ILFDublin Podcast International Literature Festival Dublin

The ILFD podcast is back! For our final episode of 2023, as many of us head home for the winter holidays, we're listening back to Kirsty Bell discuss her book 'The Undercurrents', an exploration of the city she calls home -- Berlin.
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Kirsty Bell’s 'The Undercurrents' is a story of Berlin, fusing memoir and criticism through a succession of lives and experiences grounded in one historic building by the Landwehr Canal. Both a cultural history of Berlin, and a portrait of artists that have inhabited this beguiling city, Bell’s poetic work, reveals layers of history and the centrality of landscape to the human soul. A book which reflects our contemporary fascination with urban places, and explores ideas of belonging, Kirsty will be in conversation with the critic Helen Meany.
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Kirsty Bell is a British-American writer and art critic, a prolific figure in contemporary art production. She lives in Berlin.
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‘As in other classics of urban discovery, the personal becomes universal, and the past that demands to live in the present is revealed like a shining new reef. As we return, time and again, to the solitary figure at the window’— Iain Sinclair on The Undercurrents
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Presented in association with the Goethe Institut in Ireland at the 2022 International Literature Festival Dublin.

The ILFD podcast is back! In case you missed it, this year's Booker Prize winner is Irish author Paul Lynch — we thought there would be no better time to listen back to his 2013 visit to the festival.
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Dublin Writers Festival brings together two emerging Irish novelists whose distinctive prose style and strong sense of place has marked them out as writers to watch.

'John the Revelator', Peter Murphy’s “remarkable debut” (The Observer) about the frustrations of a provincial adolescence, was met with instant acclaim and shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award and the Kerry Group Fiction Award. A musician and long-time contributor to Hot Press, Murphy’s prose is celebrated for its lyricism and rhythmic power, and it’s fitting that the idea for his new novel came from an interview with the Manic Street Preachers. 'Shall We Gather at the River' introduces Enoch O’Reilly, an Elvis impersonator and ‘radiovangelist’ in Murn, Co. Wexford, a small town threatened by a great flood. Mixing dark themes with surprising comic turns, 'Shall We Gather at the River' is a compelling follow-up from an extraordinary talent.

Film critic Paul Lynch’s debut novel 'Red Sky in Morning' has created quite a stir in the publishing world. Inspired by a horrific incident in Philadelphia in 1832 in which 57 Irish railroad workers were killed, the novel tells the story of Coll Coyle, who flees his home in Inishowen, Donegal after killing a man, and is pursued all the way to America, where a greater tragedy awaits. Written in a taut, lyrical prose reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy and set against the epic backdrops of Donegal and Pennsylvania, 'Red Sky in Morning' marks the emergence of an exciting new talent.
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International Literature Festival Dublin is a Dublin City Council Initiative kindly supported by the Arts Council. Find out more at ilfdublin.com

The ILFD podcast is back! On Monday 20 November, we celebrated World Children's Day, so today we're listening back to an event with one of our favourite children's authors — Eoin Colfer. From the 2023 edition of the festival.

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Whether he’s cloud gazing or saving the world, author Eoin Colfer has so many stories up his sleeve, it’s a wonder they don’t all fall out! Expect stellar storytelling and endless jokes as we get inside the mind of the mastermind behind the criminal escapades of Artemis Fowl, the heartwarming story of Starr in Little Big Sister, and so much more.

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Eoin Colfer is a Wexford-born writer. He published his first book, Benny and Omar in 1998, and hasn’t stopped since! His now infamous Artemis Fowl series continues apace and he loves collaborating with artists and illustrators on picture books and graphic novels. He was Ireland’s Children’s Laureate between 2014 and 2016, and still wears the medal, even in the bath.

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International Literature Festival Dublin is a Dublin City Council Initiative kindly supported by the Arts Council. Find out more at ilfdublin.com

The ILFD podcast is back! Award-winning writer Neil Gaiman celebrates his birthday later this week, so let's listen back to his last visit to ILFD in 2018.
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What doesn’t Neil Gaiman write? One of the greatest living storytellers, he is the author of short fiction, novels, comic books, graphic novels, audio theatre, and movies, including The Sandman comic book series, Stardust, American Gods, and Coraline. Among many, many awards, he has won both the Newbery and Carnegie Medals.

Described by the Guardian as a ‘a thesaurus of myth’, his book Norse Mythology is a suspenseful and dazzling retelling of the Norse myths. Enjoy an evening with the man who said, ‘stories are incredibly long- lived... We have children of flesh and blood... but we also have children of stories, and that’s immortality, of a kind’!

Chaired by journalist and broadcaster Patrick Freyne.
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‘I don’t think I’m mainstream. I think what I am is lots and lots of different cults. And when you get lots and lots of small groups who like you a lot, they add up to a big group without ever actually becoming mainstream.’ - Neil Gaiman in The Guardian
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International Literature Festival Dublin is a Dublin City Council Initiative kindly supported by the Arts Council. Find out more at ilfdublin.com

The ILFD podcast is back! With Halloween just around the corner, let's listen back to authors Kirsty Logan & Anya Bergman talking all things witches with moderator Sarah Maria Griffin. Part of the 2023 edition of ILFD.

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How far would you go for justice? In two powerful additions to the witchlit canon, Kirsty Logan and Anya Bergman dig into the painful realities of life in the shadow of the witch trials.

The past few years has seen a blossoming of witch stories, and it’s not difficult to see why this period in European history has proven such a rich vein. These stories pitch characters on the fringes of society – through poverty, queerness or plain weirdness – against social forces beyond their control, and the extraordinary measures they must take for their freedom.

Kirsty Logan has become a leading light in Scotland’s weird gothic resurgence, and her third novel, Now She is Witch, follows unlikely allies Lux and Else on the path of vengeance for the execution of Lux’s mother. In Bergman’s debut novel, The Witches of Vardø, the teenage Ingeborg still has hopes of rescuing her mother from an island fortress, but like Lux and Else, she must also learn painful lessons about the needs of the many, and her personal quest for justice.

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Kirsty Logan is a fiction writer, book reviewer, freelance editor and writing mentor based in Glasgow. She is currently working on a short musical, a short story collection, and a very long novel.

Anya Bergman is resident in Ireland, is currently undertaking a PhD by Published Works at Edinburgh Napier University, and working on her next novel.

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‘Anya Bergman summons a historic witch trial with breathtaking detail and immediacy’ ― Hannah Kent (Burial Rites; Devotion)

'Kirsty Logan is one of the darkest and most playful of writers working right now' ― Stylist, *Books to Look Out For 2023*

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Presented with support from Scottish Books International

International Literature Festival Dublin is a Dublin City Council Initiative kindly supported by the Arts Council. Find out more at ilfdublin.com

The ILFD podcast is back! Kicking off with a listen back to Irish writer and comedian Marise Gaughan talking about her book 'Trouble' for the 25th anniversary edition of the festival in 2022.

CONTENT WARNING: This episode contains strong language and mentions of suicide, sex, and substance abuse; it may not be appropriate for young listeners.

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Comedian extraordinaire (her words) Marise Gaughan invites you to forget your comfort zone ever existed …

This event doesn’t fit neatly into any category currently known to humanity – but then, neither does Marise Gaughan’s darkly honest and excruciatingly funny form of comedy. With the release of her brutally life-affirming memoir 'Trouble', Marise is in the mood to tell you some tales. Part cutting-edge comedy, part book discussion, expect a decent amount of uncomfortable stories, definitely some questions, maybe even some answers.

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Marise Gaughan is an Irish comedian based in London, dabbling mostly in pain porn comedy (a phrase she should trademark). Her debut show Drowning premiered at the Dublin Fringe Festival where it was nominated for two awards. Marise is fine about not winning either of these awards. She has a weekly radio column on Lyric.fm and is a contributor to The Journal and the Irish Times.

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“Provocative, insightful, and often uncomfortable, but uncomfortable in a good way. When Gaughan interrogates her own personal experiences her scalpel sharp, dark comedy is at its most brilliant best, disturbing you right out of your comfort zone.” – The Arts Review

“Raw, brutal and life-affirming – Marise has written a hugely important book that is as entertaining as it is illuminating” – Sara Pascoe

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International Literature Festival Dublin is a Dublin City Council Initiative kindly supported by the Arts Council. Find out more at https://ilfdublin.com