The latest updates from Literary Belfast
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- BOOK REVIEW: The Bedside Book of Dormers
Marcus Patton is a true Renaissance man. Architect, accomplished viola player, watercolourist, and, judging by his new book The Bedside Book of Dormers and Other Delights, an architectural anorak...
- BOOK REVIEW: Planesrunner
Can an author who made his name writing intelligent, near-future sci-fi for adults write a novel that will appeal to children?..
- Lisa Keogh Reimagines Moby-Dick
'Call me Atha.' In Moby-Dick, the classic tale of obsession and revenge, author Herman Melville gives scant page-space to the monomaniacal Captain Ahab's family. A 'girl-wife' and a young son, both unnamed, serve as just one more thing abandoned to the hunt...
- Colin Bateman, Class Clown
Who/what/where/why/when is Colin Bateman? I'm the author of more than 30 novels, including eight for children. I've written for the big screen and created the long running BBC TV series Murphy's Law. I was also recently made a Doctor of Letters by the University of Ulster for my services to literature...
- THEATRE REVIEW: Streets
It's easy enough to winnow through a couple of plays and find extracts that fit a broad theme. (Such as the fairly open-ended Streets.) The hard part is taking those extracts and stitching them together into a seamless, emotionally articulate narrative...
- Sam Millar on New Play Brothers in Arms
Sam Millar, the multi-award-winning novelist, has emerged as one of Northern Ireland's most popular authors. Drawing on his experiences as a former IRA prisoner, Millar has penned five novels. He has also written a best-selling autobiography, On the Brinks, detailing the infamous 1993 Brink's robbery in New York. Now Millar is launching his debut play, exploring the divisions in modern-day republicanism. Brothers in Arms, directed by Martin Lynch, begins a lengthy tour of Northern Ireland this month. True to form, the maverick writer hasn't taken the easy option...
- TALK REVIEW: Jon Ronson
Part of Jon Ronson's success as a writer and film-maker, documenting the exploits of the world's weirdest people, must come from the fact that he looks and sounds so innocuous. Small in stature, with youthful spiky hair, a washed-out t-shirt and little round glasses, he has the manner of a charming but slightly bewildered schoolboy...
- TALK REVIEW: Lionel Shriver
‘We need to talk about Lionel,’ begins host William Crawley, to groans from the audience and a scowl from his guest. ‘Do you know how many times…?’ snaps Lionel Shriver...
- Literary Lunchtime Readings at The Ulster Hall
Literary Lunchtimes begins with Wireless Mystery Theatre's performance of Streets on January 25. A combination of literature, drama and music, Streets explores how Ulster writers such as Cathal O`Byrne, Louis MacNeice and WR Rodgers mythologised, embroidered and romanticised the streets, roads and psycho-geography of the places in which they grew up...
- Charles Dickens in Belfast
For Charles Dickens, Belfast was ‘a fine place with a rough people’. He thought our citizens ‘a better audience on the whole than Dublin; and the personal affection there was something overwhelming’. This was his reaction to his first visit in August 1858...
- Author Tara West: I Relent, I Want an E-Reader For Xmas
Brussels sprouts used to make me gag. They were like lumpy phlegm scraped from the hankies of hell. I abhorred and refused them, no matter how they were prepared. Soft and slimy or hard and crunchy, these green leafy balls of doom were most unwelcome on my plate. Now, of course, I love them...
- Neil Powell's Search Dogs and Me
Neil Powell will never forget Christmas Eve 1988. On December 21, Pan Am Flight 103 crashed at Lockerbie killing all 243 passengers, 16 crew and a further 11 people on the ground. Three days later, Powell, who had over 15 years experience of mountain rescue missions in the Mourne Mountains, was at the clean-up operation in Scotland...
- Crime Writer Gerard Brennan is a Wee Rocket
Most authors have a simple, three-step career plan: write a book, find an agent and get a publisher. The end result of which, it is hoped, will be a Derek Landy sized advance cheque on the doormat come Monday morning...
- CS Lewis Centre Opens in Belmont Tower
Proudly displayed on the wall of the newly opened CS Lewis Centre in Belmont Tower is a quote from the man himself. 'I think we Strandtown and Belmont people had among us as much kindness, wit, beauty and taste as any circle of the same size that I have ever known.'..
- BOOK REVIEW: The Plantation of Ulster
Jonathan Bardon’s history of the Plantation roughly marks the 400th anniversary of the most successful systematic colonial undertaking in early modern European history. For good or ill we have lived with the consequences ever since...
- Places We Play: Ireland's Sporting Heritage
There can be something very comforting about sifting through old photographs, even if the faces staring back at you are those of strangers. To then discover that there might be a connection to family folklore adds a sense of intrigue. I recall from my childhood, references that my mother made to having had a distant cousin who had been an athlete of some note. Mother could not remember his name, but she thought that he was from somewhere in Limerick or Tipperary, across the county border from her home in Waterford...
- Blackstaff Launch eBook List
For 40 years Blackstaff Press have published some of the freshest, funniest and most thought-provoking literature in Northern Ireland. Now, to prove that this old publishing house can learn new tricks, they are launching an eBook list. And to help publicise the launch CultureNorthernIreland is running a Facebook competition to win a Kindle...
- Blackbird Book Club: Carlo Gebler
It was all Hallow’s Eve when Carlo Gebler came to Queen's University for the second in the 2011/12 Blackbird Book Club series. He made out to spook us: 'My despair is Biblical,' he declared. But in truth, he entranced us...
- PODCAST: Children of the Revolution
Bill Rolston is the author of Children of the Revolution, a pioneering oral history of the experiences of children of combatants in the Northern Ireland conflict...
- BOOK REVIEW: By the Banks of the Lagan
Appropriately, the launch of Ben Simon's latest exploration of the Belfast hinterland, By the Banks of the Lagan, takes place at the Lock Keeper’s Cottage in Newforge. Simon is nothing if not prolific: the new publication follows hard on the heels of a pioneering history of woodlands around Belfast (2009), and an oral history of the Cave Hill (2010)...