LooseLeaves:Clé, the Irish Book Publishers' Association, is to hold a three-day book fair in Dublin next March in an effort to showcase and improve the lot of Irish-published literary and cultural writing, fiction and non-fiction.
Some genres published in Ireland, such as true crime, sports books and popular fiction (with its subsets of chick-lit, mum-lit and lad-lit), have been doing well, says Clé vice-president Alan Hayes, whereas only a small number of literary titles are published here each year due to lack of funding, promotion and sales - problems that the fair will address.
"At the moment, even literary authors who sell less than 30,000 books in England are being dropped by their publishers. It's scary. In the competitive atmosphere of contemporary publishing - the dumbing down - it's increasingly difficult to market anything with literary value . . . it's very, very depressing, but Clé is working on numerous positive solutions".
It's hoped that the fair, from March 7th to 9th, will be in City Hall and that it will inaugurate an annual event. It will feature book launches and signings and readings by writers.
"I'm a literary publisher," says Hayes, who manages Arlen House and publishes Irish authors including Nuala Ní Chonchúir, James Liddy and Cathal Ó Searcaigh, "and I see what a nightmare it is. Okay, the market is not commercially viable, but if we as a nation stop publishing poetry, drama and short stories now, we will have lost our cultural identity. We've built it on dead authors but that well has to be continually nourished and refilled".
The Breton connection
The centenary of the birth of the poet Eugène Guillevic, who had many ties with Irish poets and has been translated by John Montague, will be celebrated at a conference at University College Dublin on September 21st and 22nd. The event will be organised by Michael Brophy, of UCD's French and Francophone Studies department, who has
written two books on the poet. Guillevic (1907-1997) was born in the Breton town of Carnac and though he never learned the Breton language, he had great attachment to the place of his birth. The conference, Guillevic: Poetry in the Light of the Everyday, will, says its organiser, cement a strong Celtic connection.
Opening time for Kavanagh
Entries are being accepted for the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award, now in its 36th year, for a first unpublished collection of poems in English. Closing date for entries is September 29th and the judges are Paula Meehan and Theo Dorgan. The main prize is €2,500, with a second prize of €1,000 and a third prize of €500.
Previous winners include Eílean Ní Chuilleanáin, Paul Durcan, Thomas McCarthy, Peter Sirr, Sinead Morrissey, Conor Callaghan, Celia de Freine and Joseph Woods.The award will be presented on November 23rd at the opening of the annual Patrick Kavanagh Weekend in Inniskeen.
Meanwhile, the National Patrick Kavanagh Day postponed in Inniskeen so that locals could support the Monaghan football team in the Ulster final last weekend will now take place on Sunday, August 5th, at 3pm by the River Fane near the Round Tower - a happy occasion to make up for the team's defeat by Tyrone.
For competition rules and entry forms, telephone or fax 042-93-78560, e-mail infoatpkc@eircom.net or download from www.patrickkavanaghcountry.com
Winning the children's vote
Irish author and academic Emer O'Sullivan has been presented with this year's Children's Literature Association of the USA (ChLA) book award for her book, Comparative Children's Literature (Routledge). The award is given annually for what the association considers the most distinguished scholarly work in the field of children's literature. O'Sullivan, professor of literature at Leuphana University , Lueneburg, in northern Germany, is the first Irish writer to win it. Apart from her academic work, she is also the author of seven bilingual children's books, jointly written with her husband, Dietmar Rösler.
Intensive prose writing
A five-day intensive creative writing course with Carlo Gébler starts on Monday, July 30th (10am-4pm) at the Irish Writers' Centre in Dublin. The course is both for people interested in starting to write and for those who have a body of work behind them. Participants will be expected to produce a piece of imaginative work (or autobiography or memoir) in prose and then to rewrite and polish it. Its good to see that careful proofreading is also on the agenda.
Details: 01-8721302 or courses@writerscentre.ie