To accompany our new How to Write a Book series, The Irish Times will be hosting a number of free Q&A events around the country in the coming months. The first of these takes place on Sunday, May 18th as part of the Dublin Writers Festival and in association with the Irish Writers' Centre.
Sinead Gleeson will chair a discussion with novelist Liz Nugent, whose debut novel Unravelling Oliver has been near the top of the Irish charts for some weeks, and poet, playwright and novelist Dermot Bolger. For tickets, see dublinwritersfestival.com. The event is free but ticketed.
Have you ever wanted to write a novel? How do you get it out and on the page? How do you handle structure, dialogue and plot? And once it's written, what is the best way to get it published? These and more questions will be tackled in a new series in The Irish Times called How to Write a Book.
On Saturday, May 17th the series begins with a look at what's in store. Then each Monday, in The Irish Times, on the Arts and Ideas page, for 12 weeks, arts journalist and broadcaster Sinead Gleeson will tackle a different part of the book-writing process, including how to start and where to get inspiration from, how to structure your book and find your voice, how to edit and present your work, and how to find an agent or publisher.
She'll be getting advice and hints from established and award-winning authors, including Goldsmiths Prize winner Eimear McBride; Ron Rash, 2010 winner of the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award; Impac winner Kevin Barry, author of City of Bohane; Booker winner John Banville; Booker shortlisted author Emma Donoghue; Booker Prize nominee Deborah Levy; Ross Raisin, one of Granta's "20 Under 40" Best of Young British Novelists; and Paul Murray, author of Skippy Dies.
