LOOSE LEAVES - CAROLINE WALSH
Writers en route
Sarah Waters, Melvyn Bragg, MJ Hyland, Anne Michaels, Kate Summerscale, Val McDermid and Steve Toltz are among the writers who will be visiting Ireland in June for the Dublin Writers’ Festival, running from June 2nd to 7th. Also on the bill is British novelist Julie Myerson whose non-fiction book, The Lost Child: A True Story , about how she put her 17-year-old son out of the family home because of his use of skunk cannabis, touched raw nerves. When it came out earlier this year it outraged some but was commended by others. She’s paired at the festival with William Fiennes, above, whose new memoir The Music Room dwells on life in a magical setting – an English castle – but one that is overshadowed by his brother’s severe epilepsy and early death. Their event is at the Project Arts Centre on June 6th at 4pm and Niall MacMonagle will chair. Liberty Hall is the venue on June 3rd at 8.15pm for an interview conducted by Fintan O’Toole with historian Simon Schama who, say the organisers, will be sharing his vision of the US at this pivotal moment, the subject of his TV series and book The American Future: a History. The metropolitan sensibility pervading two darkly satirical novels is the link made between The Believers by Zoe Heller, above, and Geoff Dyer’s Jeff in Venice , Death in Varanasi ; they’ll take part in a discussion, chaired by Helen Meany, at the Project Arts Centre on June 5th at 6pm.
The cast of Irish writers includes Seamus Heaney, Paula Meehan, Leanne O’Sullivan, Claire Kilroy and Christine Dwyer Hickey. Colm Tóibín will discuss his new novel Brooklyn – reviewed on W11 – with Brendan Barrington at the Project Arts Centre on June 5th at 8pm.
The question of what it’s like to be a debut novelist will be thrashed over by three Irish writers who’ve recently made their first forays into fiction in the Project Arts Centre on June 3rd at 6pm; Ed O’Loughlin with Not Untrue and Not Unkind ; Aifric Campbell with The Semantics of Murder and Peter Murphy with John the Revelator .
Details of the festival will be on dublinwritersfestival.com from Wednesday April 29th.