Friday, October 18th

Edna O’Brien (Lannan Literary Video Series)

2.30pm, Cork City Library | Free, unticketed

The Lannan Literary Video Series features inspired literary writers of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, as well as cultural freedom advocates with a social, political, and environmental justice focus. This edition with Edna O’Brien in conversation with Tobias Wolff was directed by Dan Griggs on 12th May 1998. O’Brien reads from her stories ‘Brother’ and ‘Down by the River’.

Edna O’Brien (1930–2024) was the author of more than twenty-five works of fiction, including The Country Girls, The Little Red Chairs, and The Light of Evening. She received numerous awards, including the PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature, the Irish PEN Award for Literature, the National Arts Club Medal of Honor, and the Ulysses Medal.

From the Well Showcase

4.00pm, Cork City Library | Free, unticketed

Losing David is the twentieth edition of Cork County Council and Library Service annual short story anthology From the Well. Writer and programmer Sasha de Buyl seletected nineteen stories for this anthology, four of which will be read at this event.

Siobhan Dempsey is not a writer, she is a play therapist, but therapy is fundamentally about stories. She joined a writer’s group over covid to preserve her sanity, which worked for the most part. She likes writing poetry and short stories.

M Jay Sheehan is a writer of novels, short stories and bad poetry. Previously listed for twenty different short-story competitions, he finally won something in 2017 by landing the ‘Over the Edge Story Competition’ and ‘New Writer of the Year Award’. Currently, the Feldstein Literary Agency are working hard trying to find a publisher for his new novel.

Lauren O’Donovan is an Irish writer. In 2023, she won the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award and the Cúirt New Writing Prize. Lauren is a recipient of Cork County Council Arts and Arts Council funding. She is fortunate to have her work sometimes published in journals and anthologies.

Peter Toibin is an English teacher and writer from Cork city. His work tries to draw attention to the complexities of human nature and relationships as well as the magic and beauty in the everyday. This is his first published story.

Mark Anthony Jarman & Adam Marek

7.30pm, Cork Arts Theatre | €5 tickets here

Mark Anthony Jarman is the author of Touch Anywhere to Begin, Czech Techno, Knife Party at the Hotel Europa, 19 Knives, and the travel book Ireland’s Eye. Published in journals across Europe, Asia, and North America, he is a graduate of The Iowa Writers’ Workshop, edits fiction for The Fiddlehead, and co-edits a new magazine, Camel. He edited Best Canadian Stories 2023, and Burn Man, his Selected Stories, was a 2024 Editors’ Choice with The New York Times.

Buy Burn Man: Selected Stories (Biblioasis).

“The archetypical Jarman narrator is a bedraggled man dragging around a big aching heart. He might be a petty thief, a hockey scout, an addict or a bloodstained soldier … Jarman’s stories are full of violence, tragedy and mistakes. Yet there’s plenty of humor and heart too.” —Lincoln Michel

Adam Marek is the author of three short story collections: Instruction Manual for Swallowing, The Stone Thrower, and, most recently, The Universe Delivers the Enemy You Need. His stories have appeared on BBC Radio 4, and in many magazines and anthologies, including The Penguin Book of the British Short Story. He loves collaborating with scientists on creative projects, and recently visited CERN to write a story for the Collision: Stories from the Science of CERN anthology. He regularly works with SciFutures, using storytelling to help prototype the future.

Buy The Universe Delivers the Enemy You Need (Comma Press) and visit the author's website.

“Playful, clever, witty, surprising, The Universe Delivers the Enemy You Need is 21 shots of pure pleasure which add up, Ray Bradbury-style, to a profound reflection on life in our twenty-first century. Adam Marek is surely one of the most enjoyable and humane writers of sci-fi around.” — Lucy Caldwell

(Moderator) Patrick Holloway’s debut novel, The Language of Remembering, will be published in February 2025 by Epoque Press. He is the winner of the Bath Short Story Award, The Allingham Fiction Prize, The Flash 500 Prize and The Molly Keane Creative Writing Prize. He is an editor of the literary journal, The Four Faced Liar.

Kate Doyle & Kirsty Gunn

9.00pm, Cork Arts Theatre | €5 tickets here

Kate Doyle is an American writer based in Amsterdam and the author of the short story collection I Meant It Once, longlisted for The Story Prize and a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize. A graduate of the NYU Creative Writing Program, Kate lived in New York City and later in upstate New York (where she worked as a bookseller) prior to moving to Amsterdam. She is the recipient of fellowships and residencies from A Public Space, New York University, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and elsewhere, and her writing appears in No Tokens, Electric Literature, Chicago Review of Books, Split Lip, and other publications. I Meant It Once is her first book.

Buy I Meant It Once (Hachette) and visit the author's website.

“Kate Doyle’s sentences are something to be savored, and the characters in these stories live and breathe and stand up fully from the page. Perceptive, funny, forthright, and often alarmingly relatable.” — Claire Lombardo

Kirsty Gunn has published six works of fiction and three short story collections. Her books have been translated in over a dozen territories, been widely anthologised, been broadcast, turned into film and dance theatre, and have also won multiple prizes and awards including the Edge Hill Prize for Short Stories, the Scottish Book of the Year, as well as a shortlisting for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. A regular contributor to a range of international newspapers and magazines, she is also Professor of Writing Practice and Study at the University of Dundee, where she established and directs the writing programme. She lives in London and Scotland with her husband and two daughters.

Buy Pretty Ugly (Rough Trade Books).

“Kirsty Gunn shuffles and deals the cards in the pack of short fiction to produce quietly startling combinations. In these tales, fables, anecdotes and dramas, words ‘shift and slide and they crack and go off’—appropriately, considering the author’s name —‘like a gun.’ this is a writer who is as exploratory in small forms as in large ones.” — Adam Mars-Jones

(Moderator) Laura Cassidy is a writer from Co. Kildare, living in Cork city. She is a founding editor of the literary journal and small press Banshee, where she worked for a decade in the roles of publisher and editor. Laura is a recipient of the Cecil Day Lewis Literary Bursary award.

Image credits: Kate Doyle photographed by Alana Davis Photography, Edna O'Brien photographed by John Minihan, Mark Anthony Jarman photographed by Muhammad Al-Digei