Stellar line-up for Czeslaw Milosz festival
John Banville, Derek Walcott, Breyten Breytenbach, Bei Dao, John Gray, Jane Hirshfield, Robert Hass, Amin Maalouf and Zadie Smith are among the line-up for the second Czeslaw Milosz Literary Festival, in the Polish city of Cracow from May 9th to 15th. It’s the flagship of the Milosz Year declared by the Polish and Lithuanian parliaments to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of the Nobel-winning poet, prose writer, essayist and translator. The festival’s theme, native realm, comes from his autobiography. Born in Szetejnie, in the Lithuanian countryside, he lived in Warsaw, Cracow and Paris during the tumultuous decades of the first half of the last century before leaving in the 1960s for California, where he spent 20 years as a professor of Slavic languages and literature at UC Berkeley. In later life he lived both there and back in Cracow. The centenary events also include book publications, conferences, discussions and exhibitions in many parts of the world. milosz365.eu.
Room for Donoghue on Orange Prize longlist
Emma Donoghue's Roomhas, unsurprisingly, made the longlist of the Orange Prize, for fiction by women, which was announced during the week. Though it lost out to Howard Jacobson's The Finkler Questionat the Man Booker last year, being on the shortlist gave Room welcome extra exposure, though the book is so good that once word got out about it it was always destined to blaze the trail it has in the best-seller lists. It may seem hard for those who haven't read it to believe that a novel about a five-year-old boy who has been imprisoned in a room with his mother by the psychopathic rapist who fathered him is both a tender book about love and a page-turner, but it is. It's now a strong contender for the £30,000 (€35,000) Orange Prize, the shortlist for which is announced on April 12th. Readers are invited to comment on the list on the prize's new Facebook page. Other contenders on the 20-title list include The Pleasure Seekers, by Tishani Doshi, Great House, by Nicole Krauss, and Téa Obreht's The Tiger's Wife. orangeprize.co.uk.
John Boyne named as West Cork festival tutor
The author of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, John Boyne, will be tutoring the fiction workshop at this summers West Cork Literary Festival, in Bantry. Hugo Hamilton, author of the autobiography The Speckled People, will be leading one on writing memoirs. Gillian Slovo, Marina Carr, Róisín Boyd, Eoin McNamee, Gerald Dawe and Lucy Caldwell are among other writers who will be leading sessions at the festival, which runs from July 3rd to 9th. Workshop topics include poetry, freelance journalism, crimewriting and writing for the stage. westcorkliteraryfestival.ie.
‘Year of Liberty’ author joins rebellion weekend
Thomas Pakenham, author of The Year of Liberty: The Great Irish Rebellion of 1798, published in 1969, is one of the speakers at a weekend of debate about the rebellion in Co Wexford, being held from June 3rd to 5th at Woodbrook House in Enniscorthy. Also taking part will be Bernard Browne, the first director of the National 1798 Centre. Outings to the historical sites of Vinegar Hill and New Ross are included. Participants can book in to stay at Woodbrook or just come daily for the events. woodbrookhouse.ie.
