Listowel - Listowel Writers' Week

Listowel Writers' Week

Celebrating 40 years in 2011, Listowel Writers' Week will take place from 1 to 5 June 2011.

Listowel is also the home of Ireland's biggest literary festival. Since its inception in 1970 Listowel Writers’ Week has been recognised as the primary event in Ireland’s literary calendar. North Kerry is the birthplace of many of Ireland’s most prominent writers past and present including Dr. John B Keane, Dr Bryan Mac Mahon, Professor Brendan Kennelly, Seamus Wilmot, Gabriel Fitzmaurice, George Fitzmaurice, Maurice Walsh and Robert Leslie Boland. The Writers’ Week Festival was established to celebrate those writers and to provide an opportunity for Irish Writers in general to develop their talents and meet new audiences.

The concept of the Literary Workshop was first introduced at Writers’ Week in 1971 by Bryan MacMahon. Since then our Literary Workshops continue to be the most popular in the country. Prominent Irish writers have shared their skills in poetry, fiction, theatre, screen, crime and more recently workshops in song writing, comic writing and storytelling have been added.

Competitions were introduced, together with a series of literary awards, which have given valuable recognition to new writers over the last number of years. In that time many eminent Irish and international literary figures have gathered in Listowel at the annual festival to celebrate the work of new and established writers.

The event takes place in a unique atmosphere of learning and celebration which gives new and established writers an opportunity to discuss their work before a national and international audience.

Under the leadership of its President Colm Tóibín, together with literary advisors Professor Brendan Kennelly, Seamus Hosey, Lawrence Block, and Michael Collins, Writers’ Week provides a wide ranging programme of literary events including lectures, readings, workshops, book launches, seminars, theatre, literary and historical tours, art exhibitions, music and dance.

Participants have included: Nobel Laureate and Booker Prize-winner J.M. Cóetzee, Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney, Booker Prize winners Kazuo Ishiguro, John Banville, James Kelman and Anne Enright. Poet Laureates Ted Hughes, Carol Ann Duffy, and Andrew Motion. Award winning playwrights Tom Murphy, Brian Friel, Roddy Doyle, Frank McGuinness and Hugh Leonard. Celebrated poets Michael Hartnett, Leland Bardwell, Richard Murphy, John Montague, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Roger McGough, Rita Ann Higgins and Kate Cruise O’ Brien. Acclaimed novelists Blake Morrison, Chris Whyte, Lionel Shriver, Colm Tóibín, Jennifer Johnston, John McGahern, Joseph O’Neill, Sebastian Barry, Joseph O’ Connor, Hugo Hamilton, Edna O’Brien, Douglas Kennedy, Patrick McGrath, William Trevor, Colum McCann, Gerard Donovan, Frank McCourt, Joris Duytschaever, Irvine Welsh, Dr. Robyn Rowland, Andrew Lindsay, Michael Cunningham, Jane Urquhart, Anatoly Kudryavitsky, Cees Nooteboom, Michael Dibdin, Clyde Rose, Abdel Bari Atwan, Clive James, Melvyn Bragg, Alain De Botton, Lloyd Jones, Eric P Kaufman, Robert Fisk, Jung Chang, Terry Jones, Gabriel Byrne, Christine Dwyer-Hickey and many more.