Some of Ireland’s leading writers of fiction will be taking part in this year’s festival. Colm Tóibín (Brooklyn, Nora Webster, House of Names), and Maggie O’Farrell (I Am, I Am, I Am, This Must Be the Place) will be making their first visits to Kells, as will Emer McLysaght and Sarah Breen (Oh My God What a Complete Aisling). John Banville (The Sea, Mrs. Osmond), Liz Nugent (Unravelling Oliver, Skin Deep), Frank McGuinness (The Woodcutter and His Family), Lisa McInerney (The Glorious Heresies, The Blood Miracles) will be returning to our festival. Michael Harding (Staring at Lakes, Hanging with the Elephant) will host a workshop on the art of memoir, and John McKenna (Clare, A Haunted Heart) will host a fiction writing workshop.
Loughcrew-based / Gallery Press poet and publisher Peter Fallon will team up, once again, with sister and brother Saramai and Oisin Leech (The Lost Brothers) for an evening session of poetry, music and conversation. Award winning American playwright Matthew Spangler (The Kite Runner) will talk about his globe-trotting adaptation of the Khaled Hosseini novel and will later team up with Mary Manning to describe how he would go about adapting her memoir Striking Back.
In what we hope will be the first of many visits to Hinterland the Rick O’Shea Book Club will tackle Oh My God What a Complete Aisling written by Emer McLysaght and Sarah Breen.
Ashbourne resident Aidan Comerford discusses his heart-warming and hilarious memoir Corn Flakes for Dinner, the story of how his life happened when he was making other plans. Mullingar based author Patricia Gibney will talk about cracking the huge digital book market with her crime thriller series.
Already touted as the next exciting Irish millennial writer, None of this is Serious is Dubliner Catherine Prasifka’s impressive debut novel. Catherine has already been picked as ‘one to watch’ by the Irish Times and the Irish Independent.
Dublin student life is ending for Sophie and her friends. They’ve got everything figured out, and Sophie feels left behind as they all start to go their separate ways. None of This Is Serious is about the uncertainty and absurdity of being alive today. It’s about balancing the real world with the online, and the vulnerabilities in yourself, your relationships, your body. Catherine Prasifka will read from her work and discuss it with the audience.
