Poetry Ireland: The Rising Generation
Since 1981, Poetry Ireland Review has championed the work of both established and emerging Irish poets. The new issue, The Rising Generation, released 100 years after the poets’ revolution that helped found the Republic, focuses on work by 36 of the most exciting new voices, offering a tantalising glimpse of what we can expect from Irish poetry in the near future. To mark the launch, Vona Groarke (editor of Poetry Ireland Review, and an acclaimed poet in her own right) gathers a selection of featured poets – including Tara Bergin, Martin Dyar and Rebecca O’Connor – to read and discuss their work.
Presented in association with Poetry Ireland
[cta headline=”Sat 21 May | 12pm | Main Space ” buttontext=”Book Now” buttonlink=”httpss://smockalley.ticketsolve.com/shows/873552665/events”] Tickets €10/8[/cta]
Maylis de Kerangal
Many novelists have explored the territory of a teenager’s heart, but the heart in question is usually a metaphor. In Mend the Living, the astonishing new novel from Maylis de Kerangal, it is real. Simon Limbeau is a typical energetic teenager, but when he joins his friends for a surfing expedition, he sets in train a tragedy that leaves his parents with a terrible decision. Longlisted for this year’s International Man Booker Prize, Mend the Living is a towering achievement from one of France’s most audacious prose stylists. The event will be chaired by journalist Eileen Battersby.
Presented in association with the Embassy of France in Ireland.
“a searing, unforgettable read”
Eileen Battersby on Mend the Living
“I’ve seldom read a more moving book … when the book ends, the reader feels bereft … One longs for more.”
The Guardian on Mend the Living
[cta headline=”Sat 21 May | 2pm | Main Space” buttontext=”Book Now” buttonlink=”httpss://smockalley.ticketsolve.com/shows/873552667/events” ] Tickets €10/8[/cta]
Deborah Levy
“angry and uninhibited, Levy’s prose throbs its way into the imagination”
The Observer
It takes a special kind of writer to work across genres with equal success, but Deborah Levy is a unique talent. She began her career as a playwright in the 1980s, but her restless curiosity and passion for experiment has led her to create an astonishingly diverse body of work including poetry, radio drama, essays, criticism, short stories and novels like Swimming Home, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2012. Her new novel, Hot Milk, explores the relationship between a woman and her mother, who is suffering from a mysterious illness in a dreamlike Spanish village.
[cta headline=”Sat 21 May | 4pm | Main Space” buttontext=”Book Now” buttonlink=”httpss://smockalley.ticketsolve.com/shows/873552668/events” ]Tickets €10/8[/cta]
Chris Kraus
Autobiography, fiction, essay? When I Love Dick was published in the US back in 1997, readers weren’t sure what to make of it. But over the last 20 years the ‘novel’, like Kraus herself, has acquired an army of devoted fans. For one thing, it’s very funny. I Love Dick tells the story of ‘Chris’, a ‘failed’ video artist who falls for, and writes a series of love letters to, her husband’s friend Dick (based on real-life cultural theorist Dick Hebdige). In the wake of the (long overdue) UK publication, Chris Kraus comes to Dublin to discuss her startlingly original take on femininity, desire and the epistolary novel in the company of journalist and broadcaster Sinéad Gleeson.
“a whole generation of writers owes her”
The Guardian
[cta headline=”Sat 21 May | 6pm | Main Space” buttontext=”Book Now” buttonlink=”httpss://smockalley.ticketsolve.com/shows/873552669/events” ]Tickets €12/10[/cta]
Lionel Shriver
Since We Need to Talk About Kevin, her dazzling novel about the mother of a high school murderer, won the Orange Prize in 2005 and catapulted her to international fame, Lionel Shriver has continued her fearless exploration of some of the biggest questions of our time. From illness in So Much for That to love in The Post-Birthday World and terrorism in The New Republic, Shriver skewers her targets with wit, style and intelligence. Her bold new novel, The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047, is no exception, charting the disintegration of one affluent family as financial crisis engulfs an America of the near future.
The event is chaired by writer Cathy Rentzenbrink.
“one of the most magnetically compelling writers working today”
The Wall Street Journal
[cta headline=”Sat 21 May | 8pm | Main Space” buttontext=”Book Now” buttonlink=”httpss://smockalley.ticketsolve.com/shows/873552670/events” ]Tickets €12/10[/cta]
Cathy Rentzenbrink & Decca Aitkenhead
ILF Dublin brings together two memoirists whose work explores very different kinds of loss. In All At Sea, Guardian journalist Decca Aitkenhead tells the remarkable story of her relationship with her husband, who drowned on holiday while saving their four-year-old son. Cathy Rentzenbrink was a teenager when her brother was knocked down by a hit-and-run driver and left in a ‘vegetative’ state, and her book The Last Act of Love details her attempts to come to terms with the tragedy with unflinching honesty and rare warmth.
“a memoir like no other”
Andrew Marr on All At Sea
“I never knew a story of grief could have so much joy in it”
Nina Stibbe on The Last Act of Love
[cta headline=”Sun 22 May | 2pm | Main Space” buttontext=”Book Now” buttonlink=”httpss://smockalley.ticketsolve.com/shows/873552671/events”]Tickets €10/8[/cta]
Marcus du Sautoy
The trumpet-playing surfer Marcus du Sautoy might be ‘the world’s least likely maths professor’ (The Guardian), but over the last decade he has done more than any mathematician before him to transform public attitudes to maths. Through books, TV series, radio programmes and public lectures, Du Sautoy’s infectious enthusiasm, coupled with a rare ability to explain complex ideas, has opened our minds to the mystery and beauty of numbers. His new book, What We Cannot Know, explores the limits of human knowledge, asking whether, despite the extraordinary scientific advances of the last few decades, some things will remain forever out of reach.
“Marcus du Sautoy is the Steve Irwin of the number kingdom”
Richard Dawkins
[cta headline=”Sun 22 May | 4pm | Main Space” buttontext=”Book Now” buttonlink=”httpss://smockalley.ticketsolve.com/shows/873552672/events”]Tickets €10/8[/cta]
Juan Gabriel Vasquez
With the death of Gabriel García Márquez, the mantle of greatest living Colombian novelist has arguably passed to Juan Gabriel Vásquez. Whether dramatizing Conrad’s adventures in The Secret History of Costaguana or investigating the drug trade in The Sound of Things Falling (for which he won the International IMPAC Award in 2014), Vásquez’s explorations of the dark corners of Colombian history have established him as one of Latin America’s most exciting voices. His new novel, Reputations, explores ideas of memory and truth through the figure of a political cartoonist forced to confront an incident long buried in his past. This event is chaired by journalist and broadcaster Mick Heaney.
“the most erudite and inventive Colombian novelist writing today”
The Independent
[cta headline=”Sun 22 May | 6pm | Main Space” buttontext=”Book Now” buttonlink=”httpss://smockalley.ticketsolve.com/shows/873552674/events”]Tickets €12/10[/cta]
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