Writing and reading are such quasi-solitary acts that a "literary festival" is almost a contradiction in terms. Yet while Sligo's Scriobh, now in its fifth year, is not the kind of event that sees every child in the town with a painted face and hippy hairbraids, it has gathered much prestige and goodwill, and there is always a solid hard-core attendance.
Much of this relates to the calibre of guest writers, indeed those living in the immediate hinterland. This year's guests include Cees Nooteboom, the Dutch literary travel-writer who has adopted Santiago de Compostella as his spiritual home, and novelist/playwright, Sue Townsend, who has moved on from her Adrian Mole sagas. Conducting workshops, as well as readings, are the prolific children's writer, Michael Scott, and Anne McCaffrey, no stranger on the sci-fi circuit with her Dragonworld series. Scriobh is also a platform for poets from the regions, such as Teresa Lally and Justin McCarthy.
The healthy, £1,000 short story prize, named in honour of Martin Healy (the late editor of the Force 10 journal) will be awarded on Sunday, while on Friday afternoon, there will, hopefully, be a few knives drawn at the forum on literary criticism, featuring Tom Kilroy, Keith Hopper (one-time script-reader for Druid, who can take some credit for "discovering" Martin McDonagh) and Eileen Battersby from The Irish Times.
Another highpoint is the launch of the 10th issue of Force 10, at the Model Arts Centre on Sunday. Founded in 1989 by novelist Dermot Healy and the local Markievicz writers' group, it's one of the country's most idiosyncratic and unpredictable, quality literary journals, with its mix of short fiction and poetry, black and white photography (often featuring the sublimely gloomy work of John Minihan) and, along with the odd essay or opinion piece, interviews with local people, telling their own stories - always depicting a bemusing and elastic Sligo of the imagination.
The local interviews, written as first-person testimonies, are often poignant, such as the one in this issue by the late Martin Duffy, a former farmer who died recently in the Sligo old people's home, Nazareth House, where he lived with his wife. Far more shocking is the vicious abuse at the hands of the "kinky" brothers of St John of God, described by Timothy Dunne, who is interviewed by the poet, Martina Evans, in the Irish Centre in London.
It has been Dermot Healy's practice lately to hand over to guest editors, and while Issue Nine was edited by Molly McCloskey, an American writer living in Sligo (she submits the longest fiction piece), the new issue is edited by film-maker Bob Quinn.
The mainstay features are all there, although it's interesting the way that Quinn combines photographs and text. He has aimed for more striking, narrative-saturated photographs, even if some are purely humorous (the five jubbly pairs of buttocks in Jill Jenning's Weekend In Rathlin), or Mark Granier's one of the doctored evangelistic billboard: "What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own socks?"
Apart from Leland Bardwell, Hugo Hamilton, Desmond Fennell, Lelia Doolan, Rita Ann Higgins, Paul Durcan (remembering the late Lar Cassidy), Padraig Standun, Tom McIntyre and Gerald Davis, much of the newer writing is a mix of the personal and ecological/nature-writing (particularly the poetry).
But Quinn has introduced a new element of biting polemic. "I framed 33 rhetorical questions and sent them out to people, mostly people I know, so that I could make certain assumptions about their responses. In the end, I only got 23 responses."
Thus Jobst Graeve pens a polite piece: "Why Aosdana, meaning well, fails artists (but where would we be without it?)" on how Joyce would never have made it into Aosdana's ranks. Far saltier is Jurgen Schneider's "Why Joyce's pox has not been popularised until now". There is also a typically interesting piece from Nina Fitzpatrick: "Why there is a future for hatred".
Bob Quinn says that he sent: "Why RTE is a successful failure" around the station, yet nobody responded. Nor did the Germans whom he challenged with: "Why it is quite nice to own Ireland".
As an intended companion piece to Eugene McCabe's blistering, mad-Monaghan, "Why true paralysis exists only in Dublin", he invited Mike Murphy to submit something on "Why I am merely a symptom of that paralysis". Understandably enough, no answer came.
Although he had to wade through mountains of submissions from all over the world, Quinn seems to have taken real delight and pride in the task. "Force 10 has long been my favourite mag in this country, next to Phoenix. I just hope I didn't f--- it up completely."
Not a chance.
Scriobh runs from Thursday 17th September to Sunday 20th. Further information from the Model Arts Centre, tel: 071-41405.
