Dublin's designation as a Unesco City of Literature recognises the city's rich tradition of writers and writing
Dublin writers are a formidable tribe, writes EILEEN BATTERSBY Literary Correspondent, and the city's designation as a Unesco City of Literature recognises yet again the crucial role this tribe has played in building the capital
CULTURE SHOCK: DUBLIN'S DESIGNATION as a Unesco City of Literature raises an obvious question. Beyond the accidents of birth, is there really a profound connection between writers and a city? One can say that a cityscape has a big impact on the writer who inhabits it - sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't. James Joyce is obsessively interested in the streets of the city; WB Yeats rarely notices them.
Vampires, ghouls and ghosts have been monopolising popular culture of late, but it was three novelists from Dublin who helped bring Gothic fiction into the mainstream, writes Arminta Wallace
FINTAN O’TOOLE A complex relationship with Dublin is the nexus that connects both Swift and Sheridan
MARY O’MALLEY Now that Dublin is a city of literature, it needs to recognise the work of those writing in Irish alongside our other great writers
FRANK McNALLY When his first novel received praise from James Joyce, success seemed assured, but while this didn’t come in his lifetime, the work of Flann O’Brien is surfacing again
MAEVE BINCHY Once we only knew two famous women writers in Dublin, but since then a whole generation of women have found a voice
Few poets have engaged so convincingly with the complexity of city life as Paula Meehan, writes Pat Boran
Despite living far from Ireland, writes Terence Killeen, Joyce and Beckett are two writers whose work never managed to escape Dublin
There are children’s novels dealing with every flashpoint in Irish history but more recently, children’s fiction is moving away from that and dealing with topics and themes that were previously overlooked, writes Robert Dunbar
Dublin echoes through the work of Austin Clarke and Thomas Kinsella, confirming their sense of place and identity
Gerald Dawe reflects on poets’ relationships between their city life and their rural origins
The past decade has seen an explosion in Dublin-set crime writing. Declan Burke asks why it took so long to grab our attention
There is no area of Dublin unsung by some writer’s words, and any walk through the city will be spent in the company of literary phantoms
Maeve Brennan (1916-1993) left Dublin for New York in her teens, but spent the rest of her often lonely life recapturing her childhood city in a series of masterfully executed stories
SARA KEATING Seán O’Casey’s plays led Irish drama away from rural life and into the city. It was a move that would resonate with future playwrights
William Butler Yeats’s poetry was steeped in the lore and landscape of the west of Ireland but the civic and artistic life of Dublin was just as important to his work, writes P J Matthews
WHILE OUR capital city has only recently been named a Unesco City of Literature, it has long held a valid claim to the title.
JOSEPH O’CONNOR From Swift to The Radiators From Space, from Molly Malone to the Celtic Tiger, Dublin’s identity has always depended on the power and wit of its strange fictionsADVERTISEMENT
Acknowledgements
Particular recognition should be given to those who compiled and presented the application that won Dublin its title as Unesco City of Literature:
Jane Alger , Deirdre Ellis King , Alastair Smeaton and Margaret Hayes of Dublin City Libraries,
Joseph Woods , director of Poetry Ireland,
Sarah Bannon of the Arts Council
and publisher and editor, Alan Hayes of Arlen House.
