ILFDublin Podcast

Explore the ‘lost’ buildings of Dublin's northside on this atmospheric and evocative self-guided audio walk, and discover a surprisingly multi-layered city and society.

View the route map here: https://ilfdublin.com/whats-on/festival/strand/boundless/lost-ireland-dublin-northside-edition-by-orla-fitzpatrick-self-guided-audio-walk/

From Hector Grey’s bargain shop to places destroyed in the 1916 Rising, Orla Fitzpatrick has curated a tour that includes both recent casualties and long-lost buildings. Discover the former home of Dublin Bread Company’s flagship café on O’Connell Street. Designed by Samuel Beckett’s grandfather, it was known for its chess games, political meetings and “damn bad cakes.”

The tour includes the site of elaborately-decorated French urinals on Eden Quay and the High Altar on O’Connell Bridge, installed for the 1932 Eucharistic Congress.

Orla Fitzpatrick is a photographic historian and librarian from Stoneybatter, Dublin. Her research interests include photography, dress and design history.

This walking tour is based on her book Lost Ireland, which draws on her extensive knowledge of Ireland’s photographic archives. With wonderful illustrations, it uses archival photographs to explore the ways in which buildings and cities function and change.

She writes about Irish vernacular photography at www.jacolette.com

Landscape and environment in historic and contemporary children’s literature.

Join Dr Sinéad Moriarty and MPhil students in Children’s Literature at Trinity College Dublin for a fascinating discussion on the role of landscape and environment within the world of historical and contemporary children’s writing and illustration. Whether these landscapes are green spaces, sacred spaces, road and pathways, or fantastical environments, they have an integral role and relationship to character, plot and setting.

Sinéad is a Teaching Fellow in Children’s Literature at TCD. Her work focuses on representations of wilderness, landscape, and environment in children’s literature. Her first monograph Antarctica in British Children’s Literature was published in 2020.

In association with the MPhil in Children’s Literature, School of English, Trinity College Dublin.

Part of a five-part series exploring diverse aspects of childrens’ literature.

To discover more in our StoryMachine programme for children, families, and young adults, visit www.ilfdublin.com

The DUBLIN Literary Award longlist of 49 has been narrowed down to a diverse and exciting shortlist of six, and the award will be presented during ILFDublin. This exclusive limited podcast series is hosted by Maeve Higgins and Jessica Traynor. Their conversation about Girl, Woman, Other is followed by Jessica’s interview with Bernardine Evaristo. Evaristo’s remarkable eighth novel follows 12 characters, most of them black British women, raising timeless questions about feminism and race.

Meet your hosts. Maeve Higgins is a contributing writer for The New York Times and a comedian who has performed all over the world. Her latest essay collection will be published by Penguin US in 2022. She hosts a climate justice podcast with Mary Robinson entitled Mothers of Invention. Jessica Traynor’s debut Liffey Swim was shortlisted for the Strong/Shine Award, and The Quick was an Irish Times poetry choice. She co-edited Correspondences: an anthology to call for an end to direct provision with actor Stephen Rea.

Presented in partnership with the DUBLIN Literary Award, a Dublin City Council initiative.

The DUBLIN Literary Award longlist of 49 has been narrowed down to a diverse and exciting shortlist of six, and the award will be presented during ILFDublin. This exclusive limited podcast series is hosted by Maeve Higgins and Jessica Traynor. Their conversation about Hurricane Season is followed by Maeve’s interview with Fernanda Melchor and translator Sophie Hughes. An acclaimed and inventive murder mystery set in horror and squalor, Hurricane Season was described by the Guardian as “fiction with the brakes off”!

Meet your hosts. Maeve Higgins is a contributing writer for The New York Times and a comedian who has performed all over the world. Her latest essay collection will be published by Penguin US in 2022. She hosts a climate justice podcast with Mary Robinson entitled Mothers of Invention. Jessica Traynor’s debut Liffey Swim was shortlisted for the Strong/Shine Award, and The Quick was an Irish Times poetry choice. She co-edited Correspondences: an anthology to call for an end to direct provision with actor Stephen Rea.

Presented in partnership with the DUBLIN Literary Award, a Dublin City Council initiative.

The Dublin Literary Award longlist of 49 has been narrowed down to a diverse and exciting shortlist of six, and the award will be presented during ILFDublin. This exclusive limited podcast series is hosted by Maeve Higgins and Jessica Traynor. Their conversation about The Nickel Boys, a powerful novel that evokes the grim realities of a Florida reform school with care and compassion, is followed by Jessica’s interview with writer, songwriter, poet and vocalist, Jess Kav.

Meet your hosts. Maeve Higgins is a contributing writer for The New York Times and a comedian who has performed all over the world. Her latest essay collection will be published by Penguin US in 2022. She hosts a climate justice podcast with Mary Robinson entitled Mothers of Invention. Jessica Traynor’s debut Liffey Swim was shortlisted for the Strong/Shine Award, and The Quick was an Irish Times poetry choice. She co-edited Correspondences: an anthology to call for an end to direct provision with actor Stephen Rea.

Presented in partnership with the Dublin Literary Award, a Dublin City Council initiative.

The DUBLIN Literary Award longlist of 49 has been narrowed down to a diverse and exciting shortlist of six, and the award will be presented during ILFDublin. This exclusive limited podcast series is hosted by Maeve Higgins and Jessica Traynor. Their conversation about Lost Children Archive is followed by Maeve’s interview with Valeria Luiselli. A fiercely imaginative epic road trip Lost Children Archive was described by The Washington Post as “a novel that daylights our common humanity, and challenges us to reconcile our differences.”

Meet your hosts. Maeve Higgins is a contributing writer for The New York Times and a comedian who has performed all over the world. Her latest essay collection will be published by Penguin US in 2022. She hosts a climate justice podcast with Mary Robinson entitled Mothers of Invention. Jessica Traynor’s debut Liffey Swim was shortlisted for the Strong/Shine Award, and The Quick was an Irish Times poetry choice. She co-edited Correspondences: an anthology to call for an end to direct provision with actor Stephen Rea.

Presented in partnership with the DUBLIN Literary Award, a Dublin City Council initiative.

The DUBLIN Literary Award longlist of 49 has been narrowed down to a diverse and exciting shortlist of six, and the award will be presented during ILFDublin. This exclusive limited podcast series is hosted by Maeve Higgins and Jessica Traynor. Their conversation about On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is followed by Jessica’s interview with Ocean Vuong. A Vietnamese-American poet, Vuong draws on his own family background in this beautiful coming-of-age story of the son of Vietnamese immigrant parents in the US.

Meet your hosts. Maeve Higgins is a contributing writer for The New York Times and a comedian who has performed all over the world. Her latest essay collection will be published by Penguin US in 2022. She hosts a climate justice podcast with Mary Robinson entitled Mothers of Invention. Jessica Traynor’s debut Liffey Swim was shortlisted for the Strong/Shine Award, and The Quick was an Irish Times poetry choice. She co-edited Correspondences: an anthology to call for an end to direct provision with actor Stephen Rea.

Presented in partnership with the DUBLIN Literary Award, a Dublin City Council initiative.

The DUBLIN Literary Award longlist of 49 has been narrowed down to a diverse and exciting shortlist of six, and the award will be presented during ILFDublin. This exclusive limited podcast series is hosted by Maeve Higgins and Jessica Traynor. Their conversation about Apeirogon is followed by Maeve’s interview with Colum McCann. Described by Elizabeth Strout as a “wondrous book … it will bring you to your knees”, Apeirogon mixes fact with fiction about the Israel‑Palestine conflict to create an insightful and moving depiction of grief and healing.

Meet your hosts. Maeve Higgins is a contributing writer for The New York Times and a comedian who has performed all over the world. Her latest essay collection will be published by Penguin US in 2022. She hosts a climate justice podcast with Mary Robinson entitled Mothers of Invention. Jessica Traynor’s debut Liffey Swim was shortlisted for the Strong/Shine Award, and The Quick was an Irish Times poetry choice. She co-edited Correspondences: an anthology to call for an end to direct provision with actor Stephen Rea.

Presented in partnership with the DUBLIN Literary Award, a Dublin City Council initiative.

From the 17th edition of International Literature Festival Dublin in May 2015

“Gray forces us to face the mirror and see ourselves as we are”

James Lovelock

The acclaimed philosopher, sceptic and writer makes a welcome return to the festival with his book, The Soul of the Marionette, a characteristically provocative exploration of the nature of human freedom that ranges over everything from cybernetics to fairground marionettes. Why do we flatter ourselves that we enjoy free will, Gray asks, when our actions are determined, directed and restricted by a whole range of forces: biological, social or metaphysical? Through a dazzling parade of writers, thinkers and ideas, Gray argues that instead of deluding ourselves about our true nature we should learn to embrace it.

The event is chaired by writer and film-maker Carlo Gebler.

From the 20th edition of International Literature Festival Dublin in May 2018

The essay, that brilliantly elastic literary form once described by Zadie Smith as the best way to reflect ‘messy reality’, is making a glorious comeback.

Daisy Hildyard’s collection The Second Body is a brilliantly lucid account of the dissolving boundaries between all life on earth.

The essays in Ashleigh Young’s collection Can You Tolerate This? roam freely between preoccupations, yet are consistently entertaining in their search for clarity amid uncertainty.

In her artful, intelligent collection Break.up, Joanna Walsh simultaneously flees and pursues an ambiguous partner.

Our panel discuss the contemporary essay, and debate whether information overload has created a demand for personal voices. The event is chaired by writer and broadcaster Sinéad Gleeson.

Presented in association with Creative New Zealand in partnership with Publishers Association of New Zealand.