Literary footnotes: Dublin writers festival launched

ONE NOBEL Laureate assessing the work of another. This is among the many events at next month’s Dublin Writers Festival, whose programme was launched yesterday.

Seamus Heaney will be contributing to a centenary celebration of the work of deceased Nobel laureate Polish-born poet Czeslaw Milosz, about whom Heaney has written. Other poets involved in the celebration are Adam Zagajewski, Dennis O’Driscoll, Julie O’Callaghan and Gerard Smyth.

Travel writer and novelist Paul Theroux, who is now as famous for being the father of documentary maker Louis Theroux as is he for his many books, will be making what the festival describes as “a rare visit”.

Theroux, who turns 70 this year, first came to attention with his 1975 classic and grouchy account of a four-month journey through Asia, The Great Railway Bazaar, when he made train travel, with its attendant assorted cast of passengers, his trademark narrative framework. Since then, there have been several other books based on train journeys, including Riding the Iron Rooster,an account of two years in China; and Dark Star Safari, when he rode trains in sub-Saharan Africa. His latest book, The Tao of Travel,will be published in May.

Other travel writers at the festival are Colin Thubron and television broadcaster and writer Michael Palin, who has been pretty much everywhere including Pole to Poleand Around the World in 80 Days, both of which were television programmes before books.

Paul Harding, who was a surprise winner of the 2010 Pulitzer for Fiction with his debut novel, Tinkers, reads with John Boyne, and also gives a talk on Henry James's The Aspen Papers. Other debut fiction writers are Kevin Barry, John Butler and children's author Anna Carey. Established Irish writers include novelists John Banville, Eoin McNamee and Roddy Doyle. Poets include Michael Longley, Paul Durcan and Jo Shapcott.

Irish Timesarts editor Shane Hegarty will conduct a public interview with journalist and writer Jon Ronson.

In its first visit to the festival, the Sky Arts Book Show will record two events that will later air on the channel.

One discussion will feature novelists Roddy Doyle, Anne Enright and John Boyne. The other will feature Scottish poet and dramatist Liz Lochhead, American-born film director and screenwriter Rebecca Miller and Irish writer Colm Tóibín. The festival runs from May 23rd to 29th.

For more information, visit dublinwritersfestival.com