Well known authors Roddy Doyle, Emma Donoghue, Colum McCann and John Banville are among the big names who will take part in the Irish Cultural Centre’s Digital Literary Festival which starts next week.
Described as a celebration of contemporary Irish writing, the ICC Digital Literary Festival will see five weeks of interviews broadcast on ICC Digital every Sunday and Wednesday.
Authors interviewed will also include Donal Ryan, Sinead Gleeson, Dermot Bolger, Carlo Gébler and Michelle Gallen.
The festival will form part of the centre’s 25th anniversary celebrations.
The festival begins on Sunday with an interview with Roddy Doyle who is well known for books such as The Commitments, The Snapper and The Van, known as The Barrytown Trilogy and all of which have been made into films. He released his latest book Love recently.
The festival will continue with Emma Donoghue who is known for writing Room which was adapted into an Oscar-nominated film by Lenny Abrahamson in 2015. Her latest novel, set in the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 really resonated due to its release during the pandemic.
London-based Sinéad Gleeson is known for Constellations, a collection of personal essays which won an Irish Book Award last year.
Donal Ryan won the Guardian First Book Award for The Spinning Heart which was also longlisted for the Booker Prize.
Dermot Bolger’s work is often concerned with the articulation of the experiences of working-class characters who feel alienated from society and is often set in Finglas.
One of Ireland’s best known authors, Colum McCann has been nominated for the Booker Prize and taken accolades like America’s National Book Award, Irish Novel of the Year, the Rooney Prize and the International Dublin Literary Award.
The Dublin author’s latest novel Apeirogon tells the story of the unlikely friendship between two real-life fathers on opposite sides of the Israel-Palestine conflict but united by their grief.
Liz Nugent won two An Post Irish Book Awards for her third novel Skin Deep: Irish Independent Crime Fiction Book of the Year and RTÉ Radio 1’s The Ryan Tubridy Show Listeners’ Choice Award. She has also won the Ireland AM Crime Fiction Award at the Bord Gáis Irish Book Awards in 2014 and been longlisted for the Dublin International Literary Award twice.
Carlo Gébleris the son of Country Girls author Edna O’Brien. Carlo grew up in London and is also a television director.
Michelle Gallen came to prominence this year when her debut novel Big Girl Small Town was desceribed as ‘Milkman meets Derry Girls and marked her out as a new literary star.
The final interview in the series will be with John Banville.
Banville has won the 1976 James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the 2005 Booker Prize, the 2011 Franz Kafka Prize, the 2013 Austrian State Prize for European Literature and the 2014 Prince of Asturias Award for Literature. He is an elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2007.
He also publishes crime novels as Benjamin Black including those that feature Quirke which has been adapted for the BBC with Gabriel Byrne in the title role.
In a statement the centre said: “All broadcasts will be available to the public free of charge. However, donations are invited to help support the ICC’s ongoing cultural programme and educational activities.”
