Write On!

A spot of something for everyone in this year’s Dublin Writers Festival which runs from Tue 2 to Sun 7 June at Project, Liberty Hall and the Abbey. Not surprisingly, Seamus Heaney at the NCH is sold out but you can still indulge in such high-profile delights as Zoe Heller (Notes on a Scandal), BBC journalist and New Yorker critic Simon Schama, Orange winner Anne Michaels, ITV’s Melvyn Bragg, Booker and Orange nominee Sarah Waters, and our own Colm Toibin and Brendan Kennelly. A total of 24 writers, among them poets, novelists, memoirists and social commentators, will  share their thoughts with an enthusiastic public, covering a diverse range of subjects from Victorian crime detection to immigration, homecoming, losing children and coming of age. ‘The power of the word’ may be this year’s theme, but a combination of words, music and archive imagery should pack a powerful punch in The Frost is All Over on Sat 6, a celebration of the poetry of Dermot Bolger featuring accordionist Tony MacMahon, piper David Power and actor Eamonn Hunt. www.dublinwritersfestival.com