Festival Hub

Looking to refresh your bookshelves at home? We’re inviting families to bring their old children’s books to swap them for one from our DBF book swap stand.  Free admission, drop in any time between 11am – 3:30pm.

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The Irish Writers Handbook 2025 is your essential guide to writing and getting published, with contributions from acclaimed authors and book industry professionals. To mark the launch of this year’s expanded and updated edition join the handbook’s publisher Ronan Colgan (Wordwell), Deirdre Nolan (Eriu), Ruth Hegarty (Royal Irish Academy), and Patrick O’Donoghue (Gill Books), as […]

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Described ‘as if Flann O’Brien had written Alice Through the Looking-glass’ and set in 1930’s Dublin and London, Jabberwock (Dedalus) tells of a dastardly republican plot to bring down the United Kingdom by the spreading of a counterfeit language. In a story in which language runs riot and fonts and footnotes proliferate alarmingly, the plot […]

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The short story, by its nature, captures and explores brief but significant moments or events in its characters’ lives, and so continues to captivate readers far and wide. Jan Carson’s Quickly, While They Still Have Horses (Doubleday) is a sparkling collection of stories encompassing all of life, with suggestions of the other world that will […]

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Join Tyler Anbinder and Tomás Finn in conversation with fellow historian Mary McAuliffe about their richly researched historical works. Anbinder’s Plentiful Country (Eriu), is a gripping narrative of Irish immigrants who transformed America after the Great Hunger, defying hardship to redefine the American dream. Inside Rural Ireland (UCD Press), edited by Tomás Finn and Tony […]

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Critically acclaimed as satirical masterpieces, the best-selling Ross O’Carroll-Kelly series of books is drawing to a close with Don’t Look Back in Ongar (Sandycove). In this final instalment, the nation’s favourite upper class yob returns home from bonding with goys on the Camino to pandemonium. His father is causing havoc in Áras an Uachtaráin, Sorcha […]

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The Dublin Review asked three brilliant contributors – Sam Bungey, Brenda Romero and Jessica Traynor – to choose an essay they especially love from the journal’s nearly twenty-four years of publishing. In this year’s Dublin Review Conversations event, the three will talk about what they love about these essays, how they relate to their own […]

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Taking us back to a hot Dublin summer in 1866, Juliana Adelman’s The Grateful Water (New Island) is a gripping detective story of secrets and guilt, steeped in the city’s history. Leeanne O’Donnell’s Sparks of Bright Matter (Eriu) is an equally gripping game of cat and mouse through Georgian London’s underworld, in pursuit of an […]

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Join us for a lively and engaging afternoon of book chat with some of Ireland’s most exciting contemporary authors. Kevin Power will be in conversation with Colin Barrett about his darkly funny and thrilling debut novel Wild Houses (Jonathan Cape), and with Estelle Birdy about her explosively original debut novel Ravelling (The Lilliput Press). Neil […]

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The Irish Art of Calligraphy (Royal Irish Academy), by historian and calligrapher Tim O’Neill, is a beautiful workbook that provides an introduction to modern calligraphy and creative ways to develop your own unique style of lettering. Join Tim for this unique workshop in the Chester Beatty and try your hand at some of the exercises […]

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Ina cuid scéalta pléann Réaltán Ni Leannáin teamaí casta an ghrá, briseadh croí agus díoltas, soineantacht na hóige agus briseadh na soineantachta céanna. Scríbhneoir ina bhfuil féith an ghrinn go smior ann é Seán Ó Cadhain,  rud a léiríonn sé ina chéad chnuasach gearrscéalta Fanacht Fada. ‘Bíonn an t-aorachas, an greann agus an scigmhagadh measctha le chéile aige sna […]

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In 2012, Ann Morgan set herself the goal of reading a book from every country, recording her quest at ayearofreadingtheworld.com and in her first book Reading the World. Twelve years on, she continues to receive messages from readers around the world and reading internationally has become a lifelong endeavour. Among the many things this wide-reaching […]

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