ILFDublin Podcast

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 Una Mullally.

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 latest 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.

Maeve Brennan’s short stories have long been admired by writers and cherished by readers.

Born in Dublin in 1917, she became a staff writer at the New Yorker, and brought her formidable powers of perception and scathing wit to stories of childhood, marriage, longing and exile before dying in obscurity in the early nineties. Now a new edition of her celebrated Dublin stories, The Springs of Affection, aims to bring her to a wider readership.

Join us as publisher Declan Meade talks to broadcaster and critic, Sinéad Gleeson, and Brennan’s biographer, Angela Bourke, about her troubled life; and actress Caitriona Ní Mhurchú reads extracts from the work of one of the forgotten greats of twentieth-century Irish fiction.

Presented in association with The Stinging Fly.

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.

Jon Ronson in conversation with Irish journalist Shane Hegarty, as part of International Literature Festival Dublin 2011.

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Jon Ronson is a Welsh journalist, author, documentary filmmaker and radio presenter whose works include the best-selling The Men Who Stare at Goats (2004) and The Psychopath Test (2011).

Ronson has published nine books and his work has appeared in British publications such as The Guardian, City Life and Time Out. He has made several BBC Television documentary films and two documentary series for Channel 4.

Join ILFDublin for a whistle-stop tour around the world of Oliver Jeffers, interviewed here by Margaret Anne Suggs.

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Northern Irish artist Oliver Jeffers' picture books have been translated into over 30 languages. He won an Emmy in 2010 for his collaborative work with MacPremo, with whom he co-directed the U2 video 'Ordinary Love' in 2013.

Performer, writer, director and political activist, Margaretta D'arcy is a tireless and inspirational figure. She worked in theatre from the age of fifteen, first as an actress and then as an accomplished playwright, but it is perhaps as an activist that she is best known. Over the years her activism has taken many forms, from anti-nuclear campaigns to the H-Block protests in Armagh (an experience that inspired her book Tell Them Everything).

Now, in the wake of her latest campaign (against the use of Shannon Airport by US military planes), Ireland’s ‘Guantanamo Granny’ reflects on her extraordinary life in the company of Jim Sheridan, the acclaimed director of 'My Left Foot' and 'In The Name of the Father'.

Writer Naomi Klein in conversation with Aine Lawlor, as part of International Literature Festival Dublin.

Irvine Welsh in conversation at #ILFDublin in 2015.

Suzanne O'Sullivan in conversation at International Literature Festival Dublin, 2015.