Saturday May 31st
Nature Boy
Ornithologist Seán Ronayne from Cobh, Co. Cork is on a mission to record the sound of every bird species in Ireland. In this sound-packed, illustrative talk, Seán will bring you on a striking journey through Irish birds, sharing their sounds, stories and struggles. Expect laughter, expect tears, and expect the unexpected! Not to be missed – you will never look at the world around you in the same way again.
St. John’s Theatre & Arts Centre at 10.30 am
Book Launch: Victoria Kennefick Poetry Review
Join us as we launch Poetry Ireland Review Issue 145, Ireland’s pre-eminent poetry journal. Edited by Kerry resident, poet Victoria Kennefick, the launch will feature readings by some of the contributors including Victoria herself. The issue features exciting new poems from Aoife Lyall, Yousif M. Qasmiyeh, Liz Quirke and Dillon Jaxx, as well as from Rishi Dastidar and Mag Gabbert, among many others.
Kerry Writers’ Museum at 11 am
This is a free event. No booking required.
Memory & Forgetting: The Use & Abuse of the Past
Panel Event with Fergal Keane, Lindsey Hilsum, Conor Brosnan, and Gail McConnell
Fergal Keane and his guests consider whether memorialising the atrocities of the past makes any difference in preventing such events in the present.
Are those who forget really doomed to repeat? What if remembering becomes a justification for contemporary abuses?
The Plaza Centre at 12 noon
Daily Debuts: Seán Farrell and June O’Sullivan
Frogs for Watchdogs is a dark, funny, tender and raw read from Seán Farrell. Told in the unique voice of a wild boy with a ferocious imagination who will stop at nothing to protect his family from the darkness on the edges of their unstable rural life.
June O’Sullivan’s The Lighthouse Keeper’s Wife is a heart-breaking story of motherhood, survival and resilience set on the isolated island of Skellig Michael. This poignant and vivid debut sensitively explores the depths of the human spirit and its ability to deal with loss, grief, greed and the enduring power of hope.
Listowel Arms Hotel at 1 pm
Lunchtime Theatre: Baby
Camilla is 36 and she wants a baby. With dark humour and honest vulnerability, BABY delves into baby envy and pretend pregnancies, while journeying into a landscape of fertility clinics and assisted human reproduction. Written by Lianne O’Hara and winner of the Dublin Fringe Little Gem Award, Baby is a dark comedy about baby envy and unsolicited advice from strangers.
St. John’s Theatre at 1 pm
Cúirt Filíochta
Tráth teagmhála do lucht labhartha, léite agus scríofa na Gaeilge, ag ceiliúradh Cúirt Lios Eiltín agus Traidisiún Chiarraí Thuaidh. I measc na bhfilí a bheidh ag reacaireacht beidh: Róisín Sheehy, Ceaití Ní Bheildiúin, Séamus Barra Ó Súilleabháin, Cormac Mac Gearailt, Paddy Bushe, Bríd Ní Mhóráin, Pádraig Mac Fhearghusa, Simón Ó Faoláin, Ciarán Ó Ceallaigh, Matt Ó Maonaigh, Liam Ó Ceallaigh.
Eagraithe do Sheachtain na Scríbhneoirí ag Matt Ó Maonaigh, Cléireach na Cúirte, i gcomhar le Glór na nGael Lios Tuathail agus le tacaíocht ó Oifig na Gaeilge, Comhairle Chontae Chiarraí.
Listowel Library at 2 pm
This is a free event. No booking required.
Our London Lives
Multi-award winning author, of six novels including Tatty, which was chosen as UNESCOs Dublin One City One Book, Christine Dwyer Hickey will discuss her latest epic literary novel, Our London Lives with Niall MacMonagle,. It follows two Irish outsiders in the vast and often unforgiving London in 1979. Teenage runaway Milly and young boxer Pip seek refuge in each other but over the decades their lives follow different paths, interweaving from time to time, often in one another’s sight, always on one another’s mind, yet rarely together.
Listowel Arms Hotel at 2.30 pm
Tony Guerin: A Retrospective
A reflection on the life and writings of Listowel author Tony Guerin. Amongst his works are six full length plays, two one act plays, three novels, a TV series and two commissioned film scripts. Tony’s latest novel Quilt, which is a patchwork of disparate yet connected stories, will be launched at part of this event
The event features thirty-minute film screening, a reading from Tony’s new novel and a scene from his new play The Yank Invention, performed by the Lartigue Company.
St. John’s Theatre & Arts Centre at 3 pm
Nathan Thrall – A Day in the Life of Abed Salama
Nathan Thrall is an American writer living in Jerusalem. In 2024, he received the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction for A Day in the Life of Abed Salama. An international bestseller, it was translated into more than two dozen languages, selected as a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, and named a best book of the year by over twenty publications, including The New Yorker, The Economist, and Time. He is also the author of The Only Language They Understand. In conversation with Rhona Tarrant.
The Plaza Centre at 4 pm
Kerry Voices
A celebration of the Kingdom’s rich literary tradition featuring esteemed writers rooted in the cultural and creative life of Kerry.
Eileen Sheehan’s work explores the joys and foibles of human life and relationships viewed through the prisms of memory, dream, mythology and folklore. A winner of the Brendan Kennelly Poetry Award, her most recent collection is The Narrow Way of Souls (Salmon Poetry).
Dr. Paddy Bushe is a poet, editor and translator in both English and Irish, and is a member of Aosdána. The primary and longstanding source of his work has been the land and seascape of his adoptive home in Waterville, especially the evolving culture inherent in it.
Lorraine Carey writes poetry, haiku and non-fiction with work published in Magma, Spelt, and Poetry Ireland Review among others. Her craft explores ecocentrism and the transformative power of nature, creativity and ornithology.
Kerry Writers’ Museum at 5 pm
Julian Borger – I Seek a Kind Person
As an esteemed international journalist with experience covering the Balkan wars and the Snowden files, work which won him a Pulitzer, Julian Borger discusses his second book, I seek a Kind Person which delves into his own family’s history. A personal advertisement posted in a British newspaper led Julian down a path through his grandfather’s and father’s fate amongst millions fleeing the Holocaust. It read simply, ‘I seek a kind person who will educate my intelligent boy, aged 11’. In conversation with Linsey Hilsum.
Listowel Arms Hotel at 6 pm
RITA ANN HIGGINS at 70
A special event celebrating decades of wonderful writing by poet Rita Ann Higgins with readings of her work from award winning poets Victoria Kennefick and Moya Cannon and moderated by Gabriel Fitzmaurice. The first of a dozen poetry books by Rita Ann was published in 1986. Her work captures her as a gutsy, anarchic chronicler of Irish lives and foibles.
The Plaza Centre at 7.30 pm
Theatre: The Beauty Queen of Leenane
Local drama group ‘Flavour of the Month Productions’ present Martin McDonagh’s dramatic play The Beauty Queen of Leenane. Set in the mountains of Connemara, it tells the story of Maureen Folan, a plain and lonely woman in her early 40s, and Mag, her manipulative, aging mother. Mag’s interference in Maureen’s first and potentially last romantic relationship sets in motion a chain of events that are as tragically funny as they are horrific.
St. John’s Theatre & Arts Centre at 8 pm
Music and Memories: Andy Irvine with Fergal Keane
This special musical evening will feature Ireland’s greatest folk singer-songwriter. Andy Irvine will chat to Fergal Keane about his life and his life in music and perform some of his wonderful songs.
Throughout his extraordinary career, Irvine has remained an accomplished singer, storyteller and commentator of music and songs.
One of the founding members of Planxty, the band schooled a generation of young people in the beauty of folk music.
Listowel Arms Hotel at 9.30 pm
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