A literary round-up

If you’re at Dublin Writers Festival . . .

It isn’t just the queen of England and the president of the United States who are brightening up the month in Ireland. All next week a host of major writers, international and Irish, will be crisscrossing the capital from venue to venue during Dublin Writers Festival, which starts on Monday. Paul Theroux, Paul Durcan, John Burnside, Colm Tóibín, Colin Thubron and Paul Harding, the first debut novelist in more than a decade to win a Pulitzer Prize, for last year’s Tinkers, are among the line-up.

you can catch the Pulitzer winner Paul Harding . . .

As well as reading from their work, many participants are taking part in interesting dialogues: Harding will give two free workshops on writing fiction while he's here. Next Saturday he will discuss a key work by a favourite author – Henry James's novella The Aspern Papers– at noon at Dublin Writers Museum, for which the 50 attendees must read the book in advance. The next day, also at noon, at the Irish Writers' Centre, Eoin McNamee will explore Don DeLillo's Libra,about events leading up to the assassination of JKF in 1963.

or the Oscar winner Jean-Claude Carrière . . .

Another discussion centres on why we continue to revere books in the middle of the digital revolution. The spark for this is This Is Not the End of the Book,just published by Harvill Secker. The book is a conversation, curated by the writer and editor Jean-Philippe de Tonnac, between the critic and Name of the Roseauthor Umberto Eco and the French Oscar-winning writer Jean-Claude Carrière. Carrière, who recently collaborated with Michael Haneke on the award-winning film The White Ribbon,will take part in the Dublin event, called On Books, with John Banville, tomorrow week at 3pm at Fallon Byrne.

debate the future of publishers . . .

And what about publishers? They’re the focus of the Indie Scene, a day-long seminar on international independent publishing. Run in association with Melbourne Writers Festival and Melbourne Unesco City of Literature, this takes place next Saturday at the City Wall Space at Dublin Civic Offices. Questions to be tackled include whether the dominance of the multinational is failing to meet the needs of readers and writers, and whether corporate culture stifles creativity and diversity of opinion, culminating in another question: if so, can a vibrant and innovative independent publishing scene better deliver our reading fix?

or hear Jo Shapcott and Hisham Matar

The pairings are among the most interesting aspect of this festival. Love, Art, Mortality, next Saturday at 3pm at the Samuel Beckett Theatre, sees the poet Michael Longley on stage with Jo Shapcott (top), who won this year's Costa Book of the Year Award for her collection Of Mutability,written after her diagnosis of breast cancer. Later that day, at 5pm, at the same venue, Dermot Healy, whose novel Long Time, No Seecame out last month, appears with the Libyan novelist Hisham Matar (above), who is a passionate commentator on the Libyan uprising. Matar will also debate the role of the artist in the face of social and political flux. That's tomorrow week at 1pm at Fallon Byrne. dublinwritersfestival.com