Getting on with it

Despite all the current upheaval it’s great to see South Dublin Libraries using technology to bring resources to emerging writers. I’m delighted to be hosting 8 half-hour one-to-one sessions with emerging fiction writers later in April. The closing date to apply to be one of the 8 is Sunday 12th April so get going. Full details available here

I was of course disappointed not to get to read at North West Words in Letterkenny on 26th March, but I do hope to get there later in the year when things have settled down.

Despite all the worry and the strange atmosphere out there people have been quick to use technology and social media in a positive way as a means of keeping in touch while keeping our distance. The Holding Cell is a great resource dreamed up by writing couple Rozz and Simon Lewis: virtual literary readings by writers during the Covid19 Pandemic . They have had some excellent writers reading their work over the past few weeks, including Danielle McLaughlin, William Wall, Belinda McKeown, Colin Barrett and Madeleine Darcy, to name only a few. I was delighted to read some poems also and you can see that reading here.

I hope to do a fiction reading later in the month also. In the meantime you should sit back and enjoy the wealth of talent already available at https://www.theholdingcell.eu/readers/

I hope you can use some of your enforced home time to engage with the written word over the coming weeks. As well as attending virtual readings, I’ve been reading some excellent poetry and thoroughly enjoyed Christine Dwyer Hickey’s novel Tatty (2020 Dublin One City One Book Choice), which is one of the best examples of the use of voice I’ve ever come across in a novel. I highly recommend it to everyone. At the moment I’m re-reading At Swim Two Birds by Flann O’Brien. So don’t just rely on the TV and your phone. As Flann’s famous Uncle would say: “tell me this, do you ever open a book at all?”