Dean Fee, the co-editor of Donegal-based journal The Pig's Back, invites you to the Journals Fleadh, a celebration of Ireland's thriving literary landscape, coming to the Earagail Arts Festival this July.
In August of last year, The Pig's Back invited the guys from Holy Show up to Donegal for our mini-festival Ramelton Notions. We had contributors from both of our journals come and read, then Little John Nee interviewed Ramelton writer Paul Charles’ about his book Adventures in Wonderland, and afterwards we had music from Elaine Malone and Slow Place Like Home. It was great to see so many brilliant writers and musicians making the journey to Donegal, we stayed up late chatting in Conway’s Pub (at midnight the crowd even serenaded me with Happy Birthday as I turned 35). The event was such a success we decided to team up again, except this time we’re travelling up the peninsuala to Rathmullan and we’re bringing as many other journals as we can manage.
Holy Show’s editor, Brendan McEvilly had the brilliant idea to start what we’ve called a Journals Fleadh and its aim is to get all the island’s journals together in one place to hash out some ideas, share information on the inner workings of a literary journal, and to meet with our readers. Our hope is for this to be an annual celebration that can move around the country, bringing journals, writers and readers together.
We’ve been very lucky to have formed a partnership with Holy Show, they share so many of our feelings about the literary community in Ireland, number one being that we all think we should hang out a lot more often. People often ask why Irish writers have such a strong showing internationally (four longlisted for the Booker last year), and we think the answer is a combination of funding and the generous community that a healthy culture of supporting the arts can bring. We are very lucky to have an Arts Council that support artists at every stage of their careers.
One thing for certain is there's plenty of talent on this island and thankfully there are plenty of us here to help nurture it.
But the Arts Council doesn’t only fund writers directly, they also fund the literary journals who are unearthing all this new talent and helping new and emerging writers find their footing. It can be very daunting to step into the writing world and it’s our job to help bridge that gap, to provide a sort of proving ground for writers, where they can test their skills, experience what it’s like to receive editorial support and get to meet some of the people working in the industry.
With the Journals Fleadh, our hope is to provide writers and readers with an opportunity to come and meet these people. Come and pick their brains, and for us to pick theirs. And while we’re all here, our hope would be that the editors of all these wonderful jounrals can put their heads together and think up some new schemes, some new brilliant ideas that can keep us connected and advance on all the great work we’ve been seeing over the years. Who knows, maybe we’ll unearth the next Booker Prize winner or maybe someone who’ll win the Nobel. One thing for certain is there’s plenty of talent on this island and thankfully there are plenty of us here to help nurture it.
So come on up to Donegal this July and hang out with us. There’ll be readings, sea swims, story-telling, music, sun, beer and craic.
The Journals Fleadh takes place in Rathmullen, Co. Donegal on July 20th and 21st, as part of this year's Earagail Arts Festival - find out more here.
