Crime gang of journalists on the literary rampage
What is it about Irish journalists that makes them turn to crime? That’s the question that springs to mind at a time when Gene Kerrigan (below) has again been shortlisted for a Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger award, the Irish Times contributor John Connolly is publishing his latest Charlie Parker thriller, and Conor Brady, a former editor of The Irish Times, is set to read at the Mountains to Sea literary festival in Dún Laoghaire with his fellow crime-writing journalist Michael Clifford.
Kerrigan’s novel The Rage, described as “a suspense-driven storm of violence set in the backstreets of Dublin”, is his second to make the Gold Dagger shortlist, following Dark Times in the City in 2009. The only Irish nominee, Kerrigan stands to win £2,500 (€3,160) if The Rage can see off the three other books on the shortlist: Vengeance in Mind, by NJ Cooper; The Flight, by MR Hall; and Bereft, by Chris Womersley.
The four titles will feature in a six-week crime season on ITV3, including the Crime Connections documentary series that starts next Friday. The Gold Dagger winner will be announced in London in October.
Like Kerrigan, John Connolly is by now a seasoned crime writer; his 11th novel, The Wrath of Angels, will be reviewed in these pages soon. New to the fiction field, though, are Conor Brady, Connolly’s former Irish Times boss, and the reporter Michael Clifford, both of whom will read from their debut novels in Dún Laoghaire’s Pavilion Theatre on Friday at 6.30pm. Brady’s A June of Ordinary Murders is set in Dublin in 1887 at the time of the Land War, while Clifford’s Ghost Town is a contemporary tale of betrayal.
"There's a century and a quarter between the two stories, but there is a remarkable continuity in their common themes of greed, betrayal and corruption," says Brady. "Who says that old values don't endure in Ireland?" Tickets to the reading cost €10; see mountainstosea.ie.
Tweeters in full Bloom after Coelho’s comments
“Yes, stately plump Buck Mulligan’s heart was going mad. Love loves to love moving hams. Let my country die for me. Me. And me now. yes I said yes I will Yes.” Tweet-length versions of Joyce’s Ulysses continue to arrive (including that one by Dylan Brennan), in response to the Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho’s comment that Ireland’s first modernist masterpiece is all style and hardly any content. And although some of them are obscure, and tell us little about the events of Bloom’s day, their language leaves no doubt about which book inspired them, as in this from Donal Moloney: “Stately-rumped Meddublin immazes Telesteve to rudey-poppy Puckoldysses lustgrieving through Hades and gorgonzola; Loom-Bloom yea-blazes yes.”
20 years of ‘Windows’ into world of poetry
The latest issue of the poetry magazine Windows, published in Co Cavan and now in its 20th year, will be celebrated at a free reading next Friday at 6.30pm at the Irish Writers' Centre in Dublin. Edited by Heather Brett and Noel Monahan, the publication is stylishly illustrated and has a strong line-up of contributors. Among those reading at the launch will be Maurice Harmon, Alan Jude Moore, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin and Gerard Smyth; see writerscentre.ie.
Prized troubadours will get their rewards
A first prize of £2,500 (€3,160) (plus 22 runners-up prizes) means the Troubadour poetry award is a proposition to take seriously. The closing date is October 15th, so there is still plenty of time to polish a potentially winning poem. The judges are Jane Draycott and Cork-born Bernard Donoghue, and winners will be invited to read in London in November; coffeehousepoetry.org/prizes.
