This page is currently being updated as we receive confirmations, so please check back regularly for new events. Tickets will be available soon.
Joseph O’Connor is a novelist, screenwriter, playwright and broadcaster. He is the author of nine novels including Star of the Sea, Ghost Light and his latest, Shadowplay. Among his awards are the Prix Zepter for European Novel of the Year, France’s Prix Millepages, Italy’s Premio Acerbi, an American Library Association Award and the Irish Pen Award for Outstanding Achievement in Literature. His work has been translated into forty languages. In 2014 he was appointed Frank McCourt Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Limerick.
Joseph O’Connor will be will be in conversation at Nenagh Arts Centre on Thursday 3 October with Paula Shields.
Paul McNamara was the 2018 Dromineer and Nenagh Literary festival Writer in Residence. During his time at the festival he began writing the poetry play Hello My Name is Single which would go on the win the 2019 Limerick Fringe Spirit of the Fringe Award. His poetry show Quarter Life Crises (2018) featured at Limerick Fringe, Galway Fringe and Galway Culture night and won the Galway Fringe Spoken Word Award. Paul is a two-time All-Ireland Spoken Word Slam Runner-up (2015, 2016), a former Munster Slam Champion (2016) and Yeats’ Tower Slam Champion (2016) and winner of Limerick’s Got Talent (2015). He work has been featured on TV3 and RTÉ Radio and published widely. He spent the past summer studying in Columbia University in New York City funded by an Erasmus+ Grant.
Paul McNamara will be leading workshops for local Transition Year students at Lough Derg Yacht Club on Friday 4 October. 9am-3pm
Jane Clarke’s first collection, The River, was published in 2015 to public and critical acclaim. Her second collection, When the Tree Falls will be published in September 2019 and her illustrated poems, All the Way Home, was published in April 2019.
The River was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje Prize, given for a distinguished work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry evoking the spirit of a place. In 2016 Jane won the Hennessy Literary Award for Emerging Poetry and the inaugural Listowel Writers’ Week Poem of the Year Award. She was awarded an Arts Council of Ireland Literary Bursary in 2017.
Jane grew up on a farm in Roscommon and now lives with her partner in County Wicklow, where she combines writing with her work as creative writing tutor and group facilitator.
Jane will lead a poetry masterclass for adults at Lough Derg Yacht Club on Saturday 5 October.
Poetry Masterclass: What makes a good poem? Through a combination of writing exercises, inputs and discussion, acclaimed poet Jane Clarke will lead this masterclass on what makes a good poem. Participants are invited to bring along two poems: one poem they love by another poet and one poem of their own that they’d like to workshop. Poets will go away with new work and ways of improving their work.
Jane will also be reading and discussing her poetry with Donal Ryan at Nenagh Arts Centre on Saturday 5 October at 8pm.
Siobhan Mac Mahon is a poet and performer with an MA in Creative Writing from University College Dublin. She has been writing and performing her poetry for many years in England, Ireland and across Europe. Siobhan won the WOMAD Festival poetry slam in 2017 and was poet in residence for The International Permaculture Conference in 2016. She has been published both online and in print, most recently in a Bloodaxe/ Raving Beauties Anthology, Hallelujah for 50 Foot Women. She was shortlisted for the Hennessey Award for New Irish Writing 2019.
She is actively involved in the “100 Thousand Poets for Change” worldwide movement and runs creative writing workshops in a wide range of diverse communities and settings.
Siobhan Mac Mahon will be leading one of our annual workshops with Transition Year Students and will be reading from her work in our Café Trail on Saturday 5 October.
Gráinne Higgins began playing cello at the age of nine as a pupil of Tara Lee Byrne at the Munster Music Academy in Killaloe. She is currently studying with Christopher Marwood at The Cork School of Music. She has just completed her Leaving Certificate and is looking forward to continuing her cello studies at CSM as a full-time student. She is a member of Limerick Symphony Orchestra and has performed in chamber and competitive settings too, most notably with Quartet an Ghleanna, under the direction of Katherine Hunka. She is also a current member of the Irish Youth Choir.
Gráinne Higgins will be playing her cello to accompany singer, Dylan Rooney, at Nenagh Castle, on Sunday 6 October.