You spin me round Wendy Erskine, Aingeala Flannery and Declan Long in conversation with Tony Clayton-Lea DJ Set by Gavin Corbett
You spin me round (PVA) is an illuminating collection of essays, a mixtape that takes elements of music – songs, performances, albums, gigs – as points of departure. Some of today’s finest writers reflect on what music has meant to them at different moments in their lives. Immerse yourself in an evening of conversation and music as contributors Wendy Erskine, Aingeala Flannery and Declan Long join culture journalist Tony Clayton-Lea in conversation, with Gavin Corbett on the decks playing songs referenced throughout the evening’s discussion.
This is an 18+ event.
Wendy Erskine’s two short story collections, Sweet Home and Dance Move (Stinging Fly/Picador) were variously listed for The Edge Hill Prize, the Gordon Burn Prize and the Republic of Consciousness Prize. Stories from the collections were listed for The Sunday Times Audible Short Story Prize and the Irish Book Awards short story of the year. Sweet Home won the Butler Literary Prize. Dance Move was Book at Bedtime on BBC Radio 4. She edited well I just kind of like it, an anthology about art in the home and the home as art, for PVA Books. Other fiction and non-fiction has been published by Rough Trade Books, the Tangerine Press, Ration Books, Daunt Books, Faber, the Guardian and the Quietus, among others. In 2022, she was Seamus Heaney Fellow at Queen’s University, Belfast and in 2023 was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. A frequent interviewer and broadcaster, she hosted a show on Soho Radio for Rough Trade Books until 2024. She is a head of department in a secondary school in Belfast. Her debut novel The Benefactors will be published in June 2025.
Aingeala Flannery is a writer and broadcaster. In 2019, her short story ‘Visiting Hours’ won the Harper’s Bazaar Short Story Prize. Her personal essays have been published by Paper Visual Art (PVA) and IMAGE magazine, and broadcast on RTÉ Radio One. Aingeala was awarded a Literature Bursary by the Arts Council of Ireland in 2020 and 2021. Her critically acclaimed debut The Amusements was published by Penguin Sandycove in 2022. It won both the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year at Listowel Writers’ Week and the John McGahern Prize in association with the University of Liverpool. Aingeala is deputy publisher of The Dublin Review and the producer/presenter of The Dublin Review Podcast. She holds an MA in Journalism from Dublin City University and an MFA in Creative Writing from University College Dublin. She is the Arts Council Writer in Residence at Dublin City University.
Declan Long is an art critic and lecturer at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin. He is author of Ghost Haunted Land: Contemporary Art and Post-Troubles Northern Ireland (2017) and a contributor to Art Review, Artforum, Aperture, and other international art journals.
Gavin Corbett is the author of three novels: Innocence (2003), This Is the Way (2013) and Green Glowing Skull (2015). He has been writer-in-residence at Trinity College, UCD and the University of Galway. He currently works as a medieval re-enactor, a gardener and a seller of golf balls.
Tony Clayton-Lea is an Irish-based freelance journalist/writer/editor who writes on music, arts, and pop culture for a variety of publications, but mostly for The Irish Times, specifically its Arts pages and its weekly culture magazine, The Ticket. Tony also contributes to the arts and book pages of the Irish Independent and The Irish Post.
The DBF After Dark strand is supported by The Night-Time Economy Advisor: Dublin City Council.
With thanks to our venue partner The Dublin Liberties Distillery.
