LooseLeaves: What are the conditions for the production of literature in Ireland today? That's the question that will be thrashed out at a day-long conference, The State of the Art, at the Royal Irish Academy (RIA) on Dublin's Dawson Street next Friday.
The event sets itself against a healthy background whereby publishers here and in Britain seem open to Irish writers - whose names regularly appear on the shortlists for literary prizes. Some get big advances and the arts councils North and South are able to offer bursaries in a way that was unthinkable in the past. Aosdána is there to honour and include writers; English remains popular with undergraduates even though the humanities generally are under pressure - and creative writing courses and writers-in-residence are now fixtures in many institutions. But, says the RIA, in spite of all this no attempt has been made to assess the impact of these developments.
The event is linked to a panel discussion, A Living Literature: Writing in Ireland Today at 7pm next Thursday in the Burke Theatre, Trinity College Dublin. Participants include novelist Deirdre Madden and academic and author Declan Kiberd and there'll also be questions from the floor. Tickets are free but must be booked in advance on www.ria.ie.
Although the conference the following day is not open to the public, a report on its deliberations will be produced which the academy's committee for Irish literatures in English will assess in order to come up with recommendations that may be helpful in the future. Participants include Adekunle Gomez of the African Cultural Project, Brendan Barrington of Penguin Ireland, Maurice Earls of Books Upstairs, critic Edna Longley, playwright Thomas Kilroy, poet Medbh McGuckian and literary agent Jonathan Williams. Topics up for discussion include reviewing and criticism, the role of the media, literature and social critique and - a particularly interesting one - "the professionalisation of the art". The event is sponsored by the arts councils north and south and DEPFA Bank.
New life for old books
It's a new Irish literary revival for the internet age: a free, virtual library where readers and writers can rediscover books of Irish interest that are out of print, a venture that's inspired in an increasingly commercialised world where the shelf-life of books diminishes by the day. To be found at www.irishliteraryrevival.com, it comes on stream on Monday.
It's the brainchild of writers Philip Casey and Patrick Chapman, who saw the need for a place where readers could find books no longer available elsewhere, and where writers could get a new audience for their texts, while stimulating interest in their work as a whole. They hope it will build into a huge free resource for the public - as well as scholars, translators, and potential publishers.
Chapman and Casey began by asking writers with out-of-print books to take part and the site took off when the response was enthusiastic. Every previously published and now-unavailable Irish book or book of Irish interest is eligible, be it poetry, a novel, stories, non-fiction or drama. All work on the site is released under a Creative Commons Licence, so authors retain their copyrights while allowing the texts to be downloaded.
The writer just sends an electronic copy of their eligible book, with details of its history and status, to librarian@irishliteraryrevival.com, and the "librarians" put it up. Full details are on the site. They accept books written in English and Irish.
A very British Orange
British writers dominate the shortlist for the 11th Orange Prize for Fiction which was announced during the week. The four British writers are Hilary Mantel (Beyond Black); Ali Smith (The Accidental); Zadie Smith (On Beauty) and Sarah Waters (The Night Watch). Up against them are American Nicole Krauss (The History of Love) and Australian Carrie Tiffany (Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living), the latter being a first novel based on a story the author came upon while working as a park ranger. The final of the women-only prize, worth £30,000 (€43,000) is on June 6th.
Man of Lettres
Novelist Douglas Kennedy, who holds Irish and American citizenship, has had much success in France. His seven novels have sold more than 1.5 million copies there, the last one, Les Charmes Discret de la Vie Conjugale (State of the Union), featuring on the bestseller lists there for five months. Now he has been decorated with the Chevalier de L'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, a distinction he shares with writers John McGahern and Kazuo Ishiguro - but also with David Bowie and Leonardo di Caprio. Kennedy's new novel, Temptation, is published by Hutchinson in October.