Arts Council Literary Stage

Following on from the success of the Arts Council Words and Music Stage, this year's programme is curated by writer-in-residence Dermot Bolger.

There will be conversations, interviews, debates and more with some of Ireland's finest writers and a few from beyond our shores too. Themes will include artistic and ethnic exile, the work of Samuel Beckett; love and sex; and the language of photography with John Minihan, celebrated photographer of Samuel Beckett, Lady Diana Spencer and Francis Bacon.

*In addition to the following programme, the Lyric Series will comprise occasional appearances between scheduled shows by musicians, songwriters, actors and others reading the words that have most inspired them in their work. Details will be posted on the blackboard outside the venue.*

Saturday September 5th

• 12pm - 12.30pm Dermot Bolger & Judith Mok
• 12.30pm - 1pm New Voices. Two Dublins: Mia Gallagher & Colm Keegan
• 1pm - 1.30pm George Seremba: Come Good Rain.
• 1.45 - 2.30pm Forgery & Invention: The Politics of Writing: Michael O'Loughlin, Kevin Power, Helena Mulkerns in conversation with Dermot Bolger.
• 2.30 - 3pm Brian Keenan reads from An Evil Cradling.
• 3pm - 3.30pm Ed O'Loughlin reads from his Man Booker Prize-longlisted novel Untrue and Not Unkind.
• 3.30pm - 4.15pm Roddy Doyle
• 4.15pm - 5pm Foreign Affairs: Channel 4's Jon Snow interviews Brian Keenan, George Seremba, Ed O’Loughlin & Helena Mulkerns about the perception of foreign conflict.
• 5pm - 5.45pm Rita Ann Higgins
• 5.45 pm - 6.30pm John Minihan: Photographing Beckett. Slide show and talk.
• 6.30 - 8pm Donal O'Kelly: The Cambria - A stunning re-enactment of the voyage of the trans-Atlantic paddle-steamer, The Cambria, from Boston to Ireland in 1845, carrying the escaped slave, Frederick Douglass.

Sunday September 6th

• 12pm - 12.30pm The Poetry Divas: Kate Dempsey and Barbara Smith. Expect sequins, sparkles, tiaras and willies plentifully mixed among metaphors, similes and sonnets.
• 12.30pm - 1pm Poetry Reading: Theo Dorgan.
• 1pm - 1.30pm New Irish Voices: Eileen Casey & Siobhan Daffy.
• 1.30pm - 2.15pm Writing in the Recession: How & How Not to Get Published. Dermot Bolger with Antony Farrell of Lilliput Press, Claire Kilroy, Declan Lynch and Theo Dorgan.
• 2.15pm - 2.45pm Declan Lynch reads from The Rooms and Free Money.
• 2.45pm - 3.30pm A reading by Man Booker Prize-winner John Banville.
• 3.30pm - 4.15pm Diarmaid Ferriter: Occasions of Sin: Sex and Society in Modern Ireland . In conversation with Theo Dorgan.
• 4.15pm - 4.45pm Claire Kilroy reads from All Names Have Been Changed.
• 4.45pm - 5pm Dermot Bolger & Stephen James Smith.
• 5pm - 5.30pm Irvine Welsh: A reading by the author of Transpotting and Reheated Cabbage.
• 5.30pm - 6pm Declan Kiberd: Reads from Ulysses & Us: The Art of Everyday Living.
• 6.15pm - 7.30pm Donal O'Kelly: Jimmy Joyced. Joyce's Dublin through the eyes of JJ Staines, a stallholder in Dublin's Rathmines Market with a dangerous obsession for all things Joycean.

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