Festival: New Writings, New Styles

Twinned with the long-established Franco-Irish Literary Festival in Dublin, CCI is pleased to present a festival celebrating contemporary literature in our two countries. Award-winning Irish and French writers will engage in a series of debates and talks about the preoccupations, styles and dynamics of contemporary literature.

Friday 3 March

17.15: Opening Remarks
17.30: Novel-Writing today in France and Ireland

Maylis de Kerangal, Mike McCormack and Lisa McInerney
Moderator: Lara Marlowe
The novel continues to be a form widely read and enjoyed by readers of all ages. What was, two centuries ago, a scandalously innovative form might by now be at risk of becoming old and staid. However, the form’s elasticity and resilience, as exemplified by contemporary authors writing in France and Ireland, seems to guarantee its endurance.
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19.30: A Writer’s Eye

Public interview with author and playwright Laurent Gaudé, winner of the Prix Goncourt for Le Soleil des Scorta.
Interviewer: Jean-Philippe Imbert
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Saturday 4 March

14.30: The long and the short of it

Rob Doyle, Declan Meade and Paul McVeigh
Moderator: Jean-Michel Picard
Why has short fiction, and the short story in particular, experienced such a renaissance in recent years? Every young writer in Ireland seems to produce at least one collection of short stories while more established novelists often seem to have yet another collection of stories in their back pocket. Journals like The New Yorker, The Stinging Fly and publishers like Le Dilettante provide important outlets for short stories. Is it a question of literary snobbery and a desire to emulate masters such as Joyce and Chekov? Or does the short story simply have more to offer both writer and reader?
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16.00: Alt-Facts or Alt-fiction : whose truth is it anyway?

Colette Fellous, Jean Rouaud, Rob Doyle and Julia Kerninon
Moderator: Prof Clíona Ní Ríordáin
Memoire, autofiction and fictionalized autobiographies present additional challenges to writer and reader. Does it matter if a life sounds better in a book than it really is? Is it not natural to gild the truth for the sake of a good story?
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18.30: Where to start and where to now?

Dermot Bolger, Patrick Deville, Paul Lynch and Léonor de Recondo
Moderator : Sinéad Mac Aodha
Do the new moral landscapes of our day present opportunities for the writer? Is he/she ”a storyteller” or something more, a sounding board for society? Does the past or “an elsewhere” provide a surer basis on which to construct a novel?
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