Writers have been known to cultivate reputations as incorrigibly contrary souls, all enigmatic pouts and existential discord. Not the sort you'd bundle off with on a package holiday to Ibiza. So Wednesday's Dublin Writers' Festival launch party at the Mansion House opens beneath a cloud of leaden self-aggrandisement right? Get outta here. The assembled scribes prove a disarmingly peppy bunch. Hardly a world-weary misanthrope in sight. Take Co Down novelist Eoin McNamee (you'll know him as the author of Resurrection Man, filmed to vague acclaim two years ago), and Dublin poet Pat Boran, breezily quaffing sodas like a pair of regular Joes. MacNamee's jocularity is understandable. Six years after Resurrection Man hit the stalls, new novel The Blue Tango is ready to go. A hunk of noir-ish back-stabbing located in 1950s mid-Ulster - think James Ellroy sharing a hot-tub with Seamus Deane - the book arrives later this year.
Boran, meanwhile, is taking a breather following the publication several months ago of his Brief History of Dublin, a rare foray into non-fiction. He returns to more familiar territory in the autumn with a new collection of stories, titled The Naked Man. Yes, phwoer etc. Attempts to winkle additional details out of Boran elicited a "work the title out for yourself" riposte. Honestly Pat, we'd rather not. Elsewhere, Den TV editor-producer-autocrat in chief (we think he makes the tea too) Michael Brough has a lot to say about the show's summer schedule. No Damian McCall or delinquent muppets - they've been banished to Leitrim until September (RTE, you'll have gathered, regards the idea of people actually living in somewhere like Leitrim as absolutely hilarious). The kiddies must instead make do with leggy lurvlies (Telly-Bingo grande dame) Liz Bonin and Louise Loughlin. But that's not all! Next week, another Louise - the surnamebereft former Eternal chanteuse - drops by. Westlife and All Saints are also due to visit. And a live broadcast from Slane - featuring (sigh) Bryan Adams and ubiquitous baldie Moby - is in the offing.
Hurrah! Flanking Brough is novelist Marita Conlon-McKenna. Like approximately 97 per cent of tonight's attendance, she has a book coming out. Promised Land hints at a disarming twist on the familiar 1950s-country-girls-hit-the-big-city fandango - a dissection of the eccentricities of Irish inheritance law. More William Binchy than Maeve, then. Also at the Mansion House, Bookershortlisted Derry novelist Jennifer Johnston, children's/adults author Rose Doyle (smacking lips over the imminent appearance of a long-awaited seventh novel) and a harassed Dublin Corporation arts officer, Jack Gilligan, who reveals plans to stage a series of outdoor operas on the steps of Wood Quay civic offices over August. Should be a scream.