Loose Leaves

Celebrating Myles with your only man

Mylesday, "a celebration in Guinness" of Flann O'Brien, takes place at the Palace Bar on Fleet Street in Dublin next Friday afternoon. The gathering is one of the first events commemorating the centenary this year of the late writer and Irish Timescolumnist. A host more are to follow.

Mylesday’s organisers have issued an invitation to the Plain People of Ireland, whoever they are, to come along and contribute pieces from the works of Myles.

There will also be a two-day conference at Trinity College Dublin in October (mentioned on page 11 below Keith Hopper's review of " Is It About a Bicycle?": Flann O'Brien in the Twenty-first Century. And the writer's alma mater, University College Dublin, plans to mark the centenary on the date of his birth, October 5th, at Newman House on St Stephen's Green. The focus of one of the UCD talks will be the significance of the university's old physics theatre as a location in At Swim-Two-Birds.

Abroad, 100 Myles: The International Flann O'Brien Centenary Conferenceruns from July 24th to 27th in Vienna. The keynote address there will be given by Anthony Cronin, author of No Laughing Matter: The Life and Timesof Flann O'Brien. Cronin, with O'Brien, was among the group famously photographed on Sandymount Strand at the first Bloomsday celebration, in 1954. Other conference participants include the Irish TimesIrishman's Diarist Frank McNally, Keith Hopper and Kurt Palm, director of the film of At-Swim-Two-Birds. The English department at the University of Vienna, which is organising the event with the Irish Embassy, has an established Irish-studies component.

One of the conference's aims is to look at how the writer's legacy has been shaped in comparison with those of Joyce and Beckett. That O'Brien's work continues to be valued, say the organisers, is evident in its influence on contemporary texts, including David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, Paul Auster's Oracle Night, Mark Z Danielewski's House of Leaves, Italo Calvino's If on a Winters Night a Travellerand Patrick McGinley's The Devil's Diary. In light of all this "the commonly held view of O'Nolan as a purely local writer is in desperate need of updating", add organisers Werner Huber, Paul Fagan and Ruben Borg, who hope their event will spearhead "a more integrated international community dedicated to this 'cult' author".

Irish women writers gather at Eason

Celebrating Irish women fiction writers is the theme of a public event at the Eason bookstore on O'Connell Street in Dublin on Thursday at 7.30pm. Headlined by Patricia Scanlan, whose book Love and Marriageis just out from Transworld Ireland, the roll-call for the evening includes Cecelia Ahern, Sheila O'Flanagan, Claudia Carroll, Melissa Hill, Monica McInerney, Niamh O'Connor, Sarah Webb, Alex Barclay, Kate Thompson, Claire Dowling, Liz Lyons, Marita Conlon-McKenna, Ciara Geraghty, Catherine Dunne and Alison Walsh. The event is free, but, with space for only 150 people, tickets must be booked in advance on 01-8583800.

Raising the profile of the history men and women

If you’re writing in a specialised genre it’s probably a good idea to be part of a community of like-minded scribes; such thinking lay behind the formation last autumn of the Historical Writers Association (HWA).

The founders felt they needed something similiar to the Crime Writers’ Association, an organisation that could support its members and raise the profile of historical writing. Now the HWA is planning a festival of historical literature, to be run in conjunction with English Heritage’s Festival of History on July 16th and 17th.

The HWA embraces all forms of historical writing – fiction and non-fiction – and ultimately will be looking for sponsors for prizes.

So what does the HWA deem to be historical? “For the avoidance of doubt, historical shall be defined as being beyond 35 years from the point of application,” the association says.

For more, see thehwa.co.uk.