The seventh Scriobh literary festival, next month, brings internationally known writers like novelist Julian Barnes, poet Paul Muldoon and American Richard Zimler to Sligo. There they will read and discuss their work alongside local writers.
Announcing the programme for the festival in Sligo last week, the director of the Yeats Summer School, Prof George Watson, said that in the past Irish literary culture had been predominantly oral.
"Writing was sneezed at in the 19th century. It can no longer be sneezed at, with four Nobel Prize winners in this century, as well as a few also-rans like Joyce," he said. "It is appropriate that a town so associated with one of these Nobel laureates, Yeats, should have this festival."
He pointed out this was emphatically not just an Irish festival, but a pluralist one. "But it would have been of interest to that indefatigable nurturer of Irish talent, Yeats, that so many young Irish writers will be present," he added.
The festival runs from September 14th to 17th.
