The Artist and the City Aingeala Flannery, Stephen James Smith, Luke McManus, Roisin Kiberd, Ferdia Mac Anna, Darren Murphy, Louise Nealon, Muireann Ní Chíobháin and Declan Toohey
In Partnership with DCU
This one-day symposium, programmed by DCU Arts Council Writer in Residence 2024, Aingeala Flannery, explores the artist’s relationship with the city, with a focus on North Dublin. Featuring a workshop, writing clinics with artists, readings, panel discussion, and a film screening, guests include: Stephen James Smith, Luke McManus, Roisin Kiberd, Ferdia Mac Anna, Darren Murphy, Louise Nealon, Muireann Ní Chíobháin and Declan Toohey. DCU students, staff and the public are invited to immerse themselves in a day of literature and creativity.
| Time | Event |
| 10:30am – 12pm | It Happened Here – writing about place workshop with Aingeala Flannery – Book here |
| 1 – 2pm | ‘Tales of the City’ Open Mic – Aingeala Flannery to host and lead with a 5 min reading from reflection on Vera Klute’s Luke Kelly statue Book here |
| 3 – 4pm | Campus Narratives. Roisin Kiberd (Bad Quarto; The Dublin Review), Louise Nealon (Snowflake), Declan Toohey (Perpetual Comedown) in conversation (Chair – Juliana Adelman DCU Assisant Professor of History and author of The Grateful Water (2024) – Book here |
| 4 – 5pm | ‘Fifteen Minutes With You’ Writing Clinics
Aingeala Flannery – Prose |
| 6 – 8pm | ‘North Circular’ Film Screening – Hosted by Aingeala Flannery with a guest performance by Stephen James Smith, followed by a post-show discussion with director Luke McManus – Book here |
Aingeala Flannery is the 2024 Writer in Residence at Dublin City University. Her critically acclaimed novel The Amusements won both the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year at Listowel Writers’ Week 2023 and the John McGahern Prize. Aingeala was awarded a Literature Bursary by the Arts Council of Ireland in 2020 and 2021. She is a former Irish Writers Centre Novel Fair winner. In 2019, her short story Visiting Hours won the Harper’s Bazaar Short Story Prize, while her personal essays have been published by Paper Visual Art (PVA) and have been broadcast on RTÉ Radio One. Aingeala is deputy publisher of The Dublin Review and the producer/presenter of The Dublin Review Podcast. She holds an MA in Journalism from DCU and an MFA in Creative Writing from University College Dublin.
Roisin Kiberd has written essays and features for The Stinging Fly, The Dublin Review, Winter Papers, The White Review, the Guardian and The New York Times, among other places. She is the non-fiction editor of The Stinging Fly, and lectures in creative writing at the University of Galway. Her first book, The Disconnect: a personal journey through the Internet was published by Serpent’s Tail in 2021.
Ferdia Mac Anna has worked as a television producer/director, journalist, magazine editor, filmmaker, creative writing facilitator and lecturer. At present, he lectures in screenwriting at DCU. He produced the Bafta-winning children’s drama series, ‘Custer’s Last Stand-Up’ (bbc 2000-2002) and ‘Seacht’ (2007, tg4). His feature film ‘Dannyboy’ won best film at Birmingham Film Festival.For some years he toured ireland as lead singer and songwriter with first Rocky de Valera and The Gravediggers (1977-79/2005-2008) and Rocky de Valera and The Rhythm Kings (1980-83). Now and then, he still rock and rolls. He has written three novels , ‘The Last of the High Kings’ (made into a movie starring Gabriel Byrne, Jared Leto and Christina Ricci), ‘The Ship Inspector’ and ‘Cartoon City’ plus two memoirs, ‘Baldhead’(Raven Arts) and ‘The Rocky Years’ (Hodder Headline, 2006). He has written one poem.
Luke McManus is a documentary film maker based in Dublin. He has made acclaimed films for Netflix, BBC, NBC, Channel 4, ITV, RTÉ, TV3, NDR, Virgin Media Television, Al-Jazeera and TG4. His work has won four Irish Film & Television Awards, the Celtic Media Award, the Radharc Prize, the EBU Connect Award and the Grand Prix at FIPADOC. His debut feature documentary as a director, North Circular, had its International Premiere at Sheffield Doc/Fest in 2022 and won eight awards in total including prizes at Dublin IFF, Louth IFF and Indie Cork Film Festival as well as winning the Grand Prix at France’s leading documentary festival, FIPADOC in Biarritz, the Sound On Screen Award at Thin Line in Denton, Texas and the American Cinematographer Award at Salem Film Fest.
Darren Murphy is a playwright, essayist, and academic, and has been produced in the West End, Off-Broadway, Dublin, Belfast, Derry, and Edinburgh. Plays include: X’ntigone (MAC, Belfast, and The Peacock, Dublin); Bunny’s Vendetta (UK City of Culture, Derry); Irish Blood, English Heart (Trafalgar Studios, West End); and Tabloid Caligula, (Arcola, London, and the Off-Broadway Festival at E59E, New York). He was associate playwright at the Abbey Theatre in 2018 and is currently under commission to the Lime Tree in Limerick. He was appointed a Ciaran Carson Writing in the City Fellow 2022-23, for the Seamus Heaney Centre, Belfast, and has taught playwriting at QUB for the Irish Writers Centre, the Abbey Theatre, and at Griffith College for CAPA. He is currently Assistant Professor in Creative Writing at DCU. The Playwright & the Pugilist, an essay, was published by The Tangerine. His plays are published by Methuen and Oberon.
Louise Nealon is a writer from County Kildare. She has a degree in English literature from Trinity College Dublin and a Master’s degree in Creative Writing from Queen’s University Belfast. In 2017, she won the Cork International Short Story Competition. Her debut novel, Snowflake, released in May 2021,won Newcomer of the Year at the An Post Book Awards and was chosen for the One Dublin One Book campaign in2024.Louise is currently based in Belfast where she is working on her second novel.
Muireann Ní Chíobháin is the Irish language Writer-in-Residence at DCU. She has written five Irish-language books for children, which have been published by FutaFata: Scúnc agus Smúirín, three books in the Eoinín series, and Gealach agus Grian. Muireann has also developed and written many television programmes for young people which can be seen on TG4, RTÉjr, Amazon Prime and Apple TV and was a commissioning editor and executive producer of children’s animation and drama for the launch of Irish language children’s television channel Cúla 4. The clinics she is providing are for people interested in writing for children in English or Irish.
Stephen James Smith, born in Dublin, is an Irish poet, writer, performer, playwright, and educator. Their short poetry films have captivated millions, earning them the opportunity to perform alongside notable names like Eddie Vedder (Pearl Jam), Patti Smith, Shane MacGowan, Bono (U2), Imelda May, and Glen Hansard. With close to 1,000 gigs worldwide over the past 20 years in locations from Ballydehob to Bangkok, and significant performances at venues like Glastonbury, the Radio City Music Hall, New York, the Nuyorican Poetry Café, the Centre Culturel Irlandais (Paris), and the Barbican and Palladium (London). Stephen has demonstrated a commanding presence on the stage. As a recording artist, Stephen’s work has been lauded both nationally and internationally, leading to Stephen being dubbed “Dublin’s unofficial poet laureate.” Acknowledging that success is a blend of luck, hard work, and subjectivity, Stephen invites you to form your own opinions about their work.
Declan Toohey is from County Kildare. His writing has been published or is forthcoming in Tolka, The Irish Times, Channel and elsewhere. In 2021 he was a winner of the IWC Novel Fair, and in 2022 he won the Maeve Binchy Travel Award. An MFA graduate of University College Dublin, he is the recipient of an Agility Award and a Literature Bursary from the Arts Council of Ireland. His first novel, Perpetual Comedown, was published by New Island Books in February 2023.