Parental Pathways, a parenting education and training centre, and Children's Books Ireland will host an inaugural conference in Dublin, titled Children's Literature: Building Resilience on Saturday, June 17th, in the National Library of Ireland on Kildare Street, promoting childhood mental health in a coming together of two worlds and two different disciplines – the literary and the therapeutic. Writers Roddy Doyle, Siobhan Parkinson, Kevin Stevens, Hillary Fannin and Patricia Forde wil join with psychotherapy professionals in conversation. Other speakers include Damien O'Connor (Brown Bag Films), Prof Amanda Piesse and Mary Pyle of Trinity College Dublin, senator Marie-Louise O'Donnell and Fergus Finlay, CEO of Barnardos Ireland. The conference is designed for adults who are interested in the rich diversity and power of children's literature as well as those in both the literary and the psychotherapy fields. parentalpathways.ie
Playwright Stewart Parker's novel Hopdance, largely drafted in the early 1970s but unpublished in his lifetime, centres on the amputation of his left leg when he was 19. Recently published by Lilliput Press in an edition prepared by his biographer, Marilynn Richtarik, she will read from it and discuss it next Monday, June 19th, at 6.30pm, in Books Upstairs, D'Olier Street, Dublin. Reservations for the event may be made here.
Award-winning Irish actor Olwen Fouéré and Syrian opera singer Lubana Al Quntar are to collaborate on a unique project exploring the Syrian conflict through Seamus Heaney's collection The Spirit Level, at Seamus Heaney HomePlace on Saturday, June 24th. Currently starring together in Salomé at the National Theatre in London, the duo are the latest to take part in a series of events at HomePlace called Performance Reflections, in which a leading artist responds to one of Heaney's collections. The evening will be built around Olwen's performance of the epic Heaney poem Mycenae Lookout, in addition to musical contributions from Lubana.
The third Dublin Writers' Conference for writers and aspiring writers takes place from June 23rd to 25th at the Academy Plaza Hotel, off O'Connell Street. This year's 18 speakers include Heather Graham, a New York Times bestselling author returning to her Irish roots, the Hollywood producer Ken Atchity, a one time professor of comparative literature and vide-president of PEN Los Angeles, as well as local writers such as bestselling crime novelist Patricia Gibney. DublinWritersConference.com
