This year in October the Red Line Book Festival celebrates 10 years with a huge range of events, some in person, some virtual. You can view the full programme here.
I’m so happy to be hosting a real live event in the Civic Theatre (my first live event in a long time!) celebrating the short story with authors Deirdre Sullivan and Lucy Caldwell. We’ll hear short readings from both writers and then we’ll get down to the business of the short story, what it is and how it works. ‘The Beauty of Brevity’ takes place on Monday 11th October at 7pm and you can book your tickets here.
The festival is always a cracker and it will run up until 17th October. I intend to see as many events as I can during the week and there’s so much to choose from with events featuring the likes of Colm Tóibín, Kevin Power, Jane Robinson, Nell Regan, Lynn Buckle, Catherine Dunne, Éilís Ní Dhuibhne, Mary Dorcey, Moya Cannon, Victoria Kennefick, Jessica Traynor, Aoife Lyall, Amanda Bell, Eleanor Hooker, David Butler, Annemarie Ní Churreáin, Eimear Ryan, Anrew McMillan, Seán Hewitt and many many more.
This year
Bray Literary Festival, now in its fourth year, will be mainly an online
festival. The exception will be our headline event which will be held on
Thursday 17th September 2020 in the Mermaid Arts Centre in association
with OneCity,OneBook. We are delighted to
present an evening of readings and discussion hosted by Dermot Bolger,
featuring Christine Dwyer Hickey, author of eleven novels including Dublin’s
One City, One Book 2020 choice Tatty and The Narrow Land, winner
of the Walter Scott Award 2020, and
Billy O’Callaghan, author of novels The
Dead House and My
Coney Island Baby and four short story collections, most
recently The Boatman.
Tickets are limited because of
social distancing guidelines so book your ticket now at the Mermaid.
Friday 18th September
is Culture Night and we have a lovely event planned called “Four Poets Walk into a
Bar” featuring Anne Tannam, Mark Ward, Grace Wilentz and Fiona
Bolger. This event will be livestreamed on Culture Night at 7pm. Following this
event there will be the announcement of the winners of this year’s poetry and
fiction competitions and readings of their work.
The Festival continues on Friday
25th September at 7.30pm with the launch of The Music of What Happens, an
anthology of new writing in support of Purple House edited by Festival
Director, Tanya Farrelly.
The Festival continues throughout Saturday 26th and Sunday 27th September with an amazing range of writers and poets reading and talking about their work. Please review the full programme for details. All of these events can be accessed through the Bray Literary Festival YouTube Channel so please subscribe to be sure you don’t miss anything.
I’m personally looking forward to
hosting two events. The first, Singing in the Wild
Dark, sees me chatting with poets Eleanor Hooker, Jess Traynor and Leeanne
Quinn on Saturday 26th September at 2.30pm. These three poets should
not be missed.
My second event is Brave New Words
featuring Alice Lyons, Pat O’Connor and Marianne Lee on Sunday 27th
September at 11.30am. We’ll be discussing new novels and short stories and the
route to publication and much more besides.
All of these events are free to view, but we are more than happy to receive any donations you might want to make towards the future of the festival. I hope you’ll set some time aside to catch some of these extraordinary writers read and discuss their work.
BLF Committee, l to r: Phil Lynch, Ed O’Dwyer, David Butler, Tanya Farrelly (Director), Brian Kirk, Nessa O’Mahony
Brian Kirk is a poet, short story writer, playwright and novelist from Dublin, Ireland. His work has appeared in the Sunday Tribune, Crannog, The Stony Thursday Book, Revival, Boyne Berries, Wordlegs and various anthologies.
Brian's first poetry collection, After The Fall, is published by Salmon Poetry.
