A literary roundup
Busy Tóibín to join the Griffin judges
The Canadian-based Griffin Poetry Prize loomed large in Ireland this year when Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin won the international category of the award. Now, for next year’s awards, the judging panel includes an Irish voice: the novelist and short-story writer Colm Tóibín. The other judges are the poets Tim Lilburn (Canada) and Chase Twichell (USA).
Tóibín is currently Leonard Milberg lecturer in Irish letters at Princeton University. His collection of short stories, The Empty Family, will be published by Viking Penguin next month.
Given the international reach of this prize, the judges can call in books of English-language poetry from around the world. As well as the main award, the Griffin also has a category for Canadian poetry. The shortlisted books will be announced on April 5th, 2011, in Toronto, and the winners on June 1st. See griffinpoetryprize.com.
Meanwhile, Tóibín will be the subject of a seminar in his heartland of Enniscorthy, Co Wexford, on September 26th. Called Colm Tóibín: the Writer and his Writing Explored, it features speakers including the historian Roy Foster (on Tóibín and Irish history), Christina Hunt Mahony (on the poetic quality of his writing) and Paul Delaney (on his engagement with themes of return, belonging and place). There will also be a reading by the writer and a public interview with him by Tom Mooney.
Authors line up for Rathgar writing school
A new fiction-writing school, linked to the O’Brien Press, will be launched in Dublin next month. The Author Rights Agency is offering a six-month evening course called “The Making of a Novel”, starting on October 14th, with the literary agent Svetlana Pironko, the novelist and editor Kevin Stevens and the scriptwriter and novelist Ursula de Brún. There will also be contributions from the writers Aifric Campbell, Ken Bruen, Catherine Dunne, Marita Conlon-McKenna, Celine Kiernan and Ireland’s first laureate of children’s fiction (2010-2012), Siobhán Parkinson, who has published more than 20 books and is currently commissioning editor and publisher with Little Island, the children’s imprint of New Island Books.
Crime, fantasy and literary fiction are among the genres that will be treated, and there will be meetings with editors, publishers and literary agents. There will be two courses, with 15 places per group, the fee is €2,000 and the location is the O’Brien Press base in Rathgar. Details from writing@ authorrightsagency.com.
McCabe heading to Omagh to celebrate Kiely
The playwright, novelist and short-story writer Eugene McCabe will be among the participants at the ninth Benedict Kiely Literary Weekend, “The Shortest Way Home’’, at Strule Arts Centre in Omagh on September 9th-12th.
McCabe is currently writing screenplays for his play King of the Castle(with Gerard Stembridge) and his collected stories, Heaven Lies About Us, to be directed by Louis Lentin. In Omagh he will read from his most recent novella, The Love of Sisters.
The keynote address will be given by the novelist and short-story writer Anthony Glavin. Other participants include the poet Sinéad Morrissey and Catherine Morris, whose book Taking Up the Torch: Alice Milligan and the Irish Cultural Revivalis published by the Lilliput Press this month. Also reading is Conor O'Clery, a former foreign correspondent for The Irish Times,who is working on a history of the fall of the Soviet Union, to be published on the 20th anniversary in 2011.
A bus tour of landmarks associated with Kiely will be led by Stephen McKenna, a friend of Kiely’s for more than 40 years, and writing workshops for the 12-15 and over-16 age groups will be given by Liz Weir, author of collections of stories for children.
Born near Dromore, Co Tyrone, in 1919, Kiely lived in Omagh before moving to Dublin in the late 1930s. He died in 2007 and is buried in Omagh’s Dublin Road cemetery.
