The 30th Writers' Week festival gets under way in Listowel, Co Kerry, tomorrow. The north Kerry town and its hinterland know a lot about writing and writers. Down the years, the festival has blazed a trail that is the envy of many a similar-sized town.
While concentrating on excellence, the festival, nevertheless, has managed to combine what is good in Irish letters with a sense of fun. It is serious but not highbrow, thought provoking but not over-fussy. The millennium year festival opens, then, with a definite sense of past achievements and a belief in itself.
This year, visitors to the festival will find something entirely new. Now almost finished and due to open in mid-August, the Kerry Literary and Cultural Centre will provide Listowel with a fitting focal point.
Listowel and its environs, after all, boast a 20th-century literary tradition that starts with George Fitzmaurice, whose first play, The Country Hairdresser, was produced by the Abbey in 1907. Since then, the locality has raised the likes of John B. Keane, who has delighted generations of Irish audiences; Maurice Walsh, author of The Quiet Man; Brendan Kennelly, poet and raconteur; and Bryan MacMahon, the extraordinary schoolmaster whose prolific output, as novelist, playwright, folklorist, short story writer and poet, ended just before his death when, aged 88, he published a short story collection appropriately titled A Final Fling.
MacMahon was laid to rest in his beloved Listowel on a grey December day in 1998 with all the respect the town could offer. Together with the other famous literary sons of Listowel, he will be remembered in the new centre, where rooms will be dedicated to the memory of each of the five writers. The centre, which will cost about £1.2 million, will be located in a restored Georgian building. Once it is formally up and running, Listowel will receive full heritage town status.
One of the guiding lights behind the project is the Fine Gael TD, Mr Jimmy Deenihan, who believes that the tourism benefits to Listowel will be substantial. The planners predict that some 15,000 visitors will come to the centre in the first year, with the figure rising to 25,000 in the fifth year.
Tomorrow evening, the President, Mrs McAleese, will officially open proceedings with a gala awards ceremony, during which more than £14,000 in prize money will be distributed.
The three shortlisted writers for the Kerry Ingredients Book of the Year Award will be first to share centre stage. The adjudicators are Bruce Arnold and Ita Daly. The novels are: The Keepers of Truth by Michael Collins; Dark Hollow by John Connolly; and The Pretender by Mary Morrissy. Without giving anything away, Bruce Arnold said: "As was the case last year, the degree of energy, the range of subject matter, the evidence of confident, aggressive writing, was present in everything we looked at." David Marcus will present a cheque for £1,500 to the winner of the Bryan MacMahon Short Story Award and a similar cheque will go to the winner of the Eamon Keane Full-Length Play Award.
In the poetry section, £500 will be awarded to the author of the winning single poem and a further £500 to the author of a collection. Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill will present a further £500 for the Duais Bhoird na Gaeilge do Saothar as Gaeilge. The Prison Education Service has offered a £450 prize for writing in prisons. There is also a creative writing competition for young people ranging in age from under nine to 18. As part of their prize, work by the winners and shortlisted writers will be included in an Ashford Press publication which will be on sale during the festival.
Night-time entertainment during the festival is just about everywhere and, between all that, on Thursday, Bruce Arnold will give the Dr Seamus Wilmot Memorial Lecture at St John's Theatre and Arts Centre, taking as his theme "The End of Nationalism". The winners of the various literary competitions will read from their works later in the day and, in the afternoon, members of Listowel Urban District Council will gather to name Listowel's new inner relief road in honour of John B. Keane.
Rory O'Connor, formerly of RTE, will launch his new book, Gander at the Gate, and Michael Cunningham, who won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for his novel, The Hours, will discuss his writing. There will be an exhibition of Una Lynch Heaton's art and an exhibition of wood carvings by Ian Norbury.
On Friday, lovers of the thriller genre will have an opportunity to delve even deeper into its mysteries when John Connolly, author of Every Dead Thing and Dark Hollow, and the American thriller writer, Lawrence Block, whose crime fiction includes Hit Man, Everybody Dies and The Burglar series, meet at the new cultural centre.
If you want to find out how to get started in the first place, writers Tom Nestor, Daren O'Shaughnessy, Michael Collins and Gaye Shortland will be at the same venue discussing the glory and the pain of it all.
Theatre, film and comedy are also on offer. And just to remind everyone that life outside Listowel goes on apace, Saturday will kick off with a debate on "Corruption is at the Core of the Irish State". Charlie Bird and Des Peelo will be among those involved.
As well as all this, writer Colm Toibin will be interviewed, there will be an historical and literary tour of the area and Stage Left Theatre of Listowel will present The Diary of Anne Frank.
The hectic week comes to a close on Sunday, June 4th, and, by then, an expected 1,000 visitors to the town should be well satisfied.