Books confronting the dark side of family life are nothing new these days, but one certain to attract public interest here this autumn is Death by Heroin: Recovery by Hope by journalist and author Mary Kenny, which will be published by New Island. Last December, her two nephews - brothers Conor and Patrick Kenny - died within three weeks of each other in Dublin of heroin abuse. The tragedy motivated her to write the book, which will be out in October.
In it, Kenny tries to understand what brought her nephews to addiction and death, despite a privileged and loving family background. She has talked to heroin users, the families of those who have died as a result of their addiction and to people who work with addicts.
It won't be an easy read, but it might help remind people that heroin addiction is classless - and more particularly that it's currently making itself more and more at home in a middle-class generation.
TODAY sees the opening of the 10th Edinburgh International Book Festival. During the next 17 days more than 350 authors will flock to a variety of tents in Charlotte Square in the centre of the city. This year's programme is generally accepted as the most diverse and ambitious this decade.
International visitors include Andre Brink this Tuesday, Doris Lessing on Wednesday, Herta Muller on Friday and Vikram Seth on Saturday.
Festival director Faith Liddell, a Scot, is "ever aware of the changing Scotland" and the prestigious PEN Night of Freedom symposium is this year devoted to Scotland & Ire- land and takes place on Tuesday. The line-up includes Eavan Boland, Colum McCann, Gaelic poetry from Rody Gorman and further comment from Scottish novelist/poets Alan Spense and John Burnside.
"The powerful and distinctive new voices of Scotland" that Liddell endorses includes crime writers. Represented will be Ian Rankin and Val McDermid.
All in all more than a 100 Scots feature. Early appearances come from the poets Janet Paisley and Stewart Conn and novelists Isla Dewar and Candia McWilliam. Maybe related to all this thirst-provoking activity is an early evening discussion on Alcohol and Cultural Identity. Soberly discussing same will be columnist Tom Morton, poet Simon Armitage and the quiet man of Russian journalism, Vitali Vitaliev.
IN 1986 Sara Berkeley published Penn, her first book of poetry, when still a young one at school, to considerable acclaim. She went on to publish two more books of poetry and a collection of short stories. Then she seemed to disappear off the scene for a while.
She was in fact in sunny San Francisco, where she has been living for some years now, and writing her first novel, Shadowing Han- nah, which will be published by New Island Books next month. It's about sibling incest.
GOOD news for the Men's Movement: another feminist is beginning to think that things have gone too far and maybe men are getting a raw deal after all. We've had Erin Pizzy and Fay Weldon treading this controversial ground. Now Susan Faludi enters the arena. It seems like only yesterday that Faludi, cast in the role of avenging angel, was crisscrossing the US preaching the gospel outlined in her book Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women. Men, she felt, resented and were resistant to the gains made by feminism and the result was a concerted backlash against all the gains women had made.
Anyway, nearly a decade on, Faludi's Stiffed: Scenes from the Betrayal of the Modern Man will be published by Chatto and Windus in October. Subject matter, as described by publishers: how the Backlash author now argues that men are being unjustly treated by society. Should be interesting.
Meanwhile, one of the real mothers of it all, Betty Friedan, is enduring her own purgatory with the recent publication in the US of Betty Friedan: Her Life by Judith Adler Hennessee. The flaws and faults are all there, right down to the time she called a meeting of feminist organisers in her New York apartment - shocking most of them by having a black maid in white uniform flying around serving refreshments. However, now approaching 80, she is said to be a "sweeter, calmer, happier person". No one, however, is doubting Friedan's major role on the feminist front as the whole plot gets reassessed at century's end.
THE Irish Writer's Centre has just published its annual programme of creative writing courses. On offer are weekend sessions, as well as daytime and evening classes.
Among the listings are: Alison Dye's oneday workshop on Starting a Novel; Moya Cannon's weekend course on poetry; and Laurence Foster's six sessions on writing for radio. The Society of Irish Playwrights is also running an eight-session course at the IWC on scriptwriting for TV and radio.
Participants work on two guided projects; a script for radio and the treatment of a story for TV. The course also includes a recording session in an RTE studio.
Among other writers giving courses are children's writer, Siobhan Parkinson, recently-published novelist Anthony Glavin and poet Pat Boran.
For details, phone 01 8721302 or email iwc@iol.ie
TIME to sharpen your pens and your wits. Dun Laoghaire library is running an international poetry competition for scribes of the very young and not so young variety. The library is working in conjunction with overseas contacts, who will publicise the event locally. Hence the competition will be in nine languages: Irish, English, German, French, Spanish, Welsh, Scots Gallic and Swedish. Categories are under-11, under-16 and adult, with first prizes of up to £400.
Entry forms available from the International Poetry Competition, PO Box 6983, Blackrock, Co Dublin. Completed entries should be sent to the same address. The closing date is October 9th.
Sadbh