Aidan Higgins Festival

The shortlist for the popular Prose Writing Competition, In the Footsteps of Aidan Higgins is:

Animal Loves - by James Anderson
From an abandoned trip, years ago - Barty Begley
Amazing Grace - Nuala Ni Chonchuir
Downstairs - Victoria Neumark
At the Moulin de Kerjean - William Wall

The results of this will be announced on Sunday evening May 6th by Patrick McMahon with readings from the winning entries.

Aidan Higgins has been called arguably Ireland's finest living prose writer. Annie Proulx (Brokeback Mountain, The Shipping News) calls his prose "ferocious and dazzling...the pure architecture of his sentences takes the breath out of you."

The Writer, Neil Donnelly is the Programme Director of the Aidan Higgins Festival which is taking place this bank holiday weekend, Saturday 5th and Sunday 6th May in Celbridge Co Kildare, where Aidan Higgins was born 80 years ago. The program is a celebration of Aidan's writing, including his early masterpiece ‘Langrishe, Go Down’ set in Celbridge.

The weekend will consist of talks, seminars, film showings and rehearsed readings on Higgins’ work and his influences.

The list of those taking part is impressive and includes:

John Banville, Booker Prize Winning Novelist
Fintan O’Toole, Irish Times Columnist and Biographer
Annie Proulx, Novelist, ‘Brokeback Mountain’, ‘The Shipping News’
Dermot Healy, Novelist, Poet and Playwright
Shane Connaughton, Screenwriter of ‘My Left Foot’
Denis Conway, Award winning Actor
Ingrid Craigie, Actor
Gerry Dukes, Academic and Literary Critic
Pat Laffan, Actor
Bibbi Larsson, Actor
Derek Mahon, Irish Poet
Neil Murphy, Academic
and Aidan Higgins

A fiction masterclass with Dermot Healy is also on offer, limited to 12 places on Saturday morning, May 5th. Applications are now being taken. Price 20 Euros.

Registration forms are available on the www.kildare.ie website or at 9:30 am on Saturday and 10 am on Sunday in Celbridge Abbey.

Tickets are 30 Euros for one day or 50 Euros for the two full days.