Loose Leaves Caroline WalshA celebration of the work of poet Thomas Kinsella, who will be conferred with the Freedom of Dublin this month, and a rare opportunity to hear Adrienne Rich, one of the great American poets of the past 50 years, are among the highlights of this year's Dublin Writers Festival, which will run from Wednesday, June 13th to Sunday, June 17th. Some 30 Irish and international writers and journalists will take part.
The fact that non-fiction will feature this year, as well as fiction and poetry, provides the opportunity for public debates on pressing issues - an appropriate new dimension given the volatile times we live in.
Topics up for discussion include the objectivity of war coverage, immigration into Ireland, and whether religion has caused more harm than good. Christopher Hitchens, Rageh Omaar, Janine di Giovanni, Kevin Myers and Roddy Doyle are among those lined up for these sessions.
Fiction writers Lionel Shriver, Joseph O'Connor and D4 legend Ross O'Carroll Kelly will be reading and - in conjunction with the Ark cultural centre for children - events will include readings for teenagers by Meg Roscoff.
Sticking together on the web
Breaking up is hard to do, says the song, so the alumnae of the 2006 Masters in Writing programme at NUI Galway decided, when their time came, to stick together in a new and exciting venture. Fifteen of them, writers from parts as far-flung as Sligo, Mayo, Cork, Clare, Offaly, Ontario, Illinois, Los Angeles, Nevada, New York and Alaska have founded Flosca Teo, a web-based publishing company that was launched last Sunday night in the Town Hall Theatre in Galway at the end of Cúirt.
Sponsored jointly by a private shareholder and Údarás na Gaeltachta, they also announced two new writing competitions. As writing competitions are only as good as the people who judge them, the fact that they have got American writer David Means to judge the short story competition (first prize €1,000 for a new story of up to 3,500 words) and poet Liam Ó Muirthile to judge the Irish-language poetry competition (first prize €500 for a poem of up to 100 lines) augurs well for the inaugural year. There are cash prizes, too, for the runners-up.
Closing date for entries to the competitions is December 15th. Prizes will be presented next April, but maybe more important than the cash is the fact that the winners will also be published in a prizewinners' chapbook. Meanwhile, writers from Ireland and abroad can post and discuss their work, and find details of the competitions, on www.flosca.com.
Prizing Lysaght's perceptions
Irish poet Seán Lysaght has won the Lawrence O'Shaughnessy Award for Poetry at the University of St Thomas, St Paul, Minnesota. Previous winners include Eavan Boland and Dennis O'Driscoll. Lysaght's new collection, The Mouth of a River, will be published by the Gallery Press on May 15th. The prize citation dwelt on Lysaght's hallmark, engagement with his natural surroundings: "Lysaght's poems abound with alert perceptions of Ireland's west, where he makes his home - its mountains, bogs and beaches, its flora and its birdlife. We will understand his work best (and, he reminds us, will understand our own lives best) if we remember that it rests on the bedrock of the natural world."
Saluting foreign fiction
The Book of Chameleons, by Angolan journalist and writer José Eduardo Agualusa, translated from Portuguese by Daniel Hahn, is this year's winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. Set in contemporary Angola, it was hailed by Boyd Tonkin, literary editor of the London Independent and one of the judges, as a moving and revealing novel about modern Africa, memory, grief and the endurance of hope.
The prize honours works by living authors, but this year the judges took the unusual step of giving a special commendation to a book that wasn't eligible: Suite Française, by Irène Némirovsky, translated from French by Sandra Smith (Chatto). The novel was first discovered almost 60 years after its author's death in Auschwitz in 1942 and has gone on to become an international bestseller. The judges were unanimous in saluting "a great novel and a fine translation". Meanwhile, Agualusa and Hahn received £5,000 (€7,320) each and a magnum of Champagne Taittinger.
In the spirit of McGahern
The inaugural John McGahern Irish Writing Commemorative Lecture, the first in what is intended to be an annual event celebrating both McGahern's work and the best of Irish contemporary writing, takes place in Room D115, St Patrick's College, Drumcondra, Dublin, next Thursday, May 10th, at 6pm. Derek Hand will give the lecture, Saying Goodbye to John: or Thank You for the Day, while novelist Joseph O'Connor will pay tribute to McGahern and read from his own new novel, Redemption Falls.