Talking 'bout your generation?
What constitutes a generation? Is it just being in the same age bracket – or having common values or shared experiences? That's the starting point for the 12th Franco-Irish Literary Festival in Dublin next month. Running from April 8th to 10th, events take place at Dublin Castle and the Alliance Française.
The Irish line-up includes John Banville, Carlo Gébler, Harry Clifton, Macdara Woods, Keith Ridgway, Paul Murray, Micheál Ó Conghaile, Siobhán Parkinson and Caitríona O'Reilly. Visiting writers include Claude Arnaud, whose novel Qu'as-tu fait de tes frères?(2010) combines the story of himself and his family with that of his generation, scarred by the aftermath of the revolutionary events of May 1968. Also participating is Éric Fottorino, whose most recent work, Questions à mon père(2010) pays homage to his adoptive and his biological fathers, and Philippe Forest, whose novels focus on issues of paternity; they include L'Enfant éternel, devoted to his four-year-old daughter, who died of cancer. Also on board are Julia Franck, whose The Blind Side of the Heartis on the longlist for this year's Impac prize, and Virginie Linhart, whose forthcoming La vie après is about the lives of deported Jews on their return to France. francoirishliteraryfestival.com.
Joe O’Connor edits new short story collection
With literature at the heart of next week's St Patrick's Day festivities in Dublin, it's fitting that Faber and Faber picked March 17th to launch New Irish Short Stories, edited by Joseph O'Connor. Serendipitously, he and two of the writers included, Dermot Bolger and Roddy Doyle, are also taking part in DublinSwell, a Unesco City of Literature event at Convention Centre Dublin next Friday night. "Literature opens citizenships of affection, as every reader knows, and Ireland is in need of them these days," O'Connor writes in his introduction. "The Republic is approaching the centenary of its foundation, yet there has never been a time when so many of us weren't quite sure what Ireland is for. Old certainties are shattered. We got fooled, and we know it. But sometimes, in the Irish sentence, the greatest thing we have ever invented, we glimpse what we yet might be. The arts have brought the consolation of dignity to Ireland at a time when we sorely needed it."
How to write a best-seller, and other advice
Irish popular fiction is the theme of the spring series of Library Late interviews at the National Library of Ireland, in Dublin, with debate and discussion on aspects of writing and publishing, from trends in the marketplace to tips on how to write a best-seller. On Wednesday, March 30th, at 8pm, Sheila O'Flanagan, author of 15 novels and three collections of short stories, is the speaker. On Tuesday, April 12th, also at 8pm, it's Sinéad Moriarty, who wrote her first book, The Baby Trail,as a journalist in London and is now the author of seven novels. She'll be joined by Cathy Kelly, whose first novel, Woman to Woman, went straight into the Irish best-seller list – from which she went from strength to strength. Free tickets from nli.ie.
