After a few years’ hiatus, Doolin Writers’ Weekend is back in Co Clare. The boutique literary festival takes place in Hotel Doolin on January 16th-18th.
Writing is a lonely game and January can be a lonely month but Doolin is where you’ll find friendship, inspiration and the company of other writers who know the road.
Among many others, the line-up features: Roddy Doyle, Belinda McKeon, Ian Maleney, Sarah Moore Fitzgerald, Abby Oliviera, June Caldwell, filmmaker Tadhg O’Sullivan, comedian Aoife Dunne and musician Branwen.
There’ll be creative workshops, readings, music, yoga, launches, DJ sets, open mics, food - chats and craic worth travelling for. Tickets and full line-up at doolinarts.ie
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In The Irish Times tomorrow, I preview across five pages of Ticket the best Irish and international fiction and nonfiction titles coming out this year. Mary O’Donnell, author of Sweep the Cobwebs Off the Sky (Epoque Press, March 19th), contributes an essay to Weekend review on her love of the gothic sensibility in life and in fiction. And there is a Q&A with Iain Dale, author of The Taoiseach: 100 Years of Irish Political Leadership (Swift Press).
Reviews are Daniel Mulhall on The Irish Revolution: Diplomacy and Reactions, 1919-1923; Daniel Carey on The Intellectual Origins of American Slavery by John Samuel Harpham; Kevin Gildea on The Kingdom by Yoel Noorali; Adrienne Murphy on Magic Maker: The Enchanted Path of Creativity by Pam Grossman; Míchéal McCann on the best new poetry; Eamon Sweeney on Life in Progress by Hans Ulrich Obrist; Sinéad Gibney on Rewiring Democracy: How AI Will Transform our Politics, Government and Citizenship by Bruce Schneier and Nathan E. Sanders ; Paul D’Alton on Fawning by Dr Ingrid Clayton; Helena Mulkerns on Somewhere Cold by Geraldine Osborne; John Walshe on The Outsiders by Wendy Elliman; Eugene Brennan on Alexander Kojève: An Intellectual Biography by Boris Groys; Marianne Doherty on Night Vision by Jean Sprackland; John Vaughan on Dog Days by Emily La Barge; Maija Makela on The Slicks by Maggie Nelson; and Ben Barnes on The 1920s London Irish Theatre: A History by Nelson O’Ceallaigh Ritschel.
This weekend’s Irish Times Eason offer is An Post Irish Novel of the Year Nesting by Roisín O’Donnell, just €5.99, a €6 saving.
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Bluemoose Books has acquired Richard Heart Julianne, Rónán Hession’s fourth novel after Leonard and Hungry Paul, Panenka and Ghost Mountain.
His publisher Kevin Duffy said: “It’s his best writing yet, sparse and pared down, full of humanity, funny and with a forensic insight into two people viewing their married life on the day of their divorce. Lots of great lines as you’d expect and we publish in summer 2027.”
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Kevin Gildeas Brilliant Bookshop, a second-hand book emporium expertly curated by the comic and critic, is back in business downstairs in the Board and Brewed board game cafe, 75 York Road, Dun Laoghaire for the next month or so, Wednesdays to Sundays, from noon till 5.30pm.
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The Strokestown International Poetry Competition 2026 is now open for submissions, with poet and broadcaster Rachael Hegarty as judge.
Founded in 1999, the competition’s former winners include Vona Groarke, Paddy Bushe, Maureen Boyle and Jane Robinson. Last year, Olga Dermott-Bond took home the award.
With a prize fund of €2,000, this year’s competition will shortlist five poets, wh will have the opportunity to read their poem at the Strokestown International Poetry Festival 2026, taking place from May 1st to 3rd. The winning poet will be announced on Sunday, May 3rd.
To enter, visit strokestownpoetryfest.ie and navigate to the ‘Poetry Competition’ section. The deadline for entries is February 6th.
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In 1974, shortly after moving from his native Kansas to New York, James Grauerholz was briefly a lover and then manager/editor of the writer William S Burroughs, writes Frank Rynne. Grauerholz helped shape the then sexagenarian Beat provocateur’s emergence as a punk icon by professionalising and promoting his spoken word performances.
Returning to his native Kansas in 1980, he was soon joined by Burroughs whose fame and drug-fuelled milieu made life in NYC without Grauerholz both hazardous and unproductive.
For Burroughs, the return to his native mid-West marked a creative and financial leap, with Grauerholz securing a major publishing contract for his final Red Night trilogy. Though upsetting some former hangers-on who complained Grauerholz had forced Burroughs out of their grasp, he became like an adopted son to the writer, whose work expanded into musical collaborations and a late blooming painting career. Their compound in Lawerence, Kansas became a mecca for visiting artists including U2, REM, Sonic Youth and Kurt Cobain.
From the early 1990s until recently I worked on and sometimes definitively off with James, organising The Here to Go Show of Burroughs and Brion Gysin’s paintings at The Project Arts Centre, Dublin; the 2014 centenary celebrations of Burroughs; and bringing The Master Musicians of Joujouka to the Pompidou Centre for their Beat Generation exhibition.
James could be difficult at times but he was a deeply sensitive, proudly self-educated man whose polymathy mesmerised those who knew him. His last major Burroughs project was as executive producer on the 2024 film Queer, starring Daniel Craig. As heir to William Burroughs’s estate, he encouraged academics and writers, who will continue to assure the legacy which Grauerholz devotedly curated.
Frank Rynne is a senior lecturer in Irish and British history at CY Cergy Paris University and manager of The Master Musicians of Joujouka.
