Books

Dracula gets his day in the sun

Poets shortlisted for TS Eliot and Warwick Prizes; Dublin Book Festival highlights; Something Wicked

Macnas will parade Memory Song through Dublin’s Northside as part of the Bram Stoker Festival

Martin Doyle's face
Martin Doyle
Sat Oct 21 2017 - 06:00

Dracula is getting his day in the sun, so to speak, as the Bram Stoker Festival returns with four days of living stories and four nights of deadly adventures from October 27th to 30th. Highlights including Al Porter's Camp Dracula comedy show; the Macnas parade Memory Song through the Northside; and Gravediggers & Resurrectionists at Glasnevin Cemetery, the world premiere of dance spectacle Whitby with Colin Dunne, Turning Vampire with Lisa Hannigan, Niamh Farrell, Saint Sister and more. bramstokerfestival.com

Tara Bergin's The Tragic Death of Eleanor Marx (Carcanet) and Leontia Flynn's The Radio (Cape Poetry) have been shortlisted for the £25,000 TS Eliot Prize. The 10 shortlisted poets each receive £1,500. The winner will be announced on January 15th.

The Coast Road by Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh, translated by 13 Irish poets and published by Gallery Press, has been shortlisted for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation, a new prize that aims to address the gender imbalance in translated literature and to increase the number of international women's voices accessible by a British and Irish readership. Others on the six-strong shortlist include Swallowing Mercury by Wioletta Greg and Second-hand Time by Svetlana Alexievich. The winner will be announced on November 15th.

Speaking of Gallery, you spend ages waiting for one of their collections, then three come along at once. Foreign News (bilingual) by Aifric MacAodha / David Wheatley; Stay by Andrew Jamison; and Live Streaming by Conor O'Callaghan are to be launched on Thursday, October 26th, at 7pm, at Poetry Ireland, 11 Parnell Square East, Dublin.

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John Boyne's The Heart's Invisible Furies (Transworld) has been optioned for TV by Scott Free Productions.

Dublin Book Festival, which runs from November 2nd-9th, has announcesd its 2017 programme. Now in its 11th year, highlights include Irish Times columnist Fintan O'Toole discussing his new book, Judging Shaw, with Sean Rocks; RTÉ's Bryan Dobson and Caitríona Perry discusing her new book, In America: Tales from Trump Country; Catherine Dunne in conversation with Roddy Doyle; The Stinging Fly's Declan Meade and Irish Times literary correspondent Eileen Battersby discussing her novel Teethmarks on My Tongue; Michael O'Loughlin and Dermot Bolger in conversation; and The Dublin Review's Brendan Barrington discusses the New Autobiography with three writers at the start of their careers: Kevin Breathnach, Niamh Campbell and Sinéad Gleeson. Almost all events are free and mostwill take place in Smock Alley Theatre, Temple Bar. dublinbookfestival.com

Something Wicked, Malahide's crime writing festival, returns on Saturday, October 28th, with a panel of bestselling historical crime authors, Michael Russell (City of Darkness), Joe Joyce (Echowave) and Andrew Hughes (The Coroners Daughter), hosted by author Sam Blake (Little Bones). There will also be workshops for adultsin forensics, cyber crime and criminal psychology and for kids aged 8 and 9 + hosted by prizewinning author Erika McGann (The Demon Notebook) and Matt Griffin (A Cage of Roots, Storm Weaver and The Spiral Path). somethingwicked.eu

Irish author and playwright Jaki McCarrick is having a moment overseas. Her play, Belfast Girls, about five young women who flee the Famine, opens at the Carnegie Stage in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on October 25th and will run for a month at Shaking the Tree Theatre, Portland, Oregon, from November 17th. This will be the fifth international production of this all-female play, Next year, it will open in Kansas and premiere in Australia. McCarrick also has a reading of her new play Bohemians in the Canal Café Theatre in London on November 4th and is working on an all-female version of her award-winning play, Leopoldville, which will be staged in New York next year.

Fiona Murphy, currently publicity director at Penguin Random House Ireland, is joining Transworld/Doubleday Ireland from January 1st as editorial director. Murphy moved back to Ireland in February last year and was named a Rising Star by the Bookseller this year. Eoin McHugh left Transworld Ireland earlier this year and is now followed by Brian Langan, who joined as editor in 2010 and helped establish Donal Ryan as one of the key writers of his generation and launch Doubleday Ireland as a significant new imprint of Irish literary fiction. He also edited Colm O'Regan's bestselling Irish Mammy series as well as last year's comic hit, Bolloxology.