Doolin Writers' Weekend

The weekend is an eclectic mix of workshops, readings, theatre, music and food and has something for every level of writer from beginners to expert wordsmiths and lovers of literature alike. Located amidst the breadhtaking beauty of North Clare, Doolin is surrounded on all sides by natural wonders, the Cliffs of Moher, the Aran Islands and the Burren and has always been a tonic for the soul of the weary traveller. Famed for it’s warm welcome and traditional Irish music Doolin has also long been a haunt of artists and writers including J.M Synge, George Bernard Shaw, Dylan Thomas, Augustus John and Oliver St. John Gogary.

When? 4-6th March, 2016

Where? Hotel Doolin - Doolin is a coastal village in County Clare, Ireland, on the Atlantic coast. It borders the spa town of Lisdoonvarna. A truely beautiful area.

Website? Doolin Writers' Weekend

Twitter? @HotelDoolin

Who? 2016

Joseph O’Connor
Joseph O’Connor was born in Dublin. He is the author of the novels Cowboys and Indians (short-listed for the Whitbread Prize), Desperadoes, The Salesman, Inishowen, Star of the Sea and Redemption Falls, as well as a number of bestselling works of non-fiction. He has also written film scripts and stage-plays including the award-winning Red Roses and Petrol. His novel Star of the Sea was an international bestseller, selling more than a million copies and being published in 38 languages. It won France’s Prix Millepages, Italy’s Premio Acerbi, the Irish Post Award for Fiction, the Neilsen Bookscan Golden Book Award, an American Library Association Award, the Hennessy / Sunday Tribune Hall of Fame Award, and the Prix Litteraire Zepter for European Novel of the Year.

He was recently voted ‘Irish Writer of the Decade’ by the readers of Hot Press magazine. He broadcasts a popular weekly radio diary on RTE’s Drivetime With Mary Wilson and writes regularly for The Guardian Review and The Sunday Independent. In 2009 he was the Harman Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at Baruch College, the City University of New York. His most recent novel Ghost Light was published in June 2010 to rave reviews internationally and spent nine weeks as a number one Irish besteller. It was chosen as Dublin’s One City One Book novel for 2010

Banshee Lit: Laura Jane Cassidy/Claire Hennessy/Eimear Ryan
Laura Jane Cassidy is a writer from Co. Kildare, represented by the Darley Anderson Literary Agency. Her first two novels were published by Puffin. She received the 2014 Cecil Day Lewis Literary Bursary Award, and is currently working on her next novel. She gives writing workshops and enjoys volunteering with teenagers in Fighting Words.

Claire Hennessy is a writer, editor, and creative writing facilitator from Dublin. She is the author of several novels for young adults and children; her next YA novel, Nothing Tastes As Good, will be published by Hot Key Books in 2016. She works with Penguin Random House Ireland on children's and YA fiction, and is powered by tea.

Eimear Ryan is an award-winning short story writer from Co. Tipperary. Her fiction has appeared in The Dublin Review, The Stinging Fly, New Irish Writing and the Faber anthology Town & Country. She was previously an editorial assistant for Conjunctions literary journal in New York. She now lives in Cork and works in educational publishing.

The team behind Banshee, Ireland’s newest literary journal, bring you their expertise in writing and publishing, covering everything from what not to do when submitting a short story or poem to a magazine to things to consider when revising a novel or signing a book deal.

Sonny Condell
An integral part of the Irish music scene since the early `70s, a musical career spanning 35 years, from the heady days with “Tír Na nÓg” which landed him on the biggest stages in the world, to the truly fantastic “Scullion”, numerous solo albums, perhaps one of Irelands greatest songwriters, Sonny Condell is the real McCoy.

Sonny Condell's songs are melodic and thoughtful, often with a breeze of jazz or a rhythmic hint of tradiitional music. “Down In The City”, “Teeside”, the Poptastic “Carol”, stunning lyrics, distinctive driving rhythm guitar. A prolific songwriter with 15 albums to his credit.

"Three decades equals a remarkable repertoire in Scullion's world, most of it drawn from the creative genius of Condell, whose subtle lyricism and matchless melody lines bear scant kinship to anyone else on the planet" Siobhán Long -- Irish Times June 2008

Elaine Feeney
Elaine Feeney grew up on a farm in County Galway, where she now lives, and is considered a strong part of contemporary political Irish writers. Feeney was educated at University College Galway, Cork and The University of Limerick and has published three collections of poetry Indiscipline (2007, Maverick Press), Where’s Katie? (2010, Salmon) and The Radio was Gospel (2014, Salmon). Her writing has been published widely in literary magazines, journals and anthologies and translated into many languages. Her next collection, Rise, is forthcoming in 2016 and she is working on a novel.

Catherine Dunne
Catherine Dunne is the author of nine novels including The Things We Know Now, which won the 700th anniversary Giovanni Boccaccio International Prize for Fiction in 2013 and was shortlisted for the Eason Novel of the Year at the Irish Book Awards. She has also published one work of non-fiction: a social history of Irish immigrants in London, called An Unconsidered People.

Catherine’s novels have been short listed for, among others, the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award and the Italian Booksellers’ Prize. Her work has been translated into several languages

She was recently long-listed for the first Laureate for Irish Fiction Award.

Catherine’s latest novel, The Years That Followed, will be published in March 2016 and launched at the Doolin Writers’ Weekend. Foreign rights have already been acquired by Italy, Greece and the Unites States. Catherine Dunne lives in Dublin.

Lia Mills
Lia Mills writes novels, short stories, essays and an occasional blog. Her most recent novel, Fallen, has been selected as the UNESCO Dublin: One City One Book title for 2016. For the first time, Dublin has teamed up with Belfast for a ‘Two Cities One Book’ festival, a partnership between Dublin City Libraries and Libraries NI.

Lia has worked on several public art commissions and as an arts consultant. She teaches aspects of writing, most recently at the Irish Writers’ Centre and at UCD.

She blogs at http://libranwriter.wordpress.com

Dave Lordan
Dave Lordan is a renowned writer, teacher, editor and creativity-in education advocate and the first writer to have won all three of Ireland's national prizes for young poets. Necessary Fiction named him “the most intransigently indefinable, and indispensable, of contemporary writers”, while the Irish Times found his work to be “as brilliant on the page as it must surely be in performance”. His most recent publications are the “preposterously original” short fiction collection First Book of Frags and the popular poetry collection Lost Tribe of the Wicklow Mountains. He is also editor of the acclaimed Young Irelanders anthology of new Irish fiction and in 2016 will edit the Strange Times Strange Tellers multimedia anthology of work by participants in his Experimental Fiction multimedia writing workshop at the Irish Writers Centre in Dublin.

As well as West Cork Literary Festival, Dave recently provided workshops for RTE, the Irish Film Institute, Dublin City Libraries, Ledbury Poetry Festival, Courthouse Arts Centre, The Irish Countrywomen’s Association, Youthreach, Youthspeaks, Children’s Books Ireland and numerous other schools, institutions and festivals. He teaches creative writing at the Irish Writers Centre and the Big Smoke Writing Factory and he lectures on the MA in Poetry Studies at the Mater Dei Institute and at The American College Dublin. He is the researcher for the new RTE Poetry Programme, presented by Rick O’Shea. In recent years Dave has been a front-runner in the emerging and increasingly popular genre of poetry-film and you can check out his latest, Because I'm Human, an anti-bullying poetry film, here.

E.M. Reapy
E.M. Reapy is from Mayo, has an MA in Creative Writing from Queen’s University, Belfast and was the founding editor of wordlegs.com. Her work has been published internationally and she has read at festivals and events in Ireland, the U.K., the U.S., Argentina, Australia and New Zealand. In 2013, she represented Ireland and was listed for the PEN International: New Voices Award. She was one of the writers featured in 'The Long Gaze Back: An Anthology of Irish Women Writers' and she received an Arts Council Literature Bursary to complete her debut novel Red Dirt which will be published by Head of Zeus in June 2016.

Billy Ramsell
Billy was born in Cork in 1977 and educated at the North Monastery and UCC. He has published two collections with the Dedalus Press, Complicated Pleasures in 2007 and The Architect's Dream of Winter in 2013. He lives in Cork where he co-runs an educational publishing company. The Architect's Dream of Winter was shortlisted for the Irish Times Poetry Now Award and Billy was awarded the Chair of Ireland Bursary for 2013 His recent work has appeared in Poetry London, Poetry Review, Poetry, Magma, Poetry Ireland Review and elsewhere. Billy has been invited to read at many festivals and literary events around the world, including Cúirt International Festival of Literature, the Cork Spring Poetry Festival, Poetry Africa in Durban, the Ledbury Poetry Festival in England, Litquake in San Francisco and the Shanghai International Literary Festival and published articles and reviews in The Stinging Fly, Southword, Poetry Ireland, Poetry International and elsewhere.

June Caldwell
June is a journalist, award-winning blogger & fiction writer. Her story SOMAT is published in The Long Gaze Back – An Anthology of Irish Women Writers edited by Sinéad Gleeson/New Island. She’s a prizewinner of The Moth International Short Story Prize (‘Charged language and a ferocious imagination; mad as a bag of spiders and genuine talent’ – judge Mike McCormack). Shortlisted for Lorian Hemingway Short Story Award, RTÉ Guide/Penguin and Over The Edge New Writer of the Year. June is a recipient of a John Hewitt bursary and an Arts Council of Northern Ireland (ACNI) literature award after completing an MA in Creative Writing at Queens’ University, Belfast. Her work has featured at the Italo-Irish Literature Exchange in Verona (May 2012) and she has had stories published in the Stinging Fly, The Moth & RTE.

Neil McCarthy
Neil McCarthy is a poet from West Cork now living in Vienna. His poems have appeared in dozens of international journals and anthologies, been translated into Romanian, Serbian, Czech and Hungarian, and he has been a guest speaker in festivals, libraries, conferences, universities and living rooms in New York, Melbourne, London, Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Los Angeles and now, Doolin. www.neilmccarthypoetry.com

Danielle McLaughlin
Danielle McLaughlin’s stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Irish Times, Southword, The Penny Dreadful, Long Story Short, and in The Stinging Fly. She has won various awards for her short fiction, including the William Trevor/Elizabeth Bowen International Short Story Competition, The Willesden Herald International Short Story Prize, The Merriman Short Story Competition in memory of Maeve Binchy, and the Dromineer Literary Festival Short Story Competition. Danielle was awarded an Arts Council Bursary in 2013. Her debut short story collection, Dinosaurs on Other Planets, was published in 2015 by The Stinging Fly Press. She lives in County Cork with her husband and three young children.

Elizabeth Rose Murray
Elizabeth Rose Murray lives in West Cork. Her debut, The Book of Learning: Nine Lives Trilogy 1 (Mercier Press) has been chosen as the Dublin UNESCO Citywide Read for 2016. Her young adult debut, Caramel Hearts (Alma Books) will be published in March 2016, followed by The Book of Shadows, (Nine Lives Trilogy 2) in September 2016. You can find out more about Elizabeth and her books via her website ermurray.com or on twitter @ERMurray.

Stephen Murray
Stephen Murray is an award winning poet and the director of Inspireland. Since 2007 he has provided workshops to over 30,000 Irish teenagers and adults. A graduate of the Faber Academy, his critically acclaimed debut collection ‘House of Bees’ was published in 2011 by Salmon Poetry, followed by ‘On Corkscrew Hill’ in 2013. His work has featured on BBC1, RTE Television and Radio, TV3, The Irish Times, The Independent, The Examiner, Hot Press, The Columbia Review and The Stinging Fly.

Gerry Harrison
Gerry was born in India, and educated in England. After school he became an actor in theatre, TV and film. He then switched to work as a runner before becoming an Asst Director, gradually climbing the ladder until he became a Producer and Director. While producing he was continually developing proposals and scripts, and began to write himself. He is the author of two books of non-fiction, The Scattering, about post-1945 Irish immigration to London, and To Fight Alongside Friends, the edited diaries of a soldier killed in WW1 and is completing a third, a biography. Gerry opened Banner Books(now Salmon Poetry) in Ennistymon and lives happily here in County Clare. gerryharrison.co.uk.

Anthony Glavin
Anthony Glavin was born in Boston in 1946 of Irish heritage. He has been editor of New Irish Writing (1987-88) and more latterly former Commissioning Editor of New Island Books. His first novel is Nighthawk Alley (Dublin, New Island Books, 1997). His second Novel Colours Other Than Blue (Ward River Press) is due out Spring 2015 Widely anthologized, his story collections are One For Sorrow (Dublin, Poolebeg, 1980); and The Draughtsman and the Unicorn (New Island Books, 1999). He lives in Dublin.

Dermot Bolger
Born in Dublin in 1959, Dermot Bolger is one of Ireland’s best known writers. His novels include The Journey Home, Father’s Music, The Family on Paradise Pier, New Town Soul, The Fall of Ireland and Tanglewood, which was published in 2015. His thirteenth novel, The Lonely Sea and Sky, is published in May 2016.

His first play, The Lament for Arthur Cleary, received the Samuel Beckett Award. His numerous other plays include The Ballymun Trilogy – which charts forty years of life in a Dublin working class suburb – and a stage adaptation of Joyce’s Ulysses which toured China in 2015.

His New and Selected Poems, That Which is Suddenly Precious, was published in the autumn of 2015, He devised the best-selling collaborative novels, Finbar’s Hotel and Ladies Night at Finbar’s Hotel and has edited numerous anthologies, including The Picador Book of Contemporary Irish Fiction. A former Writer Fellow at Trinity College, Dublin and Playwright in Association with the Abbey Theatre, Bolger writes for most of Ireland’s leading newspapers and in 2012 was named Commentator of the Year at the Irish Newspaper awards.

Marianne Slevin
Marianne Slevin is a visual artist, whose practice is concerned with our relationship and interconnection with nature and our environment. Her practice includes but is not limited to painting and drawing and using found objects, site specific works, installation and artists books. Her work features improvisations and explorations of chance using a wide range of materials including ink and oil paint on various surfaces. In some cases Marianne uses the elements such as the wind or a leak in the kitchen window to create the drawings. Other times she devises games of chance, rolling objects that hold meaning for her, like a fortune teller and drawing around them to create a visual map. She often works physically in ways where she has very little control, and the environment she is in, her own body and intuition have a chance to play, rather than the decisions being made only using her head. As well as her own surroundings and everyday life, she is inspired by Eastern Philosophy, particularly Zen and Haiku poetry and philosopher Alan Watts.

Marianne Slevin was born in Co. Meath, Ireland. In 1996 she was awarded a 1st Class Honours Degree in Fine Art - Painting, from Crawford College of Art, Cork. She went on to complete her M.F.A at Winchester College of Art in Barcelona. She is a member of Ground Up Artists Collective and lives in The Secret Gallery Doolin with her Artist husband and their two children.

Kim Hood
Kim Hood grew up in Canada, but now lives in the west of Ireland, with her partner and daughter. Her first novel for young adults, Finding a Voice, was shortlisted for the inaugural YA Book Prize, won a Literacy Association of Ireland merit award and is a White Raven book for 2015/16. She has an eclectic background in education, therapy and social services, which hasn’t helped her one bit in her latest endeavours of small hold farming and running a local newspaper. Plane Jane, her second YA novel will be published in April 2016.

Previous Festivals? Established 2013

2015 - Donal Ryan, Christine Dwyer Hickey, Dave Lordan, workshops from Catherine Dunne, Madeleine D’Arcy, Anthony Glavin, as well as singer songwriter John Spillane, theatre with Peter Sheridan, a workshop with publishing whirlwinds Tramp Press and a plethora of local trad musicians, our own Dooliner Beer and some of North Clare's finest food to keep the whole thing moving.