OnTheTown: Writers gathered on the roof of Joyce's Martello Tower in Sandycove this week to celebrate publication of a collection of new short stories by Irish writers, called New Dubliners.
Like the fictional Buck Mulligan in Ulysses, they looked out on "a snot-green sea" in Dublin Bay, thinking of James Joyce and his legacy.
Maeve Binchy, Joseph O'Connor, Roddy Doyle, Frank McGuinness and Anthony Glavin were among those who saluted the great Joyce on the eve of this year's Bloomsday.
As the sun set, Senator David Norris addressed the gathering, congratulating publisher New Island for the timely collection of stories, marking the centenary of the year Joyce began writing his Dubliners collection.
The book "is like a mirror held up to Dublin. It is ruthless and fascinating. It's a roll-call of honour, featuring the stars of the Irish literary firmament", said Norris of New Dubliners, which comprises 11 new short stories. The book is "a wonderful barometer" of writing today, he added.
He also said he believed that the literary short story form has changed a great deal in the last 100 years.
Robert Nicholson, curator of the Joyce Tower, was at the celebration, as was writer Kate Thompson with her husband, actor Malcolm Douglas, whose broadcasting work with fellow actor Joe Taylor, on the various tribunals, will be published later this year in a book to be called Trials and Tribunalations.
Writer Joseph O'Connor was getting ready to fly off to New York the next day, having been awarded a Cullman Creative Writing Fellowship at the New York Public Library. Fifteen fellowships are awarded each year to creative writers and academics.
Suzanne Barnes, whose new book, When Our Plane Hit the Mountain, was published recently, was also at the eve-of-Bloomsday event.