Loose Leaves

Book-lovers defy forecast for summer festivals

With this year’s monsoon persisting in its relentless barrage, and 50 shades of grey dominating the climatic landscape as well as the literary one, it is heartening to see the determination of writers and book-lovers not to submit entirely, continuing instead to huddle together to read and listen at the various “summer” festivals.

Tonight, for example, the literary strand of Boyle Arts Festival, in Co Roscommon, will see an appearance by Kevin Barry, who earlier this year won the £30,000 Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Prize, the world’s largest award for a single story. Barry, whose most recent story collection, Dark Lies the Island, was published earlier this year, will read at 6pm in King House in Boyle; tickets cost €5.

Meanwhile, the Ireland professor of poetry, Harry Clifton (below), will be this Monday's guest poet at the free weekly event Ó Bhéal, in the Long Valley pub, on Winthrop Street in Cork. Clifton's new collection, The Winter Sleep of Captain Lemass, has just been published by Bloodaxe/Wake Forest University Press. Ó Bhéal begins at 9pm; as well as Clifton's reading, there will be the usual poetry challenge and open-mic session; obheal.ie.

Farther west in Co Cork, next weekend’s Liss Ard festival, in Skibbereen, will also have a literary strand, with readings by Paul Howard (author of Triggs: The Autobiography of Roy Keane’s Dog), Paul Murray (Skippy Dies), the poet Joe Dunthorne, and the musician and memoirist Nile Rodgers, of Chic.

Day tickets to Liss Ard cost €39.50; see lissardfestival.com.

Boyne book launch at Dublin’s Gutter Bookshop

Another welcoming venue for a readers’ huddle is the Gutter Bookshop, on Cow’s Lane in Dublin, where, next Thursday, John Boyne, author of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, will be launching his new children’s book, The Terrible Thing That Happened to Barnaby Brocket. The book, about a boy who horrifies his parents by defying the laws of gravity, is illustrated by Oliver Jeffers, whose unmistakable work includes The Incredible Book Eating Boy. The free event begins at 6.30pm.

Final countdown for Over the Edge competition

There are 11 days left for story writers or poets to enter this year's Over the Edge New Writer of the Year competition, which carries prizes of €300 in each of the two categories, plus an extra €400 for the overall winner. As well as receiving the cash prize, the overall winner will be invited to read at an event in Galway City Library this winter and will have his or her work considered for publication by Salmon Poetry or Doire Press. See overtheedgeliteraryevents. blogspot.com.

Booker longlist: the Dublin connection

Even though no Irish authors are on the longlist for the Man Booker Prize, announced this week, at least one of the writers has strong Irish connections, writes Davin O’Dwyer. Sam Thompson, whose novel Communion Town is one of four debuts to make the list, is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin. He earned a first-class degree in English in 2001, then stayed on to complete a master’s degree before doing a PhD at Oxford University.

Thompson described himself as “thrilled and dumbfounded” about his first book making the longlist.

Communion Town is an ambitious portrait of a city in 10 stories, so perhaps readers can try to detect hints of Dublin in the streets of Thompson’s fictional city.