to read their winning entries.

Rena Garrett is a graduate of the MA in Writing from NUI Galway. She has participated in poetry workshops at Galway Arts Centre. Her poetry has been published in The Moth Magazine, and Spontaneity. org and was shortlisted for the Galway Rape Crisis Centre Short Story Competition 2016. Rena was a Featured Reader at the August 2016 Over The Edge: Open Reading.

Eileen P Keane is from North Connemara, Co. Galway. She has completed the MA in Writing at NUI Galway. Eileen has written and performed for theatre and stage and her CD Spaces was released in 2014. She writes poetry, memoir and non-fiction. Her poems appear in the latest edition of The Galway Review and her Flash Fiction was shortlisted for Allingham Festival 2015. Eileen was a Featured Reader at the March 2016 Over The Edge: Open Reading.

Price Free Approximately 20 minutes duration

A theatrical reading of James Joyce’s love letters to Nora Barnacle.

When the young Joyce met Nora in 1904 it marked the beginning of a long relationship that eventually led to marriage and continued until Joyce’s death. Joyce’s love letters give an insight into this intense, intimate and often inspiring relationship.

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Una Mannion teaches Performing Arts in IT Sligo. In March 2016, her poetry was published in the New Irish Writing page in The Irish Times and her fiction was shortlisted for the Cúirt New Writing Prize. She won the Yeats’ Society’s Seamus Heaney Prize and came second place in Dromineer Flash Fiction 2015. She has been shortlisted in the Listowel, Bridport, Fish Memoir and other competitions. She recently completed an MA in Writing at NUI Galway. She lives in Sligo with her husband and three children. Una was a Featured Reader at the May 2016 Over The Edge: Open Reading.

ROPES Launch ROPES is a Literary and Arts Journal produced solely by the students of the Masters in Literature and Publishing at NUI Galway. Launching at Cúirt, all proceeds will be in aid of Pieta House, a nationwide charity that focuses on helping those dealing with issues such as suicide and self-harm.

Venue:

Town Hall Theatre Bar

Date:

Wednesday, 26 April

The theme of this year’s publication is ‘Silence’ and features work from writers such as Brian Leyden and Kevin Higgins. ROPES 2017 also contains an array of exciting art, photography, prose, poetry and drama from new and up and coming artists and writers.

Price: Free

www.cuirt.ie

Time: 5.00pm

Anam Theatre presents

PERSONA

To be or not to be, that is the question…

Venue

Nun’s Island Theatre

When the outside world and her roles within it become too much to bear, actress Elizabeth Harker ceases to speak and move. Declared physically and mentally sound, she is sent to her doctor’s seaside cottage where she is looked after by Alma. A close and complex relationship develops between the two women which crosses the bounds of sanity, identity and reality.

Date

Wed 26 to Friday 28 April

Time 6.00pm Price €10/€8

This work-in-progress adaption from Anam Theatre explores transposing the famously disintegrative form of Ingmar Bergman’s radical, minimalist classic from the cinema to theatre and pursues its urgent question of whether it is possible to cease to be without ceasing to live.

Adapted by Sarah O’Toole from Ingmar Bergman’s 1965 screenplay Design by Elaine Mears

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Cúirt International Festival of Literature

David Butler, Yrsa Daley-Ward & Kerrie O’Brien Venue

Town Hall Theatre

Date

Wednesday 26 April

Time 6.30pm Price €10/8

David Butler is a novelist, poet and playwright. His most recent novel City of Dis (New Island) was shortlisted for the 2015 Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award.

In 2016 David received a Per Cent Literary Arts Commission to compose a poetry sequence for Blackrock Library. Literary prizes include the Fish Short Story contest, Poetry Ireland’s Ted McNulty prize, and the Brendan Kennelly award for poetry. All the Barbaric Glass, David’s second poetry collection, was published by Doire press in March. All the Barbaric Glass consists of poems written over a five-year period which interrogate nature —specifically the sea — in order to broach such perennial human concerns as ageing, loss and love, as well as the prevalence of social media with its (mis) representations of the contemporary world.

Kerrie O’ Brien is a writer from Dublin. She has won multiple awards for her poetry and prose and featured in Miscellany, RTÉ Arena, The Stinging Fly, Poetry Ireland Introductions Series, Cyphers, The Irish Times and Hennessy New Irish Writing among others. She was the Editor of Looking At The Stars, an anthology of Irish writing which raised over €21,000 for the Dublin Simon Community. She has given talks on art and poetry in the National Gallery of Ireland and has spoken about literary activism in universities and literary festivals. Illuminate is her debut collection of poetry and was made possible by a literature bursary from the Arts Council of Ireland. It was chosen as a New Statesman Book of the Year by Sebastian Barry and an Irish Times Book of the Year by Joseph O’ Connor.

“My poems are raw and powerful reflections on lineage, faith and love which explore the concept of oneness and the transcendent nature of art and creativity.”

Yrsa Daley-Ward is an actor, writer and poet of mixed West Indian and West African heritage, born and raised in Lancashire and now living in London.

Drawing heavily on her own experiences, Yrsa interweaves each discipline to fuse poetry with theatre, music and storytelling and has been writing for as long as she can remember. Her debut collection of poetry and prose, bone, is available on Amazon. Yrsa has performed her work at several theatre and performance spaces in London including the Soho and Lyric theatre, Rich Mix and the Albany. Her poetry has also been exhibited at the Tate Modern. She has worked in South Africa in conjunction with The British Council in Cape Town and Johannesburg.

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“I tell stories. Some tall, some dark.”

Martina Evans, Vona Groarke & Mary O’Malley Date:

Wednesday 26 April

Time:

8.30pm

www.cuirt.ie

Venue: Town Hall Theatre

Price: €16/€13

Martina Evans was born in County Cork and has lived in London for 28 years.

She is a poet and novelist, the author of eleven books of prose and poetry.

Her awards include the Premio Ciampi International Prize for Poetry. Burnfort Las Vegas was short-listed for the Irish Times Poetry Now Award 2015. The Windows of Graceland: New and Selected Poems was published by Carcanet in July 2016.

“I work mainly with dramatic monologues as I am interested in the human voice as an instrument. Working with memory, history and dreams, I am interested in creating cinematic effects.”

Vona Groarke has published ten titles with Gallery Press, including seven poetry collections, the latest being Selected Poems (2016). Her most recent publication is a book-length essay on art frames, Four Sides Full, which was the Book on One on RTÉ Radio 1 in January 2017. Her poems have recently appeared in The New Yorker, Threepenny Review, The Guardian and Poetry Review. A former editor of Poetry Ireland Review, current selector for the UK’s Poetry Book Society and a member of Aosdána, she teaches poetry in the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester.

Mary O’Malley was born in Connemara. She served on the council of Poetry Ireland and was on the Committee of Cúirt International Poetry Festival for eight years. She has published seven books of poetry, the most recent Valparaiso arising out of her residency on the national marine research ship. Playing the Octopus is her latest book of poems. She is working on a memoir of childhood, as well as essays on place. She is a member of Aosdána and has won a number of awards for her poetry. She writes for RTE Radio and broadcasts her work regularly. She was the 2016 Arts Council Writer-in- Residence at University of Limerick.

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Cúirt International Festival of Literature

Also on Thursday 10.00am Poetry workshop with Martina Evans: Hotel Meyrick 11.00am Pop-up with Miquel Barceló & Sarah Maria Griffin: Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop 12.30pm Lindsay J. Sedgwick on Writing for TV & Film: GMIT CCAM 1.30pm Screenwriting workshop with Lyndsay Sedgwick: GMIT CCAM 2.00pm Pop-up with Miquel Barceló & Sarah Maria Griffin: Galway University Hospital 3.00pm Joyce’s letters to Nora: Tigh Nora 4.00pm Pop-up with Miquel Barceló & Sarah Maria Griffin: Tigh Neachtain 6.00pm Persona: Nun’s Island Theatre 6.00pm Sports Writing workshop with Gerard Siggins: Hotel Meyrick 8.00pm The Sacrificial Wind: Town Hall Theatre Studio 8.00pm Consensual: Nun’s Island Theatre 10.00pm Festival Club: Hotel Meyrick

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Songs from a Room: Sive Sive is a songwriter and multiinstrumentalist with a voice that “sweeps along displaying folk and jazz influences with the confidence of one who knows.” Her unique sound weaves together her love for the craft of song writing with her enthusiasm for experimentation and intricate arrangements.

Venue:

The King’s Head

Date:

Thursday 27 April

Time: 1.00pm Price: €10/€8

Sive released her debut album to critical acclaim in 2012 and since then has toured extensively across Ireland, The UK, Europe and New Zealand, sharing stages with the likes of Kila, Mick Flannery, John Spillane and Gemma Hayes. Her second album The Roaring Girl will be released in April.

“Keeps the toes tapping and both ears alert.

Brilliant stuff. Sive is a real find.”

Jackie Hayden, Hot Press

Merlin Coverley & Michael Winter

“My work explores the relationship between places, both real and imagined, and those who write about them, especially in respect to my own city, London. I am also interested in the relationship between walking and writing, and in the literary tradition which this has inspired.”

www.cuirt.ie

Merlin Coverley is the author of six books: London Writing, Psychogeography, Occult London, Utopia, The Art of Wandering, and South. He lives in London. Moving between geography and mythology, literature and history, South is the first book to look at all things Southern in one volume. It examines the South as a symbol of freedom and escape, the South as the location of Northern visions of Utopia, and the South as the imagined site of decadence, poverty and backwardness. From Tahiti to the streets of Peckham, from Naples to New Orleans, Merlin Coverley’s brilliant and wide-ranging study throws light on how and why the idea of the South, in all its forms, has come to exert such a powerful hold on our imaginations.

Venue: Town Hall Theatre Date:

Thursday 27 April

Time

1.00 pm

Price

€10/€8

Michael Winter has published two collections of stories, five novels, and one work of non-fiction. He has won the CBC short story contest and is the only writer ever to win the Notable Author award, conferred by the Writers Trust. His novel Minister Without Portfolio was a Canada Reads finalist and he’s been twice nominated for the Giller Prize. His most recent book, Into the Blizzard, sets out to retrace the steps of the Newfoundland Regiment during the First World War. He divides his time between Toronto and Newfoundland.

“In June a few years ago I set out to visit some of the World War One battlefields of Europe – the slope and valley and river and plain that the Newfoundland Regiment trained on, and fought over and through and under.”

Part unconventional history, part memoir-travelogue, part philosophical inquiry, Michael Winter uniquely captures the extraordinary lives and landscapes, both in Europe and at home, scarred by a war that is just now disappearing from living memory. In subtle and surprising ways, he also tells the hidden story of the very act of remembering – of how the past bleeds into the present and the present corrals and shapes the past.

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Cúirt International Festival of Literature

Oisín Fagan & Ross Raisin Oisín Fagan is a writer and activist. He has previously been published in The Stinging Fly, New Planet Cabaret and Young Irelanders and his work has featured at the Irish Museum of Modern Art. In 2016, he won the inaugural Penny Dreadful Novella Prize for The Hierophants. Hostages, published by New Island, is his first collection. He is a recipient of the Literature Bursary Award from the Arts Council of Ireland.

“The stories in Hostages are blends of histories, mythologies, revolutions, science fictions and mysteries, all concerned with the possibility of communities to bring about change, and the ability of normal people to care for others under extreme circumstances.”

Ross Raisin was born in 1979 in West Yorkshire. His first novel, God’s Own Country was published in 2008 and was shortlisted for nine literary awards, including the Guardian First Book Award and the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize.

In 2009 Ross Raisin was named the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year.

In 2013 he was selected as one of Granta’s Best of Young British writers. He lives in London. A Natural delves into the heart of a professional football club: the pressure, the loneliness, the threat of scandal, the fragility of the body and the struggle, on and off the pitch, with conforming to the person that everybody else expects you to be.

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Venue: Galway Arts Centre Date:

Thursday 27 April

Time:

5.00pm

Price:

€10/€8

Jami Attenberg, Sinéad Gleeson & Cheryl Tan Powerfully intelligent and wickedly funny, All Grown Up delves into the psyche of a flawed but mesmerising character. Readers will recognise themselves in Jami Attenberg’s truthful account of what it means to be a 21st century woman, though they might not always want to admit it.

Sinéad Gleeson’s essays have appeared in Granta, Banshee, Winter Papers, gorse and Autumn. Her short story ‘Counting Bridges’ was longlisted at the 2016 Irish Book Awards. In 2015, she edited The Long Gaze Back: an Anthology of Irish Women Writers, which won Best Irish Published Book at the 2015 Irish Book Awards, and in 2016, The Glass Shore: Short Stories by Women Writers from the North of Ireland, which won in the same category.

She is currently working on a collection of non-fiction and also a novel. She presents The Book Show on RTE Radio 1.

Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan is a New York-based journalist and author of the new novel Sarong Party Girls, which was named one of Amazon’s 10 “Best Books of the Month” for July 2016. A native of Singapore, she also wrote A Tiger In The Kitchen: A Memoir of Food & Family, and was editor of the fiction anthology Singapore Noir. She was a staff writer at The Wall Street Journal, In Style magazine and Baltimore Sun. Her stories have also appeared in The New York Times and The Paris Review.

Venue:

Town Hall Theatre

Date:

Thursday 27 April

Time: 6.30pm

www.cuirt.ie

Jami Attenberg is The New York Times best-selling author of five novels, including The Middlesteins and Saint Mazie. She has contributed essays about sex, urban life, and food to The New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal and Lenny Letter. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Price: €10/€8

“My books explore the intimate folkways and rhythms of Singapore, where I grew up, with a focus on the collision of old traditions and heady modern materialism, post-colonial gender and racial politics, as well as the traditional role of women -- specifically Asian women -- in society and how that is changing.”

Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan

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Cúirt International Festival of Literature

Spoken Word Platform This exciting, high-energy event will showcase both poetry and short fiction. Performers will have up to three minutes to present their piece to a panel of three judges with MC Pete Mullineaux overseeing proceedings. The top three participants will go on to perform at the Cúirt Showcase at Electric Picnic in September.

Guest Performer to be announced.

Open submissions are invited for the Spoken Word Platform and entry is open to all. Your poem or fiction piece should take up to three minutes to perform.

Please submit to: Spoken Word Platform, Galway Arts Centre, 47 Dominick Street, Galway or email petemullineaux@gmail.com by Thursday, 13 April.

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Venue

The King’s Head

Date

Thursday 27 April

Time 6.30pm Price €6

Ó Íochtar Mara Saothar Chaitlín Maude Venue

Ionad Cultúrtha an

Phiarsaigh, Rosmuc, Co. na Gaillimhe Thursday 27 April www.cuirt.ie

Date

Time 7.00pm Price €10/€8 Ba dhuine de phríomhfhilí a linne í Caitlín Maude (1941 -1982), chomh maith le bheith ina hamhránaí seannóis, drámadóir, aisteoir, scríbhneoir, oideachasóir agus gníomhaí polaitiúil.

Déanann an taibheoir Caitríona Ní Chonaola míreanna as prós, filíocht agus amhráin Chaitlín a chur i láthair ag 7pm Déardaoin 27 Aibreán 2017 in Ionad Cultúrtha an Phiarsaigh, Ros Muc. *Is i nGaeilge ar fad a bheidh an taispeántas seo. (This event is in the Irish language.)

No Childhood Back in our Day

Venue:

Róisín Dubh (upstairs)

Date:

Thursday 27 April

Time: 10.00pm Price: €10/€8 An evening of song, poetry, social history and tall tales with Seamus Ruttledge, Martina Evans, SarahAnne Buckley, Conor Montague and special guests.

Tickets are available from the Town Hall Theatre or www.roisindubh.net 23

Cúirt International Festival of Literature

John Boyne & Kit de Waal “Long before we discovered that he had fathered two children by two different women, one in Drimoleague and one in Clonakilty, Father James Monroe stood on the altar of the Church of Our Lady, Star of the Sea, in the parish of Goleen, West Cork, and denounced my mother as a whore”.

Cyril Avery is not a real Avery, or at least that’s what his adoptive parents tell him. And he never will be. But if he isn’t a real Avery, then who is he?

At the mercy of fortune and coincidence, and struggling with his sexuality at a time where to be gay was to be a pariah, he will spend a lifetime coming to know himself and where he came from – and over his three score years and ten will struggle to discover an identity, a home, a country and much more.

John Boyne was born in Ireland in 1971. He is the author of ten novels for adults, five for young readers and a collection of short stories. Perhaps best known for his 2006 multi-award-winning book The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, John’s other novels, notably The Absolutist and A History of Loneliness, have been widely praised and are international bestsellers. In 2015, John chaired the panel for the Giller Prize, Canada’s most prestigious literary award. The Heart’s Invisible Furies is his most ambitious novel yet.

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Venue: Town Hall Theatre Date:

Thursday 27 April

Time

8.30pm

Price

€16/€13

Leon is nine, and has a perfect baby brother called Jake. They have gone to live with Maureen, who has fuzzy red hair like a halo, and a belly like Father Christmas. But the adults are speaking in low voices, and wearing Pretend faces. They are threatening to give Jake to strangers. Since Jake is white and Leon is not.

Evoking a Britain of the early eighties, My Name is Leon is a heart-breaking story of love, identity and learning to overcome unbearable loss. Of the fierce bond between siblings. And how - just when we least expect it - we manage to find our way home.

Kit de Waal writes about forgotten and overlooked places, where the best stories are found. Her debut novel My Name is Leon, a heart-breaking story of love and identity, is a Times and international bestseller, and was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award. Her prize-winning flash fiction and short stories appear in various anthologies. In 2016 she founded the Kit de Waal Scholarship at Birkbeck University.

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www.cuirt.ie

A brother chosen. A brother left behind. And a family where you’d least expect to find one.

Cúirt International Festival of Literature

Also on Friday 10.00am Fiction workshop with Jami Attenberg: Hotel Meyrick 12.00am Pop-up with Miquel Barceló & Stephen Burt: McDonagh’s Fish & Chip shop 12.00pm Kitchen Reading with Damon Galgut, Theresa Muñoz & Jacob Polley: Galway City 1.00pm Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan, writing on Food: GMIT Library 2.00pm Pop-up with Miquel Barceló & Mary O’Malley: Galway City Library 3.00pm Joyce’s letters to Nora: Tigh Nora 4.00pm Pop-up with Miquel Barceló & Mary O’Malley: The Quay’s Pub 6.00pm Persona: Nun’s Island Theatre 8.00pm The Sacrificial Wind: Town Hall Theatre Studio 8.00pm Consensual: Nun’s Island Theatre 10.00pm Festival Club: Hotel Meyrick

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Launch Poems for Patience Venue:

University Hospital, Galway

Date:

Friday 28 April

Time: 11.00am Price: Free Poems for Patience is a long running programme established by Galway University Hospitals Arts Trust in which poems are displayed on the Arts corridor of the hospital and in waiting areas throughout the hospital and associated hospital units.

In the past, the series has featured poems by leading Irish and international poets such as Seamus Heaney, Vona Groarke, Jane Hirschfield and Colette Bryce.

Since 2013 Galway University Hospitals Arts Trust runs an annual poetry competition. The 2017 winner will be introduced at the launch and will read their winning poem.

‘It is great to be able to stop for a minute and forget everything and share in a silent way with the world’ ‘Wonderful collection to ease the mind of even the most impatient patient!’’

This year’s selection has been chosen by Yrsa Daly-Ward.

Yrsa Daley-Ward is a poet, actor and writer. Drawing heavily on her own experiences, Yrsa interweaves each discipline to fuse poetry with theatre, music and storytelling and has been writing for as long as she can remember. Her debut collection of poetry and prose, bone, is available on Amazon.

Songs from a Room:

Lasairfhíona (pronounced Lah-sah-reena) is a singer/songwriter from Inis Oírr, the Aran Islands in the West of Ireland. Her debut album An Raicín Álainn (pronounced An Rackeen Ah-lyn) generated a very favourable response in Ireland and abroad. It was selected by Hot Press music magazine as one of the best folk albums of 2002. Her second solo album released in 2005 appropriately called Flame of Wine, a literal translation of her name, was also very well received. Tracks from the album were used on the award-winning BBC programme Coast. Her new album One Penny Portion demonstrates Lasairfhíona’s rare ability to sing songs from an ancient Gaelic tradition while being equally at home with contemporary songs.

Venue:

The King’s Head

Date:

Friday 28 April

www.cuirt.ie

Lasairfhíona Ní Chonaola Time: 1.00pm Price: €10/€8

‘’One Penny Portion is a vibrant and subtle return of a major song stylist.’’ fRoots Music Magazine

‘’A pure breath of everything that is beautiful about Ireland.”

BBC Folk & Acoustic Reviews

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Cúirt International Festival of Literature

Pete Mullineaux, Mark Wagenaar & William Wall Originally from Bristol UK, Pete Mullineaux now lives in Galway and works in development education. His first published poem, aged 13, was recorded on an album along with music by Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger. He has been featured on RTE’s Arena and published widely in Ireland, UK, USA as well as Spain, France, Japan & India. His four collections are: Zen Traffic Lights (Lapwing 2005) A Father’s Day (Salmon Poetry 2008) Session (Salmon 2011) and most recently, How to Bake a Planet (Salmon 2016).

“Pete Mullineaux’s poetry merges the personal and the global, while music and visual art are also recurring themes. Wry and philosophical, his work has been described by various reviewers as ‘tender & lyrical’, ‘gorgeous and resonant’, ‘grimly funny’ and comparisons made with Brian Patten, Roger McGough and John Cooper-Clarke.”

Mark Wagenaar is the winner of the 2015 CBC Poetry Prize and the 2016 winner of Red Hen Press’ Benjamin Saltman Prize, for his forthcoming book Southern Tongues Leave Us Shining. His first two books, The Body Distances (A Hundred Blackbirds Rising), and Voodoo Inverso, won UMass Press’ Juniper Prize & U of Wisconsin Press’ Pollak Prize, respectively. His poems have appeared in or are forthcoming from The New Yorker, 32 Poems, Field, Southern Review, Image, & many others. He holds a PhD in English Literature from the University of North Texas & an MFA from the University of Virginia, and this year he is serving as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Valparaiso University.

“Mark Wagenaar’s poems are brimful of the world, generous, fluid, packed with an avid music, with praise and astonishment. In poem after poem, Wagenaar renders a sense of ‘a still life with everything in the world,’ not in an attempt to freeze-frame the moment but in order to register everything in the moment, in all its registers, as the moment passes.”

William Wall is the author of four novels, including This is the Country, longlisted for the 2005 Man Booker Prize; three collections of poetry; and two volumes of short stories, including his latest, Hearing Voices/Seeing Things (Doire Press). His work has won and been shortlisted for many prizes including The Virginia Faulkner Award, The Patrick Kavanagh Award, the National Book Award and the Hennessy Award. His work has been translated into many languages including Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Latvian. He is the 2017 winner of the Drue Heinz Literature Prize and the only European recipient of the award.

“The stories in Hearing Voices/Seeing Things are inspired by overheard conversations, chance phrases, isolated encounters and each story is a brief, intense, confessional moment in a character’s life. These are stories of ordinary people coping with an extraordinary world, a little lost and uncertain of their future.”

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Venue:

Town Hall Theatre

Date:

Friday 28 April

Time: 1.00pm Price: €10/€8

Début Panel Venue

Town Hall Theatre

Date

Friday 28 April www.cuirt.ie

Time 3.00pm Price €10/€8 Paula Cocozza is a staff feature writer at The Guardian and has covered everything from soccer to fashion to fourth-wave feminism. Her writing, which has also appeared in Vogue, The Telegraph, the Independent, and the TLS, received the 2013 David Higham Award.

Paula lives in London with her husband, two children, and a garden full of foxes. How to Be Human is her first novel.

Lisa Harding completed an MPhil in Creative Writing at Trinity College. Her stories have been published in The Dublin Review and The Bath Short Story Anthology. She has just been awarded a DLR Professional Development Arts grant for her prose writing.

Harvesting is her first novel and was inspired by her involvement with a campaign against sex trafficking run by the Children’s Rights Alliance.

Alan McMonagle has written for radio, published two collections of short stories, and contributed to many journals in Ireland and North America. Ithaca is his first novel.

“Compelling from start to finish. Read it.”

Patrick McCabe ‘‘Right from its remarkable opening sentence, this extraordinary debut had me hooked. A fierce, funny, onits-own-terms, beautiful, heartbreaker of a novel.”

Joseph O’Connor

Roisín O’Donnell was born in Sheffield with family roots in Derry. Her stories have been anthologised in The Long Gaze Back, Fugue, Young Irelanders, Unthology and The Glass Shore.

She has been shortlisted for several international prizes, such as the Cúirt New Writing Prize, the Pushcart Prize, the Forward Prize, and the Brighton Prize. Wild Quiet is her first collection.

Amanda Reynolds teaches Creative Writing in Cheltenham, where she lives with her family.

Close To Me is her debut novel.

“Close To Me is a gripping psychological thriller about secrets and lies, an incredibly accomplished debut novel with a quality of prose that will keep the reader gripped from the first page.”

Rhea Boyden (Chair) has been published in the Irish Times Magazine and had her Documenta Art Show review published in Roll Magazine, New York. She is currently collaborating with PHEVER. ie TV-Radio in Dublin on various projects including the upcoming Irish Electronic Music Awards 2017.

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Cúirt International Festival of Literature

Conor O’Callaghan & A.L. Kennedy Conor O’Callaghan is from Newry in County Down, and now lives in Manchester. He has published four acclaimed poetry collections: The History of Rain (1993); Seatown (1999); Fiction (2005); and The Sun King (2013). He also wrote the nonfiction book Red Mist: Roy Keane and the Football Civil War (2004).

He lectures at Sheffield Hallam University in the UK and at Wake Forest University in North Carolina.

Nothing on Earth is his first novel.

It was a time when nobody called.

Early evening, the hottest August in living memory. A frightened girl bangs on a door. A man answers.

From the moment he invites her in, his world will never be the same again. Where is her family now? Is she telling the truth? Can the man be trusted? Beautiful and disturbing, her story – retold in his words – reaches towards those frayed edges of reality where each of us, if only once, glimpses something nobody will ever explain.

A.L. Kennedy is the author of 18 books: 6 literary novels, 1 science fiction novel, one storybook for children, 7 short story collections and 3 works of non-fiction. She was included in the Granta Best of Young British Novelists list on two occasions and has won various awards in various countries including the 2007 Costa Award and the 2016 Heinrich Heine Preis. Her prose is published in a number of languages.

She is also a dramatist for stage, TV, film and radio. She is an essayist and commentator in various UK and European publications and regularly reads her work on BBC radio. She occasionally writes and performs one person shows and has worked as a stand up comedian.

“I was born in Dundee in the NE of Scotland. My work is both dark and funny - something that I think both Scots and Irish people can understand. Life is both dark and funny. I think art and literature can create places where humanity is able to remember itself and the qualities which keep it humane.”

Venue:

Town Hall Theatre

Date:

Friday 28 April

Time: 6.30pm Price: €10/€8

Digital Literature & Art: Interface as Creative Device This panel discussion brings together different perspectives on digital creative practice, including literary authorship, art, publishing and criticism.

It focuses on how new media platforms and interfaces offer new possibilities in the production and reception of literature and art in the 21st century. The session features digital poet Jason Nelson and digital artist Alinta Krauth as well as practitioners and scholars from Ireland.

The event is supported by the Fulbright Commission of Ireland, the Irish Research Council, the European Commission via Marie Curie Actions, and the Moore Institute, NUI Galway.

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Digital Cultures Initiative

Venue

Galway Arts Centre

Date

Friday 28 April

Time 5.00pm Price Free

Damon Galgut & Eimear McBride Eimear McBride grew up in the west of Ireland and studied acting at Drama Centre London. Her debut novel A Girl is a Half-formed Thing took nine years to publish and subsequently received the Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction, Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year, the Goldsmiths Prize, Desmond Elliot Prize and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. Her short fiction has appeared in Dubliners 100, The Long Gaze Back and on Radio 4. She occasionally reviews for the Guardian, TLS, New Statesman and New York Times Book Review.

“My writing is about finding ways to make language best express the life of the body and the life of the mind simultaneously. I’m particularly interested in sex, sexuality, women’s struggle for self-determination and modernism’s potential for pushing the conversation about these subjects forward.”

Venue: Town Hall Theatre Date

Friday 28 April

Time

8.30pm

Price

€16/€13

The writers will be interviewed by JP O’ Malley, a freelance journalist, cultural critic, and events curator, presently based in Budapest. He writes on literature, culture, international politics, history, economics, and society. His work has appeared in a wide range of publications, including: The Irish Times, The Sunday Independent, The Washington Post, The Observer, The Irish Examiner, The Toronto Star, New African, and The Times of Israel.

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www.cuirt.ie

Damon Galgut was born in 1963 in Pretoria, South Africa, and published his first novel when he was 17 years old. In total he has published 8 books, which have won and been shortlisted for numerous awards, including two shortlistings for the Man Booker Prize. He currently lives in Cape Town.

“Damon Galgut’s work covers a variety of themes and subjects, ranging from the personal to the political. He is fascinated by isolated individuals at odds with history and themselves, often trapped in moral quandaries to which there is no clear solution. ”

Cúirt International Festival of Literature

Performance Poetry:

Elaine Feeney & Josh Idehen Elaine Feeney’s work has been widely published, translated and anthologised, including recent Summer/ Autumn 2016 publications in Stonecutter Journal (US), The Wide Shore, A Journal of Global Women’s Writing (US), The Stinging Fly (IRE), The Manchester Review (UK), Solas Nua (US), New Writing (Canada) Pilgrimmage (US), and The Oxford Poetry Review (UK).

Feeney has published three collections of poetry, Indiscipline (2007, Maverick Press), Where’s Katie? (2010, Salmon) and The Radio was Gospel (2014, Salmon). Her next collection, Rise is forthcoming and she is working on her first novel and a pilot comedy series that was highly commended by BAFTA. She has performed her work all over the world.

Joshua Idehen is a poet, workshop facilitator, musician and founder of renowned poetry/music magazine Poejazzi, poetry group A Poem Between People and leader of ‘fro-funk band Benin City. His poetry has been published in anthologies alongside luminaries such as Linton Kwesi Johnson. He has performed with Bipolar Sunshine, Dan le Sac, Laura Marling, and Scroobius Pip. He founded and runs the poetry/music events and magazine company, Poejazzi, which released its first free app in 2014 called ‘Poejazzi,’ to celebrate UK spoken word. Poejazzi also produced the sold out critically acclaimed ‘HOWL 2.0’, a reimagining of Allen’s Ginberg’s Howl by London’s up and coming young poets, visual artists and producers.

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Venue

Róisín Dubh (upstairs)

Date

Friday 28 April

Time 10.00pm Price €12.50/€10

8.00pm Consensual: Nun’s Island Theatre 10.00pm Festival Club: Hotel Meyrick

Venue:

Town Hall Theatre

Date:

Saturday 29 April

Time: 12.00pm Price: €10/€8

Claire-Louise Bennett & Mia Gallagher Claire-Louise Bennett writes fiction and essays. Her work has been published in The Stinging Fly, gorse, The White Review, Harper’s, The New York Times, and The Millions, among others. Her first book Pond was published in Ireland in 2015 by the Stinging Fly Press. It was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize 2016.

“A sharp, funny, and eccentric debut … Pond makes the case for Bennett as an innovative writer of real talent. … [It] reminds us that small things have great depths.”

New York Times Book Review

Mia Gallagher was born in Dublin, where she still lives. Her short fiction has been published in Ireland, the UK, the US and Italy. She won the Irish Tatler Literature Award (2007) for her acclaimed debut novel HellFire, which had its genesis in her time life modelling in Portlaoise Prison. She was also shortlisted for the Hennessy (1991), Fish (2004) and Trevor/Bowen (2011) awards. In addition to writing fiction, Mia is a professional theatre performer and playwright and her work has toured widely in Ireland, the UK and Europe.

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www.cuirt.ie

Also on Saturday

Cúirt International Festival of Literature

Songs from a room: My Fellow Sponges

Venue

The King’s Head

Date

Saturday 29 April

Time 1.00pm Price €10/€8

My Fellow Sponges are an original band based in Galway. The band is the creative union of two singer-songwriters; Donal McConnon with his lyricallyled folk ditties and Anna Mullarkey with her lush and elegant synth-pop sound. The two started a band after performing together as actors on a number of theatre shows in university. They were later joined by David Shaughnessy (drums) and Sam Wright (bass).

2013 saw the release of their debut album Bonne Nuit. Mostly focused on a more rural sound, the single that received the most attention was ’This Dream Song’ mainly for the highly-ambitious, surrealist backwards video which accompanied its release. The follow up album Something Like Light (2014), displays a much more reflective, piano-driven sound from a band ever-willing to explore new possibilities with sound. Last year’s single, ’The Cold Hand’, has been the bands most successful release to date, gaining nationwide radio-play and convincing music lovers to flock to their shows during the festival season.

My Fellow Sponges have collaborated with story-tellers, comedians, dancers and brass-ensembles. They have played entire shows improvised, under the moniker Community. Their concerts are lively, unpredictable and intimate. They comfortably switch from eerie-electronica to hip-shakingbossa-nova, all with a dramatic flair that has stayed with Donal and Anna since their theatre days.

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An Focal: Grá Is fís ealaíontóir agus amhránaí neamhspleách í Ceara Conway a bhaineann úsáid as taibhsiú, amhránaíocht agus cleachtaí traidisiúnta in a saothar. Tá sí mar ealaíontóir cónaithe le hOifig Ealaíon Luimnigh agus le hOrmston House, Luimneach faoi láthair. I measc na saothar atá coimisiúnaithe uaithi le déanaí tá Breath, Damer House Gallery; Time, Ulster Museum; DUBH, EVA International Ireland’s Biennale (2016), Thin Places (2015) Kings College, London; Vicissitudes (2013), Derry City of Culture agus Making Visible, Irish Museum of Modern Art (2014). Sa bhliain 2013, bronnadh scoláireacht Paul Brady ag an Dámh Chruinniú Éireann Rince agus Ceol ar Cheara.

Venue

An Taibhdhearc

Date

Saturday 29 April

Time 2.00pm

www.cuirt.ie

Tá an ócáid seo á reáchtáil ag Cúirt i gcomhar le Oireachtas na Gaeilge.

This event is being organised by Cúirt in conjunction with Oireachtas na Gaeilge.

Price €10/€8

Ceara Conway is an independent Irish visual artist and singer working in performance, song and traditional folk practices. She is currently undertaking an artist’s residency with the Limerick Arts Office and Ormston House, Limerick. Recent commissions include Breath, Damer House Gallery, Time, Ulster Museum, DUBH, EVA International Ireland’s Biennale (2016). Thin Places (2015) Kings College, London; Vicissitudes (2013), Derry City of Culture and Making Visible, Irish Museum of Modern Art (2014). In 2013 Ceara was awarded a Paul Brady Scholarship at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, UL. Is file, criticeoir agus léachtóir í Caitríona Ní Chléirchín. Is as Gort na Móna, Scairbh na gCaorach, Co. Mhuineacháin ó dhúchas í. Bhuaigh a céad chnuasach Crithloinnir duais an Oireachtais don scríbhneoir úr sa bhliain 2010 agus bhuaigh a dara cnuasach An Bhrídeach Sí (2014) duais Michael Hartnett i 2015. Thiomnaigh sí a dara cnuasach dá máthair a fuair bás anuraidh.

Foilsíodh filíocht léi in Comhar, Irish Pages, Cyphers, The Stinging Fly, Feasta,Blaiseadh Pinn, The SHOp, An t-Ultach agus An Guth. Scríobhann sí ailt acadúla agus iriseoireachta agus tá níos mó ná fiche léirmheas scríofa aici san Irish Times, Comhar, Taighde agus Teagasc agus in irisí eile.

Caitríona Ní Chléirchín is an Irish-language poet, critic and lecturer originally from Gortmoney, Emyvale in Co. Monaghan. Her début collection Crithloinnir won the Oireachtas Prize for New Writers in 2010 and her second collection An Bhrídeach Sí published in 2014 has won the Michael Hartnett Prize 2015.

She has published poetry in Comhar, Irish Pages, Cyphers, The Stinging Fly, Feasta, Blaiseadh Pinn, The SHOp, An t-Ultach and An Guth. She also writes reviews, academic and journalistic articles and over 20 reviews in The Irish Times, Comhar, Taighde agus Teagasc and others.

Is reacaire ó Lios Tuathail é Séamus Barra Ó Súilleabháin a d’fhreastal ar ollscoil sa Ghaillimh. Chífeá ag caitheamh thairis é ag ócáidí ar nós Reic, an Cabaret Craiceáilte agus Liú Lúnasa. Is minic a bhíonn sé ag obair le ceoltóirí agus thá sé mar leathbhádóir sa togra hip-hop Craos. Is comheagarthóir é don iris Mionlach agus is é Beatha Dhónaill Dhuibh (2016) a chéad chnuasach dánta foilsithe ag Cló Iar-Chonnacht.

Séamus Barra Ó Súilleabháin is a raconteur from Listowel who attended university in Galway. He can be seen giving it up at events such as Reic, the Caberet Craiceáilte and Liú Lúnasa. Seamus often works with musicians and he is on the crew of the hip-hop project Craos. He is co-editor of Mionlach magazine and his first collection of poetry Beatha Dhónaill Dhuibh (2016) is published by Cló Iar-Chonnacht.

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Cúirt International Festival of Literature

Dermot Healy: Writing the Sky

Venue

Town Hall Theatre

Date

Saturday 29 April

Time 2.00pm Price €10/€8

“Part of the motivation behind publishing this volume is to address the extraordinary neglect of one of Ireland’s most gifted and industrious modern writers. The aim is to acknowledge Healy’s immense creative achievement while also establishing an initial body of critical work, drawn from a variety of vantage points.”

Tess Gallagher’s 12th volume of poetry, Is, Is Not, will be published

by Graywolf Press in 2019. Midnight Lantern: New and Selected Poems, is her most complete volume of poetry available in Ireland. She spends time in a cottage on Lough Arrow in Co. Sligo in the West of Ireland where many of her new poems are set, and also lives and writes in her hometown of Port Angeles, Washington.

Michael Harding is an Irish writer, widely known for his books, plays and columns chronicling life in Ireland through the fictitious lens of ordinary life. He has published three novels: Priest (1986), The Trouble With Sarah Gullion (1988) and Bird in the Snow (2008).

Keith Hopper teaches Literature and Film Studies at Oxford University’s Department for Continuing Education, and is a Research Fellow in the Centre for Irish Studies at St Mary’s University, Twickenham. He is the author of Flann O’Brien: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young PostModernist (revised edition 2009), and general editor of the twelve-volume Ireland into Film series (2001–7). He is a regular contributor to The Times Literary Supplement.

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Brian Leyden’s books include the bestselling memoir, The Home Place and Sweet Old World: New & Selected Stories. He has recently contributed to Winter Papers II edited by Kevin Barry & Olivia Smith and Fermata: Writings Inspired by Music, edited by Vincent Woods & Eva Bourke. His new novel is Summer of ’63.

Mike McCormack is the author of two collections of short stories Getting it in the Head and Forensic Songs, and three novels Crowe’s Requiem, Notes from a Coma and Solar Bones, which was published in May of last year.

Eoin McNamee’s novels include Resurrection Man, later made into a film, The Blue Tango, which was longlisted for the Booker Prize, and Orchid Blue, described by John Burnside in The Guardian as ‘a political novel of the highest order but also that rare phenomenon, a genuinely tragic work of art’. He lives in Sligo.

Neil Murphy is Professor of Irish and English literature at NTU, Singapore. He is the author of Irish Fiction and Postmodern Doubt (2004) and editor of Aidan Higgins: The Fragility of Form (2010) and of the revised edition of Higgins’ Balcony of Europe (2010). He co-edited (with Keith Hopper) a multi-volume sequence of books on the author, Dermot Healy, published by Dalkey Archive Press, including Dermot Healy: Collected Short Stories (2015), Fighting with Shadows (2015), Dermot Healy: Collected Plays (2016), and Dermot Healy: Writing the Sky - Critical Essays and Observations (2016). He is currently completing a book on John Banville.

Mary O’Malley was born in Connemara. She served on the council of Poetry Ireland and was on the Committee of Cúirt International Poetry Festival for eight years. She has published seven books of poetry, the most recent Valparaiso arising out of her residency on the national marine research ship. Playing the Octopus is her latest book of poems.

She is working on a memoir of childhood, as well as essays on place.

She is a member of Aosdána and has won a number of awards for her poetry. She writes for RTE Radio and broadcasts her work regularly. She was the 2016 Arts Council Writer-inResidence at University of Limerick.

Claire Hennessy is a writer, editor, book reviewer, and creative writing teacher based in Dublin. She is the author of several YA novels, including Nothing Tastes As Good (2016) and Like Other Girls (coming May 2017). She is the recipient of three Arts Council bursaries and holds masters’ degrees in popular literature and creative writing from Trinity College Dublin. Claire is a co-director and co-founder of the Big Smoke Writing Factory creative writing school in Dublin, co-founder and co-editor of the literary journal Banshee, and Puffin Ireland editor at Penguin Random House. She is powered mostly by tea.

Shirley-Anne McMillan lives in rural Co. Down. She works as a writer and the Alternative Chaplain at Shimna Integrated College where she runs a high school Gay Straight Alliance and a Peace and Integration club. She has a Masters in Creative Writing from Manchester Metropolitan University and in 2013 she won the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators Undiscovered Voices competition with an extract from her novel, A Good Hiding (Atom, 2016).

“I write contemporary Young Adult novels set in Northern Ireland “I am passionate about which explore themes feminism and mental relating to various social health, but when I’m writing issues including teen fiction I’m constantly aware pregnancy, LGBT issues, it’s not a manifesto, and gender and religion. My also that humour makes character-driven stories everything better (even if also demonstrate a strong it’s quite dark). I always want sense of place and an to make a reader have a awareness of the current moment where they laugh, concerns of young people a moment where they cry, in NI.” and a moment where they relate to something in the story. Most of my work is set in Ireland – it’s where I know, but it’s also important for there to be versions of Ireland in fiction that aren’t old-fashioned, miserable or leprechaun-infested.”

Venue:

Nun’s Island Theatre

Date:

Saturday 29 April

www.cuirt.ie

Claire Hennessy, Shirley Anne McMillan & Dave Rudden Time: 4.00pm Price: €10/€8

Dave Rudden’s first novel, Knights of the Borrowed Dark, was the 2016 Specsavers’ Children’s Book of the Year. The sequel, The Forever Court, will be released on April 6th 2017. Dave enjoys cats, putting pens in his beard, and being cruel to fictional children.

Denizen Hardwick doesn’t believe in magic - until he’s ambushed by a monster created from shadows and saved by a word made of sunlight.

That kind of thing can really change your perspective.

Now Denizen is about to discover that there’s a world beyond the one he knows. A world of living darkness where an unseen enemy awaits...

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Cúirt International Festival of Literature

Jay Griffiths, Richard Hamblyn, Gaia Vince & Paul Kingsnorth

Venue

An Taibhdhearc

Date

Saturday 29 April

Time 4.30pm Price €10/€8

(Chair)

Jay Griffiths is the author of Tristimania: A Diary of Manic Depression; Wild: An Elemental Journey; Pip: A Sideways Look at Time; Kith: The Riddle of the Childscape and A Love Letter from a Stray Moon with a foreword by John Berger. She has won the Orion Book Award and the Barnes & Noble Discover Award for the best new non-fiction writer to be published in the USA and was shortlisted for both the Orwell Prize and a World Book Day Prize.

“Jay Griffiths is one of the most perceptive and lyrical writers working today.’”

John Burnside, Book of the Year, New Statesman

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Richard Hamblyn’s books include The Invention of Clouds (2001), which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize; Terra: Tales of the Earth (2009), a study of natural disasters; and The Art of Science, an anthology of readable science writing from the Babylonians to the Higgs boson. His latest book, Clouds: Nature and Culture, will be published

by Reaktion Books in June.

“I am an environmental writer, with a passion for telling stories that weave through layers of human and natural history. I am particularly interested in the cultural cross-currents that flow between the arts and the sciences, and am currently working on a book of true stories about half-imagined and remembered places.”

Paul Kingsnorth’s debut novel, The Wake won the 2014 Gordon Burn Prize, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the Folio Prize and the Desmond Elliot Prize, and was shortlisted for the Goldsmith’s Prize. His second novel Beast was published in 2016. He is also the

author of two non-fiction books, One No, Many Yeses and Real England, and a poetry collection, Kidland. He is co-founder of the Dark Mountain Project, a global network of writers, artists and thinkers in search of new stories for a world on the brink. His new collection of essays Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist is published this April.

Gaia Vince is a writer and broadcaster specialising in science and the environment. She has been the front editor of the journal Nature Climate Change, the news editor of Nature and online editor of New Scientist. Her work has appeared in newspapers and magazines in the UK, US and Australia, including The Guardian, Science, Scientific American and Australian Geographic.

She also devises and presents science programmes for BBC radio.

Her first book, Adventures In The Anthropocene: A Journey to the Heart of the Planet we Made, won the Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books in 2015.

www.cuirt.ie

An interview with Rick O’Shea

Rick O’Shea has been a radio presenter with RTÉ 2FM since 2001 and is also the presenter of The Poetry Programme on RTÉ Radio 1. Starting on Facebook in May 2014, The Rick O’Shea Book club now has over 5,500 members, making it Ireland’s biggest book club.

Venue

Town Hall Theatre

Date

Saturday 29 April

He hosts public author interviews with guests as diverse as playwright Simon Stephens, authors Anthony Horowitz, Eoin Colfer, Liz Nugent and Donal Ryan, journalist Johann Hari at Dublin’s International Literature Festival, Graham Norton at Listowel Writers Week and Michael Chabon at the Dublin Bloomsday Festival. He has been a panellist and event host at the Lingo Spoken Word Festival, Bram Stoker Festival, ISLA Festival, Cúirt International Festival of Literature, Dublin One City One Book, as well as performing spoken word pieces at European Literature Night and the Barnardo’s ‘Under My Bed’ nights.

Price €10/€8

Time 5.00pm

He is part of the industry voting academy for the Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards and was a judge for the 2015 UK and Ireland Young Adult Book Prize run by The Bookseller magazine.

39

Cúirt International Festival of Literature

Sophie Hannah & Denise Mina Sophie Hannah is an internationally bestselling writer of psychological crime fiction, published in 32 languages and 51 territories. In 2014, with the blessing of Agatha Christie’s family and estate, Sophie published a new Hercule Poirot novel, The Monogram Murders, which was a bestseller in more than fifteen countries. In September 2016, her second Poirot novel, Closed Casket, was published and became an instant Sunday Times top ten bestseller. She lives with her husband, children and dog in Cambridge, where she is a Fellow Commoner at Lucy Cavendish College.

The world’s most famous detective – and Agatha Christie’s most famous creation – returns in this new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Monogram Murders: a diabolically clever mystery soaked in period atmosphere and loaded with clues, suspense, and danger.

Denise Mina’s first novel Garnethill, published in 1998, won the Crime Writers Association John Creasy Dagger for Best First Crime Novel. She has now published 12 novels and also writes short stories, plays and graphic novels. In 2014 she was inducted into the Crime Writers’ Association Hall of Fame.

Denise presents TV and radio programmes as well as regularly appearing in the media, and has made a film about her own family. She regularly appears at literary festivals in the UK and abroad, leads masterclasses on writing and was a judge for the Bailey’s Prize for Women’s Fiction 2014.

William Watt wants answers about his family’s murder. Peter Manuel has them. But Peter Manuel is a liar. The Long Drop is an extraordinarily unsettling literary suspense novel based on the notorious case of Scotland’s first convicted serial killer.

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Venue:

Town Hall Theatre

Date:

Saturday 29 April

Time: 6.30pm Price: €10/€8

Abridged presents

Venue:

An Taibhdhearc

Date:

Saturday 29 April

Time: 6.30pm Price: €10/€8

www.cuirt.ie

Stephen Burt, Theresa Muñoz & Jacob Polley Usually active in the visual art environment, Abridged makes a rare appearance in the live poetry arena with a reading featuring critically acclaimed international poets Jacob Polley, Stephen Burt and Theresa Muñoz.

This will coincide with the Cúirt launch of Abridged 0 - 49: Babel. 0-49: Babel will also feature photography from the Belfast International Photo Festival.

Abridged currently consists of Gregory McCartney and Susanna Galbraith.

Stephen Burt is the author of three poetry collections, Belmont, Parallel Play, and Popular Music, and several collections of critical works. His essay collection Close Calls with Nonsense was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His writing has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, London Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, The Believer, and the Boston Review.

Theresa Muñoz’s work has appeared in several journals in both Canada and the United Kingdom, including Canadian Literature, Poetry Review and Best Scottish Poems. Her debut collection Settle was shortlisted for the Melita Hume Poetry Prize. She writes regular reviews for Scotland’s Herald newspaper and is currently Research Associate at the Newcastle Centre for Literary Arts.

Jacob Polley has published four books of poems, winning the 2016 T.S. Eliot Prize for poetry for his fourth book, Jackself. He has also been awarded the 2013 Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize for The Havocs, and the Somerset Maugham Award for his first novel, Talk of the Town (2009).

This event will be chaired by Gregory McCartney.

City Lit Talks Back

Venue:

Róisín Dubh

Date:

Saturday 29 April

Time: 6.00pm Price: Free

London’s premiere spoken word event at the Róisín Dubh.

A fantastic line-up of writers from the City Literary Institute, London, perform an eclectic mix of poetry, prose, comedy and drama.

Hosts: Conor Montague and Lindsey Booth.

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Cúirt International Festival of Literature

Simon Armitage & Terrance Hayes Simon Armitage, an award-winning British poet, playwright, novelist, lyricist and broadcaster, also writes extensively for television and radio. He is the author of almost a dozen collections of poetry, most recently his new volume The Unaccompanied and Paper Aeroplane: Selected Poems 19892014. He has also published two novels and three best-selling non-fiction titles, All Points North, Walking Home and Walking Away. Armitage’s writing for television and radio includes the BAFTA-winning film Feltham Sings for which he received a prestigious Ivor Novello Award for songwriting. Armitage’s translations of medieval verse include his acclaimed Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and his recent translation of Pearl. Armitage is Professor of Poetry at the University of Sheffield and was elected Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford in 2015. He was awarded a CBE in 2010 for services to poetry.

“I think of myself as a communicator. I want my poems to be read and to be understood, even if that understanding is on an intuitive or sub-conscious level.

I have things to say and I use the poems as vehicles to convey those things. It’s that simple (sort of).”

Terrance Hayes, one of the most compelling voices in American poetry, is the author of five books of poetry; How to Be Drawn (2015), longlisted for the 2015 National Book Award in Poetry; Lighthead (2010), winner of the 2010 National Book Award in Poetry; Wind in a Box, winner of a Pushcart Prize and Hip Logic, winner of the National Poetry Series, Whiting Writers Award and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. His poems have appeared in literary journals and magazines including The New Yorker, The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Fence, The Kenyon Review, Jubilat, Harvard Review, and Poetry. He is a professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh, in Pennsylvania.

“First you’ll marvel at his skill, his near-perfect pitch, his disarming humor, his brilliant turns of phrase.

Then you’ll notice the grace, the tenderness, the unblinking truth-telling just beneath his lines, the open and generous way he takes in our world.”

Cornelius Eady

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Venue:

Town Hall Theatre

Date:

Saturday 29 April

Time: 8.30pm Price: €16/€13

11.00am Crime Workshop with Sophie Hannah: Hotel Meyrick 11.00am Writing for YA with Claire Hennessy: Hotel Meyrick

Venue

The King’s Head

Date

Sunday 30 April

Bardic Brunch

(Curated by Mike McCormack)

www.cuirt.ie

Also on Sunday

Time 12.00pm Price €14/€12

Adrian Crowley has made a name for himself as one of the country’s celebrated lyricists, his songs delivered in his trademark, rich baritone. To date Crowley has released seven albums with his eighth set for release later in 2017. Adrian also spends time writing literary fiction. He has had a short story published in ‘Sunday Miscellany’ and has had lyrics published in The Stinging Fly. He is currently working on his debut novel.

For the Bardic Brunch, Adrian will be reading some new pieces, and combining his semi-sung / semispoken ‘story-songs’ with a specially composed soundscape.

Mia Gallagher’s short fiction has been published in Ireland, the UK, the US and Italy.

She won the Irish Tatler Literature Award (2007) for her acclaimed debut novel HellFire.

She was also shortlisted for Hennessy (1991), Fish (2004) and Trevor/Bowen (2011) Awards.

Yan Ge was born in Sichuan Province, China.

Publishing since 1994, she is the author of eleven books. Her work has been translated into English, French, German, Korean, and Hungarian.

Being named by People’s Literature magazine as one of twenty future literature masters in China, she is the chairperson of China Young Writers’ Association and a contract writer of Sichuan Writers’ Association. She now lives in Dublin with her husband.

Arja Kajermo has contributed cartoons to the feminist publisher Attic Press and occasionally to The Sunday Press, The Irish Times, Image magazine, Magill and others.

She now draws the strip Tuula in the Sunday edition of Swedish daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter.

In 2014 she was shortlisted for the prestigious Davy Byrnes Award for her short story ‘The Iron Age’, upon which her novel is based. She lives in Dublin.

Louise Manifold’s recent group shows and projects include: Winter Papers edited by Kevin Barry and Olivia Smith (2016), Berlin Open Studios (2016), Becoming: the adventures of Growing up, Baboró International Arts Festival for Children (2016), Wildscreen (2015), and Trauma at the Science Gallery, Dublin (2015). Visuals provided by Louise Manifold.

Mike McCormack is the author of two collections of short stories Getting it in the Head and Forensic Songs, and three novels Crowe’s Requiem, Notes from a Coma and Solar Bones, which was published in May of last year.

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Cúirt International Festival of Literature

Sara Baume, Jenni Fagan & Paul Kingsnorth Sara Baume won the 2014 Davy Byrnes Short Story Award, and in 2015 she won the Hennessy New Irish Writing Award and the Rooney Prize for Literature. Her debut novel Spill Simmer Falter Wither was longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award, won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and has been translated into several languages. Her second novel A Line Made by Walking was published in spring 2017 and prompted Colum McCann to describe her as ‘a writer of outstanding grace and style’, who ‘writes beyond the time we live in.’

Jenni Fagan was born in Scotland. She attended Greenwich University and won a scholarship to the Royal Holloway MFA where she was awarded an MA in Creative Writing. Her critically acclaimed debut novel The Panopticon was published in 2012 and named one of the Waterstones 11, a selection of the best fiction debuts of the year. Her poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and her collection The Dead Queen of Bohemia was named 3:AM Magazine’s Poetry Book of the Year.

She was shortlisted for the Dublin Impac, The James Tait Black, and was named one of Granta‘s Best of Young British Novelists.

Paul Kingsnorth’s debut novel, The Wake won the 2014 Gordon Burn Prize, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the Folio Prize and the Desmond Elliot Prize, and was shortlisted for the Goldsmith’s Prize. His second novel Beast was published in 2016. He is also the author of two non-fiction books, One No, Many Yeses and Real England, and a poetry collection, Kidland. He is co-founder of the Dark Mountain Project, a global network of writers, artists and thinkers in search of new stories for a world on the brink. His new collection of essays Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist is published this April.

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Venue

Nun’s Island Theatre

Date

Sunday 30 April

Time 2.00pm Price €10/€8

fermata:

Writings inspired by Music

Venue

Nun’s Island Theatre

Date

Sunday 30 April

Time 4.00pm Price €10/€8

‘A pitch perfect book’ Niall MacMonagle, editor of Windharp

www.cuirt.ie

Readings and music to mark the Artisan House publication fermata: Writings inspired by Music, edited by Eva Bourke and Vincent Woods.

Joining the editors at this special Cúirt event will be writers Moya Cannon, Louis de Paor, Mary Noonan, Matthew Sweeney, and Peter Woods accompanied by musical performances by piper and flute player Louise Mulcahy and composer and accordion player, Christy McNamara. fermata (in musical notation a pause, literally a breathing space) contains poems and prose writings from sixty-five contributors - a chorus of diverse and lively voices in response to music, the most beloved of all the arts.

The writing is inspired by singers, composers, musicians, dancers and the music of ‘what happens’. From a lullaby in a dead South African language (Moya Cannon), the pub session (Peter Woods), the Fado house of Argentina Santos (Mary Noonan), didjeridu (Louis de Paor), to Do Wah Diddy Diddy Do (Matthew Sweeney), all this and far more accompanied by incomparable playing from Christy McNamara and Louise Mulcahy. fermata: Writings inspired by Music (Artisan House 2016) www.artisanhouse.ie

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Cúirt International Festival of Literature

Far From Literature We Were Reared A night of spoken word, poetry and song In aid of Galway Rape Crisis Centre

Aoibheann McCann, Seamus Ruttledge, Steve Bennett and Conor Montague introduce a fantastic array of literary, comedic and musical talent across three stages Guests include Celeste Augé, Elaine Feeney, Trevor Conroy, Miceal Kearney, Sandra Coffey, Aoife Casby, Liz Quirke, Hugo Kelly, Alan McMonagle, Lorna Shaughnessy, Ciaran Tierney, George Shiels, Emma Comerford, Stephen Byrne, Hugo Seale, Aideen Henry, Kernan Andrews, Charlie Adley, Nicole Flattery, Páraic Breathnach, John Donnellan, Johnny Hannon, Gerry Hanberry, Órfhlaith Foyle, Aindrais de Staic, Paul McMahon, Atlantic Rhythm Section.

Tickets available from the Town Hall Theatre or www.roisindubh.net All proceeds to GRCC.

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Venue:

Róisín Dubh

Date:

Sunday 30 April

Time:

Doors at 8.00pm

Price:

€10 (all proceeds to GRCC)

nocturne. presents

MUSIC FOR THE PEOPLE After the recent split of his band Augustines, singer-songwriter William McCarthy, is ready to embark on his second solo tour, titled Music For The People, in the spring of 2017.

Venue:

Loam Restaurant

Date:

Sunday 30 April

www.cuirt.ie

An Evening with William McCarthy of Augustines

Time:

8.00pm (Doors at 7.00pm) While Augustines played their final run of shows last autumn, McCarthy can’t keep his feet still. Currently based in Berlin, he will tour Germany Price: €20 once again in April doing what he does best – telling stories, singing songs he’s written over the past decade and a half, and reading from his journals.

Anyone who’s ever been to an Augustines show knows how close McCarthy is to the audience. This show promises to be intimate and unique, and offers fans the chance to get up close and personal.

McCarthy will perform his brutally honest songs in a bare, stripped back setting. A life story, in one night, through song.

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Cúirt International Festival of Literature

Cúirt Labs Cúirt Labs is a series of workshops, talks and performances for children and teenagers. Taking place in Galway Arts Centre, writers, illustrators and other creative artists will engage with primary and post primary school groups on weekdays. On Saturday 29th April, teenagers are invited to sign up for a full day of writing and illustration workshops followed by a reading in Nuns Island Theatre. For the first time we are delighted to present LABS as Gaeilge. On Monday 24th April primary school groups are invited to sign up for workshops conducted completely in Irish with children theatre companies Branar and Fíbín.

LABS as Gaeilge Branar and Fíbín Monday 24 April

Sive, Caroline Busher, Javier Gimenez

Primary schools: 9.30am - 12.45pm

Thursday 27 April

€5 per pupil

Primary schools: 9.30am - 12.45pm

Tatyana Feeney, Genevieve Ryan, Erika McCann

€5 per pupil

Tuesday 25 April

Gerard Siggins, Caroline Busher, Javier Gimenez

Primary schools: 9.30am - 12.45pm

Friday 28 April

€5 per pupil

Primary schools: 9.30am - 12.45pm

Lauren O’Neill, Genevieve Ryan, Erika McCann

€5 per pupil

Marc MacLochlainn, Branar

Wednesday 26 April

Monday 24 April

Primary schools: 9.30am - 12.45pm

Post-Primary Schools: 1pm - 3pm

€5 per pupil

William Wall, writer Thursday 27 April Post-Primary Schools: 1pm - 3pm

To book please email karen@cuirt.ie

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www.cuirt.ie

Cúirt Labs: Young Adult 12 - 18yrs

Claire Hennessy, Shirley-Anne MacMillan, Dave Rudden, Margaret-Anne Suggs Saturday 29 April 10.00am – 6.00pm €20, including lunch, refreshments & admission to reading at 4.00pm in Nuns Island Theatre.

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Cúirt International Festival of Literature

Cúirt Labs Branar tell big stories for little citizens.

They strive for a simple, elegant form of theatre for young people that achieves intricacy through the creative use of few means. A style that stimulates the ability to imagine and challenge, while opening a dialogue with their audiences and providing a catalyst for education.

Caroline Busher’s novel The Ghosts of Magnificent Children is set in 1848, a time when magic and ghosts exist. Theo can reveal your secret thoughts, which come out of his mouth like a swarm of bees. Ginny’s ribs are woven together to form a birdcage where a bird called Blue perches on a swing. The thought-reading twins read each other’s minds. One hundred years later the children’s ghosts appear on an island off the coast of Ireland where a boy called Rua befriends them. Caroline Busher has a relentless thirst for seeking out the bizarre and peculiar. As a child she encountered what she believed to be a ghost, it dwelled beneath the floorboards in a dilapidated cellar. Eoin Colfer declared that: ‘The Ghosts of Magnificent Children reads wonderfully, an excellent and original voice, with shades of Neil Gaiman and Lemony Snicket’.

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Tatyana Feeney grew up in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and spent a lot of her early childhood going to the library and listening to stories. She still loves books and reads as much as she can. She is based in County Meath. Most of her artwork is done using monoprinting, often adding collage or watercolor to the finished pieces. She has written and illustrated Small Bunny’s Blue Blanket, Little Owl’s Orange Scarf, and collaborated with Malachy Doyle on Cillian agus an Rón.

Fíbín puppetry and theatre company is based in Connemara, County Galway. Fíbín creates exciting, energetic and highly visual theatre of the highest professional standards for young audiences through the medium of Irish. To achieve this, Fíbín uses puppets, masks, shadows, music, sound and an array of visual techniques to develop an aesthetic not previously seen in children’s theatre, particularly Irish Language Theatre.

Javier Gimenez is a teacher and facilitator based in Galway. He has been working in language teaching and arts education since the early 2000s. He has facilitated storytelling workshops in the West of Ireland for the last three years.

He is currently conducting PhD research in the area of intercultural narratives for children.

Erika McGann lives in Dublin in her own secret clubhouse (which is actually an apartment) and spends her time solving mysteries and having brilliant adventures (well, she writes about them anyway). As a kid she loved books filled with action, adventure, humour and mystery. She aims to create characters that kids will relate to, and that they’ll root for, and she loves the unexpected comedy that can pop out of any scene. Erika McCann’s series The Bubble Street Gang features Cass and her best friends Lex and Nicholas. They investigate crimes, solve mysteries and have brilliant adventures. They’ve even got their own secret clubhouse.

Lauren O’Neill is an illustrator and graphic designer based in Dublin.

Originally from Wexford, she moved to Dublin to study Vis. Comm. in NCAD and now thinks of the city as home. Since graduating in 2006 she has worked mainly as a designer in branding and advertising but has recently begun to focus on illustration full time.

Lauren has been an avid reader since childhood so illustrating books has been a lifelong ambition. She recently illustrated the cover for Geraldine Mills’ latest book, Gold.

Gerard Siggins was born in Dublin and has lived almost all his life in the shadow of Lansdowne Road; he’s been attending rugby matches there since he was small enough for his dad to lift him over the turnstiles. He worked for The Sunday Tribune for many years - he began his career as a sports journalist and was sports editor before moving into news and politics as chief sub-editor. Since 2011 he has published seven books, including his series about rugby player Eoin Madden: Rugby Spirit, Rugby Warrior, Rugby Rebel, Rugby Flyer and Rugby Runner.

Gerard enjoys writing fiction for children, but still does sportswriting and is cricket correspondent of the Sunday Independent.

He has ghostwritten with David Norris on his autobiography A Kick Against The Pricks (2012). Gerard also has a passion for history and writes newspaper features on many historical subjects, as well as editing The Irish Independent’s 1916 magazine series.

Sive is a songwriter and multiinstrumentalist with a voice that sweeps along displaying folk and jazz influences with the confidence of one who knows. Her unique sound weaves together her love for the craft of song writing with her enthusiasm for experimentation and intricate arrangements. Sive released her debut album to critical acclaim in 2012 and since then has toured extensively across Ireland, The UK, Europe and New Zealand, sharing stages with the likes of Kila, Mick Flannery, John Spillane and Gemma Hayes.

Her second album The Roaring Girl will be released in April. “Keeps the toes tapping and both ears alert. Brilliant stuff. Sive is a real find.” - Jackie Hayden, Hot Press.

William Wall is the author of four novels, including This is the Country, longlisted for the 2005 Man Booker Prize; three collections of poetry; and two volumes of short stories, including his latest, Hearing Voices/Seeing Things (Doire Press).

Claire Hennessy is a writer, editor, book reviewer, and creative writing teacher based in Dublin. She is the author of several YA novels, including Nothing Tastes As Good (2016) and Like Other Girls (coming May 2017).

Shirley-Anne McMillan lives in rural Co. Down. She works as a writer and the Alternative Chaplain at Shimna Integrated College.

In 2013 she won the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators ‘Undiscovered Voices’ competition with an extract from her novel, A Good Hiding (Atom, 2016).

Dave Rudden’s first novel, Knights of the Borrowed Dark, was the 2016 Specsavers’ Children’s Book of the Year. Its sequel, The Forever Court, is released this Spring.

Dave enjoys cats, putting pens in his beard, and being cruel to fictional children.

Margaret Anne Suggs’ specialty is children’s picture books. Her detailed drawings are peppered with charismatic cats and ladybirds that bring stories to life.

Margaret Anne was born and raised in the American deep South, but later moved to Dublin, Ireland to complete her Master’s Degree at the National College of Art and Design. Currently, Margaret Anne is the Promotions Officer for Illustrators Ireland, a dynamic group of professional illustrators. When she is not drawing, painting and making things, she teaches others in the Illustration department at Ballyfermot College of Further Education.

Margaret Anne lives in County Dublin, near the sea with her dashing husband, two amazing sons and a whiny cat. She recently illustrated the award-winning Pigín of Howth.

51

www.cuirt.ie

Genevieve Ryan is an American born dancer, teacher and choreographer who has made Galway her home since 2006. She has been engaged in her own dance practice for over 30 years and has studied dance all across the United States. In 2015 she received her MA in Dance from the University of Limerick, exploring how cultural influences impact the creative process of dance artists. She is a cofounder of the Galway Dance Project and is currently serving as Chair of the Board. She is artistic director of her dance company Off Beaten Path Dance and is the Director of the Genevieve Ryan Dance Academy.

Cúirt International Festival of Literature

Workshops Poetry Workshop with Martina Evans: Towards the Forest

Fiction Workshop with Jami Attenberg: Setting the Stakes

Venue

Hotel Meyrick

Venue

Hotel Meyrick

Date

Thursday 27 April

Date

Friday 28 April

Time 10.00am

Time 10.00am

Price €25

Price €25

Using poetry, art and film, this workshop will explore forests as a metaphor for human relationships and transformations - separating the woods from the trees. Particular attention will be paid to the difference between form and structure in poetry.

How many pages will you read before you walk away from a book? Ten, twenty, or fifty? Setting the stakes can hook your reader (or an agent or editor, for that matter) immediately. So what does it take to get a reader instantly invested in your story? An irresistible character or perhaps a suspenseful plot? Or a string of sentences so gorgeous they simply can’t walk away?

Martina Evans will read with Vona Groarke and Mary O’Malley in the Town Hall Theatre on Wednesday, 26 April at 8.30pm. For more information see page 17.

Sports Writing with Gerard Siggins Venue

Hotel Meyrick

Date

Thursday 27 April

Time 6.00pm Price €25 Gerard Siggins was born in Dublin and has lived almost all his life in the shadow of Lansdowne Road; he’s been attending rugby matches there since he was small enough for his dad to lift him over the turnstiles. He worked for the Sunday Tribune for many years - he began his career as a sports journalist and was sports editor before moving into news and politics as chief sub-editor.

Since the newspaper closed in 2011 he has published seven books, including his series about rugby player Eoin Madden. Rugby Spirit, Rugby Warrior, Rugby Rebel, Rugby Flyer and Rugby Runner are all published by The O’Brien Press.

In this Masterclass Gerard will show how a life-long passion for sport can be channeled into writing about it as a career. He will take a look at the great sportswriters and their work, the different ways of approaching a sporting event as a writer, and how you can make a living in this challenging environment.

52

American novelist Jami Attenberg examines a selection of brilliant and addictive beginnings from short stories and novels across an array of genres. Workshop a writing exercise, discuss what attracts you to a story and outline the stakes of your own works-in-progress.

Jami Attenberg will read with Sinéad Gleeson and Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan in the Town Hall Theatre on Thursday 27, April at 6.30pm. For more information see page 21.

Crime Workshop with Sophie Hannah Venue

Hotel Meyrick

Date

Sunday 30 April

Time 11.00am Price €25 Sophie Hannah is an internationally bestselling writer of psychological crime fiction, published in 32 languages and 51 territories. Sophie’s novel The Carrier won the Crime Thriller of the Year Award at the Specsavers National Book Awards. Two of her crime novels, The Point of Rescue and The Other Half Lives, have been adapted for television.

Explore the work of others and develop your own, with Sophie’s expert guidance.

Sophie Hannah will read with Denise Mina in the Town Hall Theatre on Saturday 29 April at 6.30pm. For more information see page 40.

Writing for YA with Claire Hennessy

Lindsay J. Sedgwick on Writing for TV & Film

Venue

Hotel Meyrick

Venue

Date

Sunday 30 April

Date

www.cuirt.ie

GMIT CCAM, Monivea Road Thursday 27 April

Time 11.00am

Time:

12.30pm

Price €25

Price:

Free

Claire Hennessy is a writer, editor, book reviewer, and creative writing teacher based in Dublin. She is the author of several YA novels, including Nothing Tastes As Good (2016) and Like Other Girls (coming May 2017).

Claire is a co-director and co-founder of the Big Smoke Writing Factory creative writing school in Dublin, cofounder and co-editor of the literary journal Banshee, and Puffin Ireland editor at Penguin Random House.

A former journalist, Lindsay Jane Sedgwick is a versatile and imaginative award-winning screenwriter with over 9 hours’ credits for TV and film work. Her groundbreaking series, PUNKY, has been recognized as the first mainstream cartoon series in the world in which the main character has special needs (Down’s syndrome) and is available worldwide. In addition, she has had 14 stage plays produced as well as one radio play for BBC4.

She has also been involved in writing game narrative.

She teaches screenwriting in DCU and in Filmbase, is currently Screenwriter-in-Residence at Maynooth University, and Kildare Co. Council Library & Arts Service and has just published her first novel, Dad’s Red Dress.

Claire Hennessy will read with Dave Rudden and Shirley Anne McMillan in Nun’s Island Theatre on Saturday 29 April at 4.00pm. For more information see page 37.

Workshop with Mark Wagenaar & the Corrib Rangers Award winning poet and former soccer professional Mark Wagenaar will work with the Corrib Rangers Junior boys’ and girls’ teams on a poetry workshop followed by soccer skills.

Mark Wagenaar will read with Pete Mullineaux and William Wall in the Town Hall Theatre on Friday, 28 April at 1.00pm. For more information see page 28.

Lindsay Sedgwick will run a Screenwriting workshop at 1.30pm later that day at GMIT, CCAM, Monivea Road To book email: bernie.lally@gmit.ie

Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan, Tales From the Kitchen Writing on Food Venue

GMIT Library, Old Dublin Road

Date

Friday 28 April

Time 1.00pm Price Free Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan is a New York-based journalist and author of the new novel Sarong Party Girls. A native of Singapore, she also wrote A Tiger In The Kitchen: A Memoir of Food & Family, and was editor of the fiction anthology Singapore Noir. She was a staff writer at The Wall Street Journal, In Style magazine and Baltimore Sun. Her stories have also appeared in The New York Times and The Paris Review.

To book email: bernie.lally@gmit.ie

53

Cúirt International Festival of Literature

Pop-up Literature Miquel Barceló is a theatre performer, fool, jester, minstrel and troubadour. Born in the heart of the Mediterranean, Miquel has taken inspiration from there to develop his work. Trained at École Jacques Lecoq in Paris, he became involved in theatre at the age of eight and hasn’t stopped since.

Since 2000 he has been based in Ireland working as a solo artist and with companies Teatro Punto, The Gombeens, Macnas, and Branar, with a special emphasis on theatre for people with intellectual disabilities.

He creates a place for celebration where the comical, the poetical and the acrobatic meet the social and the irreverent.

He has toured all over Ireland, the UK, Spain, France, Italy, Holland and the United States.

Sarah Maria Griffin is a writer from Dublin, Ireland. Her first novel, Spare & Found Parts, was published by Greenwillow Books in October 2016. Her nonfiction has appeared in The Irish Times, The Rumpus, Midnight Breakfast, Guts and Winter Pages. Her collection of essays about emigration, Not Lost, was published by New Island Press in 2013. She was U Magazine’s 30 Under 30 award recipient for literature in 2016.

She tweets @griffski.

Stephen Burt is the author of three poetry collections, Belmont, Parallel Play, and Popular Music, and several collections of critical works.

Mary O’Malley has published seven books of poetry. Playing the Octopus is her latest book of poems. She is working on a memoir of childhood, as well as essays on place.

These 20 minute pop-up events will feature music, song and words.

Tuesday 25, to Saturday, 29 April Tuesday, 11.00am Bell, Book & Candle, Small Crane Tuesday, 3.00pm The Dough Bros, Upper Abbeygate St Tuesday, 4.00pm Sonny Molloy’s, High Street Wednesday, 11.00am Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Ballybrit Business Park Wednesday, 3.00pm Sheridans Cheesemongers, Church Yard St. Wednesday, 4.00pm Dock 1 Seafood Bar & Restaurant, Dock Rd Thursday, 11.00am Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop, Cornstore Mall Thursday, 2.00pm Galway University Hospital, Newcastle Rd Thursday, 4.00pm Tigh Neachtain, Cross Street Friday, 12.00pm McDonagh’s Fish & Chip Shop, Quay Street Friday, 2.00pm Galway City Library, St Augustine St. Friday, 4.00pm The Quays, Quay St.

54

Exhibitions Placing the Word

Illustrators Ireland

Venue:

Black Gate Cultural Centre, 14 Francis St.

Galway Arts Centre

Date:

Tuesday 25 April (Exhibition Opening)

23 – 30 April 2017

Time: 7.00pm

Monday – Saturday 10am – 5.30pm, Sunday 12pm – 5.30pm

Price: Free

Without the Words is an exhibition of over 50 works inspired by a line from Emily Dickinson’s well loved poem, Hope is the Thing with Feathers as well as Laureate na nÓg PJ Lynch’s “The Big Picture”.

While Dickinson reminds her readers to always have hope, Lynch promotes visual storytelling and the power of imagination.

Imagination and hope make a powerful combination. In most circumstances an illustrator will respond to a brief which is communicated either through written or spoken word.

Illustrators Ireland tell their visual stories, putting the pictures first - without the words. These stories stimulate the imagination to respond by creating an individual narrative, not a prescribed story.

Illustrators Ireland is a non-profit organisation that supports the development of illustration in Ireland by showcasing the work of our members and fostering links with similar organisations at home and abroad. As a professional organisation we aim to raise the profile of Irish illustration as a dynamic and cutting edge art form, as well as promoting the work and skills of our individual members. www.illustratorsireland.com www.childrenslaureate.ie www.galwayartscentre.ie

Galway 4040: Portraits of Writers and Others Kenny’s Bookshop will be holding a portrait exhibition by John Banahan entitled Galway 4040: Portraits of Writers and Others during the week of the festival.

www.cuirt.ie

Without the Words

Placing the Word Paintings and prints by Dolores Lyne and Margaret Irwin This exhibition explores the shared space between words and land, with both artists responding to land and seascapes stretching from the south coast of Ireland to Inishbofin Island. These are the same spaces and places that have inspired writers such as Theo Dorgan, Paddy Bushe, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Bernard Ó Donoghue, Ellen Cranitch, Eileen Sheehan and Richard Murphy. Placing the Word tucks the words and images together in a most convivial space, making good bedfellows in the Black Gate Cultural Centre.

Followed by a reading by Eileen Sheehan.

Dolores Lyne was born in Killarney and is a graduate of fine art from Waterford Institute of Technology. She has exhibited widely and is now settled in Connemara, with work in several national collections including the Arts Council of Ireland and OPW. The current show is an extension of her interest in collaborating with writers.

Her love of remote places is evident in her paintings. She also studied at the Motley Theatre design course in Drury Lane, and holds an Irish Times award for set design.

Born in India of Irish parents, Margaret Irwin is a printmaker and painter with roots in Roscommon, who has been living and working in Connemara since 1991.

She trained in Dublin and Paris. Her work is held in both public and private collections. In 2008, she received a “Lifetime Achievement Award” from the County Galway Arts Office. Much of Margaret’s imagery is drawn from the prehistorical and medieval sites in Connemara including a body of work sourced on High Island.

Inishbofin Island also features.

Kenny’s Bookshop, Liosban Business Park, Tuam Rd, Galway City, Co. Galway 55

Cúirt International Festival of Literature

Library Events Reading & Discussion with Michael Winter Venue

Ballybane Library

Date:

Wednesday 26 April

Time: 11.00am Price: Free Writer Michael Winter will give a short reading from Into the Blizzard: Walking the fields of the Newfoundland Dead. Part unconventional history, part memoirtravelogue, part philosophical inquiry, Michael Winter uniquely captures the extraordinary lives and landscapes, both in Europe and at home, scarred by a war that is just now disappearing from living memory.

Michael Winter will read with Merlin Coverley in the Town Hall Theatre on Thursday, 27 April at 1.00pm. For more information see page 19.

To book email: karen@cuirt.ie

56

Kitchen Reading in association with Tuam Library Date

Wednesday 26 April

Time 12.00pm Price Free To host a kitchen reading in your home with writers Alan McMonagle and Kerrie O’Brien, please apply to tuam@ galwaylibrary.ie, stating why you want to host a kitchen reading. The Deadline for applications is Friday, 07 April at 5.00pm.

This is a free event and the audience is limited to those invited by the host.

Kerrie O’Brien will read with David Butler and Yrsa DaleyWard in the Town Hall Theatre on Wednesday, 26 April at 6.30pm. For more information see page 16.

Alan McMonagle will read on the Début Panel in the Town Hall Theatre on Friday, 28 April at 3.00pm. For more information see page 29.

Kitchen Reading in association with Galway City Library

Date

Date

Wednesday 26 April

www.cuirt.ie

Kitchen Reading in association with Ballinasloe Library

Friday 28 April

Time 12.00pm

Time 12.00pm

Price Free

Price Free

To host a kitchen reading in your home with writers Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan and Pete Mullineaux, please apply to ballinasloe@galwaylibrary.ie, stating why you want to host a kitchen reading. The Deadline for applications is Friday, 07 April at 5.00pm.

This is a free event and the audience is limited to those invited by the host.

To host a kitchen reading in your home with writers Damon Galgut, Theresa Muñoz and Jacob Polley, please apply to Karen@cuirt.ie, stating why you want to host a kitchen reading. The Deadline for applications is Friday, 07 April at 5.00pm.

This is a free event and the audience is limited to those invited by the host.

Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan will read with Jami Attenberg and Sinéad Gleeson in the Town Hall Theatre on Thursday, 27 April at 6.30pm. For more information see page 21.

Damon Galgut will read with Eimear McBride in the Town Hall Theatre on Friday, 28 April at 8.30pm. For more information see page 31.

Pete Mullineaux will read with William Wall and Mark Wagenaar in the Town Hall Theatre on Friday, 28 April at 1.00pm. For more information see page 28.

Theresa Muñoz and Jacob Polley will read with Stephen Burt in An Taibhdhearc on Saturday, 29 April at 6.30pm.

For more information see page 41.

A 20 minute pop-up event will take place in Galway City Library, St Augustine Street with Miquel Barceló & Mary O’Malley on Friday, 28 April at 2.00pm.

57

Cúirt International Festival of Literature

Plaque Unveilings For many years now Cúirt, in conjunction with Kenny’s Bookshop and Galway City Council, has unveiled plaques around Galway.

These plaques are all linked to writing about Galway and are cast onto bronze or carved into stone, providing a literary trail for visitors and locals.

This year two plaques will be unveiled: Tuesday April 25th at 4 pm.

Corner of Grattan Road and the new prom.

The One-Armed Crucifixion by Paul Durcan, with an illustration by John Behan.

Wednesday April 26th at 1pm.

Junction of Threadneedle Road and the prom.

Poetry Ireland & Cúirt Bursary Once again, Poetry Ireland and Cúirt are delighted to offer an emerging younger poet the opportunity to visit the festival and immerse themselves in the poetry programme.

The bursary includes tickets to all events and workshops, accommodation for 5 nights, travel costs to Galway and a per diem. Applications are invited from those aged 35 or under who are based on the island of Ireland.

To apply please send a short expression of interest statement (no more than a page), outlining why your work would benefit from this support to info@poetryireland.ie by 5.00pm on Friday 31 March.

For full details please see www.poetryireland.ie or www.cuirt.ie.

58

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Cúirt International Festival of Literature

Sun 23 April

Mon 24 April

Tue 25 April

Wed 26 April

Official Opening Hotel Meyrick / 7.00pm

Cúirt Labs as Gaeilge Galway Arts Centre / 9.30am-12.45pm

Cúirt Labs Junior Galway Arts Centre / 9.30am-12.30pm

Cúirt Labs Junior Galway Arts Centre / 9.30am-12.30pm

Cúirt Labs post-primary Galway Arts Centre / 1.00pm

Found in Translation: Legacy of Michel Déon NUI Galway / 9.30am

Pop-up Literature Hewlett Packard Enterprise / 11.00am

Anne Kennedy Writers’ Salon Nun’s Island Theatre / 2.00pm

Pop-up Literature Bell, Book and Candle / 11.00am

Reading & Discussion with Michael Winter Ballybane Library / 11.00am

In Person: World Poets Nun’s Island Theatre / 5.30pm

Book Launch: Horseman, Pass by!

by Michel Déon Aula Maxima, NUI Galway / 2.00pm

Kitchen Reading with Alan McMonagle & Kerrie O’Brien Tuam / 12.00pm

Book Launch: Song of Songs: 2.0 by Kevin Higgins The House Hotel / 7.30pm

Pop-up Literature The Dough Bros / 3.00pm

Kitchen Reading with Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan & Pete Mullineaux Ballinasloe / 12.00pm

Seisiún na Cúirte Seán Tyrrell The Crane Bar / 8.00pm

Film: The Purple Taxi An Taibhdhearc / 4.00pm

Little John Nee Plaque Unveiling Threadneedle Road / 1.00pm

Fruition by Fregoli Nun’s Island Theatre / 8.30pm

Pop-up Literature Sonny Molloy’s / 4.00pm

Pop-up Literature Sheridans Cheesemongers / 3.00pm

Paul Durcan Plaque Unveiling Grattan Road / 4.00pm

Cúirt/ Over the Edge New Writing Showcase Town Hall Theatre / 3.00pm

Book Launch: Rise by Elaine Feeney Bite Club / 6.00pm

Joyce’s letters to Nora Tigh Nora, Cross Street / 3.00pm

Placing the Word Exhibition Black Gate Cultural Centre / 7.00pm

Pop-up Literature Dock 1 Seafood Bar & Restaurant / 4.00pm

Book Launch Calasanctius College, Oranmore / 7.00pm

Launch: ROPES Town Hall Theatre / 5.00pm

The Sacrificial Wind Town Hall Studio / 8.00pm

Persona Nun’s Island Theatre / 6.00pm

Frédéric Vitoux An Taibhdhearc / 8.00pm

David Butler, Yrsa Daley-Ward & Kerrie O’Brien Town Hall Theatre / 6.30pm

Consensual Nun’s Island Theatre / 8.00pm

The Sacrificial Wind Town Hall Studio / 8.00pm

.

Cúirt Day by Day

Consensual Nun’s Island Theatre / 8.00pm Martina Evans, Vona Groarke & Mary O’Malley Town Hall Theatre / 8.30pm

Fri 28 April

Sat 29 April

Sun 30 April

Cúirt Labs Galway Arts Centre / 9.30am-12.30pm

Cúirt Labs Senior Galway Arts Centre / 9.30am-12.30pm

Cúirt Labs 12-18 yrs Galway Arts Centre / 9.30am-4.30pm

Crime Workshop: Sophie Hannah Hotel Meyrick / 11.00am

Poetry workshop: Martina Evans Hotel Meyrick / 10.00am

Fiction Workshop: Jami Attenberg Hotel Meyrick / 10.00am

Claire-Louise Bennett & Mia Gallagher Town Hall Theatre / 12.00pm

Writing for YA Workshop: Claire Hennessy Hotel Meyrick / 11.00am

Pop-up Literature Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop / 11.00am

Pop-up Literature McDonagh’s Fish & Chip shop / 12.00pm

Songs from a room: My Fellow Sponges The King’s Head / 1.00pm

Bardic Brunch The King’s Head / 12.00pm

Lindsay J. Sedgwick on Writing for TV & Film GMIT CCAM / 12.30pm

Launch: Poems for Patience, Yrsa Daley Ward University College Hospital / 11.00am

An Focal: Grá An Taibhdhearc / 2.00pm

Sara Baume, Jenni Fagan & Paul Kingsnorth Nun’s Island Theatre / 2.00pm

Cúirt Labs post-primary Galway Arts Centre / 1.00pm

Kitchen Reading: Damon Galgut, Theresa Muñoz & Jacob Polley Galway City / 12.00pm

Dermot Healy: Writing The Sky Town Hall Theatre / 2.00pm

Fermata Nun’s Island Theatre / 4.00pm

Songs from a room: Sive The King’s Head / 1.00pm

Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan, writing on Food GMIT Library, Old Dublin Road / 1.00pm

Claire Hennessy, Shirley Anne McMillan & Dave Rudden Nun’s Island Theatre / 4.00pm

Far From Literature We Were Reared Róisín Dubh / 8.00pm

Merlin Coverley & Michael Winter Town Hall Theatre / 1.00pm

Song from a room: Lasairfhíona Ní Chonaola The King’s Head / 1.00pm

Jay Griffiths, Richard Hamblyn & Gaia Vince An Taibhdhearc / 4.30pm

Evening with William McCarthy Loam / 8.00pm

Screenwriting workshop: Lyndsay Sedgwick GMIT CCAM / 1.30pm

Pete Mullineaux, Mark Wagenaar & William Wall Town Hall Theatre / 1.00pm

An Interview with Rick O’Shea Town Hall Theatre / 5.00pm

Pop-up Literature Galway University Hospital / 2.00pm

Pop-up Literature Galway City Library / 2.00pm

City Lit Talks Back Róisín Dubh / 6.00pm

Joyce’s letters to Nora Tigh Nora, Cross Street / 3.00pm

Debut Panel Town Hall Theatre / 3.00pm

Sophie Hannah & Denise Mina Town Hall Theatre / 6.30pm

Pop-up Literature Tigh Neachtain / 4.00pm

Joyce’s letters to Nora Tigh Nora, Cross Street / 3.00pm

Abridged An Taibhdhearc / 6.30pm

Oisín Fagan & Ross Raisin Galway Arts Centre / 5.00

Pop-up Literature The Quay’s Pub / 4.00pm

Consensual Nun’s Island Theatre / 8.00pm

Persona Nun’s Island Theatre / 6.00pm

Digital Literature and Art: Interface as Creative Device Galway Arts Centre / 5.00pm

Simon Armitage & Terrance Hayes Town Hall Theatre / 8.30pm

Sports Writing Workshop: Gerard Siggins Hotel Meyrick / 6.00pm

Persona Nun’s Island Theatre / 6.00pm

Festival Club Hotel Meyrick / 10.00pm

Jami Attenberg, Sinéad Gleeson & Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan Town Hall Theatre / 6.30pm

AL Kennedy & Conor O’Callaghan Town Hall Theatre / 6.30pm

Spoken Word Platform The King’s Head / 6.30pm

The Sacrificial Wind Town Hall Studio / 8.00pm

Ó Íochtar Mara – Saothar Chaitlín Maude Ionad Cultúrtha an Phiarsaigh / 7.00pm

Consensual Nun’s Island Theatre / 8.00pm

The Sacrificial Wind Town Hall Studio / 8.00pm

Damon Galgut & Eimear McBride Town Hall Theatre / 8.30pm

Consensual Nun’s Island Theatre / 8.00pm

Elaine Feeney & Josh Idehen Róisín Dubh / 10.00pm

Booking Information Book online at: www.cuirt.ie or www.tht.ie

Box Office

Town Hall Theatre, Courthouse Square Galway, Ireland 00353 (0) 91 569777

www.cuirt.ie

Thu 27 April

Galway Arts Centre

2

Nun’s Island Theatre

3

An Taibhdhearc

4

Town Hall Theatre

5

The King’s Head

6

University College Hospital

7

NUI Galway

8

The Crane

9

The House Hotel

10

Ionad Cultúir an Phiarsaigh, Rosmuc

11

Róisín Dubh

12

Cluain Mhuire, GMIT

13

GMIT Dublin Road

14

Loam, Fairgreen Road

15

Bite Club

16

7

8

8

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The Dough Bros, Upper Abbeygate Street

2

Sonny Molloy’s, High Street

3

Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Ballybrit Business Park

4

Sheridans Cheesemongers, Church Yard St.

5

Dock 1 Seafood Bar & Restaurant, Dock Road

6

Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop, Cornstore Mall

7

Galway University Hospital, Newcastle Road

8

Tigh Neachtain, Cross Street

9

McDonagh’s Fish & Chip Shop, Quay Street

10

Galway City Library, St Augustine St.

11

The Quays, Quay St.

12

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Cúirt International Festival of Literature

Cúirt Staff Producer: Páraic Breathnach Programmer: Maeve Mulrennan Manager: Tara O’Connor Programme Coordinator: Karen Arnold Operations Manager: Fiona Hession Publicist: Heather Mackey Social Media Manager: Jill Murray Production Manager: Derval Byrne Volunteer Coordinator: Siobhán Singleton Accounts: Sinéad Wynne Cúirt Labs: Órla O’Donoghue Photographer: Boyd Challenger Cúirt Website: Heaventree Design Graphic Design: Pure Designs Cover Design: Marielle MacLeman Production Crew: Richard Brennan, Denis Browne, Pat Coleman, Anthony Eggitt, Paul Flaherty, David Joyce Box Office: Seóna Ní Chonghaile (Manager), Eoin Butler Thornton, Marie Folan, Jack Gibbons, Conor Kennedy Burke, Annie McMahon, Emer McMahon, Jill Murray, Aoife Noone, Finian O’Gorman, Seóna Tully Galway Arts Centre: Judith Bernhardt, Ailbhe Feeney, Andrew Flynn, Mattie Hynes, Victoria Juhasz, Clíona Ryan, Barbara Wojtyra, Eoghain Wynne Cúirt Reading Panel: Karen Arnold, Neil Astley, Derval Byrne, James C. Harrold, Gregory McCartney, David Muñoz Galway Arts Centre Board of Directors: Craig Steven (Chair), Vinny Browne, Michael Burke, Siobhán Calpin, Gerard Hanberry, Louise Manifold, Lillis O’Laoire, Imelda Tierney

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Cúirt would like to thank the following people for their help and support: The Arts Council of Ireland, Galway City Council, Galway County Council, the board of Galway Arts Centre, the staff of the Town Hall Theatre, the staff of An Taibhdhearc, the staff of Charlie Byrne’s bookshop, and this year’s reading panel.

Peter Rabbitt, Siobhán Arkins, Emer Donoghue, Elizebeth Keane, Bernie Kelly, Kieran Shaughnessy, Josephine Vahey, and the staff of Galway city and county libraries.

Jane Conroy and Catherine Gagneux with the support of the French Embassy in Ireland and NUI Galway for programming events paying tribute to Michel Déon on Tuesday, 25 April.

Majella Ní Chríocháin and all at Oireachtas na Gaeilge for collaborating with Cúirt on this year’s Irish language programme.

We would also like to thank the International Festival of Authors and the Canadian Embassy, the American Embassy in Ireland, James C. Harrold, Margaret Flannery, Biggley Byrne, Rob Gaughan, Jimmy McGuire, Jim Fennell, Chris Coughlan, John Mannion, Paul Grealish, Ollie Jennings, our interns and our volunteers.

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Business Partners

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