Loose Leaves:We're used to the glass of wine, ubiquitous at literary launches and festivals, but centre-stage at the start of the Lady Gregory Autumn Gathering next Friday night in the demesne of her old home, Coole Park, Co Galway, will be a giant barmbrack, similar to the ones she always brought to Abbey Theatre opening nights. O'Connor's Bakery of Gort has been all systems go, baking it for the occasion.
Among the speakers at the event will be Ann Saddlemyer, whose first publication on Lady Gregory was In Defence of Lady Gregory, Playwright (1966), which was followed by a four-volume edition of her collected plays. She also edited, with Colin Smythe, Lady Gregory Fifty Years After, and her book, Becoming George: The Life of Mrs WB Yeats, came out in 2002.
Other participants include Murray Biggs, professor of English and theatre studies at Yale, and Nicholas Canny, professor of history and director of the Moore Centre for the Study of Human Settlement and Historical Change at NUI Galway. Film-maker Bob Quinn, Lelia Doolan and Michael D Higgins are also taking part and members of the Gregory and Persse families (Lady Gregory was originally a Persse) will be at the event, which continues over the weekend.
Booking details from Mary Troy Fennell, 091-521144
Reid all about it at Queen's
A large collection of the manuscripts and letters of Belfast-born writer and literary critic Forrest Reid (1875-1947) has been acquired by Queen's University. It includes 217 letters and postcards from novelist EM Forster to Reid, dating from 1912 to 1946, which discuss such Forster works as A Passage to India and Maurice, his novel with a homosexual theme that was published only after Forster's death. The archive is one of the largest known collections of Forster letters in existence.
Reid, a pre-war novelist sometimes compared to JM Barrie, is known for the tales of boyhood in his trilogy, Uncle Stephen (1931), The Retreat (1936), and Young Tom (1944). As a student at Christ's College, Cambridge, he was influenced by Forster, who visited him in his native Belfast when he settled back there after graduation. Reid remained in the city for the rest of his life and, in 1952, Forster unveiled a plaque at his Belfast home.
Reid also wrote critical works on W B Yeats and on his friend, Walter de la Mare, and letters from both are included in the archive, which will ultimately be held in the special collections section of the new library to open at Queen's in 2009. The collection had been in the possession of novelist Stephen Gilbert. A protege of Reid, Gilbert inherited many of his letters and manuscripts.
Aspects of BangorAmong more than 25 writers taking part in the Aspects Irish Literature Festival, in Bangor, Co Down, from Wednesday next to Sunday, are journalists Kevin Myers, who will read from Watching the Door: A Memoir 1971-1978 about his time as a reporter in Belfast, and Malachi O'Doherty, whose The Telling Year: Belfast 1972, his memoir of working as a journalist through the worst year of the Troubles, came out earlier this year. Playwright Gary Mitchell (who, with his family, had to flee his home in north Belfast in 2005 after protests from paramilitaries about his portrayal of the loyalist community, especially in As the Beast Sleeps), will be in conversation with novelist Glenn Patterson. Patterson's new novel, The Third Party, will be published this autumn by Blackstaff. Poets Richard Tillinghast and Mark Granier and novelists Dermot Bolger and Hugo Hamilton are also taking part.
www.northdown.gov.uk
Kavanagh fellows in church
Some recent recipients of the Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship - Kerry Hardie, Michael O'Loughlin and Aidan Murphy - will read this Thursday at an event organised by Poetry Ireland in association with the trustees of the estate of Katherine Kavanagh in Dublin. The venue is the Unitarian Church, St Stephen's Green West; the time 6.30pm.
Details: 01-4789974 or management@poetryireland.ie
The Dromineer literary tour
Andrew Nugent, whose recent thriller, Second Burial, is set in the Nigerian immigrant community, and Julian Gough, winner of the UK National Short Story Prize for The Orphan and the Mob (and whose novel, Jude Level 1, came out this summer) are among the participants at the fourth Dromineer Literary Festival, which starts on Friday and runs over next weekend. An adult poetry competition will be judged by poet and publisher Pat Boran, who will host a poetry writing workshop on Saturday, while the adult short story competition will be adjudicated by writer Vincent McDonnell, who will give a short story writing workshop on the same day.
Meanwhile, on Sunday, on board The Spirit of Killaloe, Prof Dáithí Ó hÓgáin, of UCD's folklore department and a specialist on north Co Tipperary, will be regaling passengers with stories while the boat tours Lough Derg.