Irish Book Awards 2013

For anyone who missed the Ireland AM coverage of the Irish Book Awards 2013 - Click on the link below! 

Live Stream of History in the Making - Breaking Guinness World Record at The Irish Writers Centre

READING THROUGH DAY & NIGHT

The Irish Writers’ Centre are attempting to make history by claiming the Guinness World Record for ‘Most Authors Reading Consecutively From Their Own Books’.

Senator David Norris will open proceedings in the Irish Writers’ Centre, 19 Parnell Square, Dublin, at 10am on Friday, June 15th and the first reader will be best-selling novelist, John Boyne.

The readings, of 15 minutes each will run for 28 hours, all through the night, culminating at 2pm on Bloomsday.

Seamus Heaney will take over at 10am on Saturday morning to read from his Opened Ground: Selected Poems, 1966-1996,and Roddy Doyle with an excerpt from The Van at 1.30pm, while the final slot has been given to Jack Harte’s From Under Gogol’s Nose.

The current record of 75 is held by the Berlin International Literature Festival.

The readings will be open to the public and the worldwide audience can join in too, as the whole event will be streamed live on the Irish Writers’ Centre website.

For a full list of the readers taking part click here

Listen to live stream  HERE

From 10 am Friday 15th June 2012

Miram O Callaghan in Conversation with Roddy, Rory & Ita Doyle at the Library

I went along to Tallaght Library last Thursday for the interview with Roddy Doyle and his parents with the wonderful Miriam O Callaghan.  I say wonderful because one, I had a very high opinion of Miriam before the interview, and two because after it, it went up a couple more notches.

Firstly, she did a very good job of putting everyone at their ease, including Roddy Doyle's parents, who turned out to be really interesting and also very moving to listen to.  You'll get a chance yourself to listen by clicking the link below, and also because Miriam was really supportive to the school students that came along, giving lots of encouragement and praise with a bit of humour fired in for good measure.

Now I am sure interviewing, even very good interviewing always throws up the odd curve ball, but Miriam had more than her fair share to deal with last Thursday, when having waited for the production team to do all the sound checks, whilst Miriam chatted to everyone, we had a power failure, complete black out.  Initially, most thought it would last a couple of minutes and then we would be off again, but it turned out the whole area was down and the ESB had no idea when they would get it back up again......interviewing nightmare..... except that the sound man had back up batteries!  As the setting up of the new sound level would take about 15 minutes, it was decided to have a bit of a question and answer session while we waited.  This was really good, with some great questions from the students about Roddy's characters and stories, and it was awful pity that it wasn't being recorded, and again to Miriam's credit, not only did she praise and encourage the teenagers, but she also managed to store up items in her head out of the responses from the Q & A, for the interview once it got rolling.

So the first part of the interview, all 4 minutes before the power cut had to be scraped, because the sound would be different, and then 15 to 20 minutes later, the sound guys had everything set up on battery, when guess what, yes you've guessed it, the power came back on.  So..........this meant changing all the sound settings again, another 10 or 15 minutes, and me thinks deffo an interviewer's worst nightmare.  But the lady just kept on going, charming everyone, and smiling all the way through it.  So when we did finally start, the below recording took place and well worth a listen to, so get listening.

Miriam O Callaghan in conversation with Roddy, Ita and Rory Doyle  HERE

St Patrick's Festival 2011 - Dublin

For all those who live in and around Dublin, or for those visiting, or (doing my bit for the promotion of Ireland as a destination in the future), anyone thinking of visiting, see below lists of things happening around this years St Patrick's Day event.

Have a happy St Patrick's Festival everyone

St Patrick's Festival

The festival gets under way today and runs until Sunday, and is themed in honour of Dublin’s designation as Unesco City Of Literature and will see legions of literary luminaries discuss, debate and reflect on Dublin’s cultural heritage.

This evening there’s an open discussion, titled How Ireland Gets Its Voice, examining the ways in which the Irish literary tradition has progressed into genres such as film, television and radio alongside theatre and music, at 6.30pm in the Alexander Hotel, Dublin 2.

On Thursday, the St Patrick’s Day parade, which is the centrepiece of the festival and the biggest open-air street performance in Europe, will also have a literary theme.
Based this year around a specially commissioned short story, Brilliant , by Roddy Doyle, the parade will come in eight “chapters”, each telling a chapter from the story, each performed by a different performing arts company.
The story, which can be downloaded HERE , tells the tale of two children who are hiding under the kitchen table listening to the grown-ups talk about their troubles.
They interpret the discussion to mean a black dog has stolen the city’s funny bone, so they set off to find the dog and the funny bone, and return triumphant.
The parade will also feature marching bands from Dublin, the United States, France and Spain.

“Dublin Swell” will see some of the finest writers and musicians come together to chart the course of literary Dublin in readings, music and song.
Among those performing will be Séamus Heaney, Maeve Binchy, Sebastian Barry, Roddy Doyle, Cathy Kelly, Joseph O’Connor, Paula Meehan, Paul Durcan and Mike Scott .

On Saturday, a literary treasure hunt invites participants to solve clues while finding out about Dublin’s poets and writers.
Teams of four can register at City Hall between 10am and 5pm for a free event with lots of prizes.

There will be numerous music events, including the festival céilí between 4.30pm and 7.30pm this evening in St Stephen’s Green; the Kilfenora Céilí Band play the National Concert Hall today and Thursday evening; a range of Irish bands play Vicar Street at 7.30pm this evening in an event titled Ceol , and Trad Trails sees different Irish musicians playing at street locations throughout Dublin city today, Thursday and Saturday.

The Skyfest fireworks extravaganza is in Wexford town this year, between 6.30pm and 8.30pm on Saturday

Miriam O Callaghan meets Roddy Doyle 24th March

Miriam O’Callaghan in conversation with Roddy Doyle and his parents at County Library Tallaght.

Thursday 24th March at 10.30am

The ever popular RTE Radio series “Miriam meets…” is coming to the County Library Tallaght!

In this series, Miriam interviews individuals who have a strong connection, whether through family, business or otherwise. Miriam’s conversation with Roddy Doyle and his parents will be the first time that the programme is recorded in front of an audience, to be broadcast on RTE Radio 1 on Sunday 27th March.

If you would like to go along and be part of the audience for this event on Thursday 24th March at 10.30am, bookings will be taken from Monday 14th March via online booking service at www.southdublinlibraries.ie. To book online, a unique email address will be required for each individual booking.