NOVELIST and memoirist Dermot Healy was a victim of his own success this week when the Sligo based writer found himself double booked. The author of The Goats Song was due to launch Force 10, the literary magazine he founded in Sligo, but couldn't attend because of a reading engagement at London's South Bank Centre with Booker prize nominee Seamus Deane.
It has been an eventful time for Healy, who also boasts a cameo role in Neil Jordan's forthcoming film The Butcher Boy, which is to be released in May. Author Patrick McCabe also appears in the film of his book - although he didn't have to go to the same extremes as Healy, who was ordered to trim his trademark flowing locks for the role.
Other busy authors at the moment are Colm Toibin, heading for a tour of Newfoundland next month, and Joe O'Connor, presently putting the finishing touches to his eagerly awaited third novel, The Salesman, which hits the shelves in September.
The Force 10 launch could have been a bit like Hamlet without the Prince in the absence of Healy but there were plenty of other members of the Irish literary court present.
The publication was launched by short story writer Leo Cullen in The Winding Stair bookshop and the night included a reading from Monaghan native Peter Woods, whose novel The Given Note, about traditional music and published by O'Brien Press, is currently proving a success. Woods revealed that more than 300 copies were sold at a launch in Ennis and American publishing giants Roberts and Rinehart are showing interest in the book.
Other writers lending their support to the magazine on the night were poets Eithne Strong, Phillip Casey and Katie Donovan, novelist Brian Leyden and short story writer Ciaran Folan.