Donegal Bay & Blue Stacks Festival

I'm excited to be heading up to Donegal at the weekend to read at the Donegal Bay and Blue Stacks Festival. It's a great line up.

Sunday Oct. 9th, Abbey Arts Centre, Ballyshannon at 3:00 pm - €5


Poems, Songs and Stories from Elizabeth Reapy, Imelda Maguire, Anthony Glavin, Kate Dempsey, Rosie Carney and Sarah Cullen
Download the programme here- https://donegalgathering.files.wordpress.com/…/donegal_bay_…

Elizabeth (EM) Reapy’s debut novel, Red Dirt, has just been published by London publishing house, Head of Zeus. A thriller inspired by the author’s backpacking trip around Australia in 2011, the novel’s events unfold in the context of the 88 days of Outback farm-work that  backpackers, including many Irish, are required to do to qualify for a second year holiday visa.  A native of Mayo, her work is also featured in The Long Gaze Back: An Anthology of Irish Women Writers, as recently published by New Island Books.

Boston-born writer and editor Anthony Glavin is no stranger to the Abbey Arts Centre, having been featured in a number of the RTE Radio 1 Sunday Miscellany programmes recorded here, over the past few years. He is the author of two short story collections, One For Sorrow and The Draughtsman and The Unicorn, as well as two critically acclaimed novels, Nighthawk Alley and Colours Other Than Blue. He served as a commissioning editor for New Island Books from 1996 to 2004, for whom he edited Nuala Ó Faoláin’s  Are You Somebody? The Accidental Memoir of a Dublin Woman and Joseph O’Connor’s The Irish Male: His Greatest Hits, among many other titles.

Kate Dempsey’s poetry is published in many journals in Ireland and the UK. She has won many awards for her work, including The Plough Prize, a Cecil Day Lewis Award, a Hennessy New Irish Writing Award shortlisting and she has had a poem nominated for the Forward Prize. She runs the Poetry Divas, ‘a glittery collective of women poets who blur the wobbly boundary between page and stage’. Her debut collection, The Space Between, was published this year by Doire Press.

Imelda Maguire’s most recent collection of poetry, Serendipity, was published last year by the Limerick Writers Centre. Born in Kildare, raised in Limerick, Imelda has lived most of her adult life in Sligo and Donegal, where she now resides. Her first collection, Shout If You Want Me To Sing, was published in 2004 by Summer Palace Press.

Rosie Carney is a singer and songwriter, originally from Hampshire, now living in Downings. Earlier this year she performed at the SXSW Music Festival in Austin, Texas, as part of a Culture Ireland–sponsored Irish artists showcase. A recent Burberry Acoustic video, for her song Humans, has already been viewed by over 20,000 people.

Sarah Cullen is a multi-instrumentalist, singer and songwriter from Carrigart. Coming from a well-known musical family, she has been a performer from a very young age. Blurring the boundaries between traditional country, jazz and blues, she has performed in the US and on mainland Europe as well as being involved in many musical projects in Ireland. Earlier this year, she travelled with Rosie Carney to the SXSW Music Festival in Austin, Texas.