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The festival will host a handful of other poetry
events, such as bilingual poetry reading Ní Chuireann Sí Fiacil Ann/She Tells It Straight (National Library of Ireland) and a showcase of promising new poets in Irish and English entitled Poetry And The Duty Of Care, featuring Róisín Leggett Bohan, Jennifer Horgan and Lianne O’Hara in conversation with Martin Dyar in The New Theatre. The finale of Slamovision, the spoken word version of Eurovision, will have performances both online and in-person on Wednesday night, Nov 5th (Teeling Distillery). Across genres, DBF is celebrating launches and some are going beyond just discussions of the book. DubStreet Coffee Guide is accompanied by a coffee tasting, Roxana Manouchehri’s memoir This is not a cookbook will honor both her writing (Temple Bar Gallery) and decades of art and quarterly magazine The Dublin Review commemorates its 100th edition with live broadcast and musical guests (1WML Windmill Quarter). İlhan Sami Çomak Spanning five days and over 100 events honouring Ireland’s literary landscape, the Dublin Book Festival will take place from Wednesday 5th November to Sunday 9th November this year. Headquarters for the event is the Irish Museum of Modern Art but other events will unfold in venues across the city, including the National Library of Ireland, National Botanical Gardens and Royal Dublin Academy. Publishing Ireland started the festival in 2006 and the festival has expanded over the last two decades, supported primarily by the Arts Council of Ireland, along with organizations such as Dublin City Council and Dublin UNESCO City of Literature. This year, the last day of the festival overlaps with Science Week, an annual celebration of science’s innumerable intersections with everyday life. November 9, a Sunday, will offer collaborations such as Irish STEM Lives, an event and book of the same name highlighting the visionaries who shaped Irish scientific history. Royal Irish Academy’s biochemist Luke O’Neil and book co-editor Jane Grimson will discuss these fascinating figures with science broadcaster Jonathan McCrea. The festival’s Science Week events also include walking tours spotlighting haikus traversing personal and natural lives (accompanied by saxophone) as well as architecture and woodland photography. Through the week, however, festival events will educate about sustainability and nature. Wednesday’s programming boasts an all-day sustainability crash course with Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education gold-certified sustainable Technological University Dublin and Green Foundation Ireland, covering everything from the agricultural to the political implications of thoughtful development. Some of the other ecological talks cover an introduction to urban beekeeping on Thursday, in addition to a dive into Ireland’s historical agricultural practices and why bugs need a rebranding on Saturday. 12 DUBLIN BOOK FESTIVAL Kaavya Butaney speedreads through the program as the Dublin Book Festival takes over the city with an incredible, stacked line up of events and special guests. WORDS Kaavya Butaney As an early tribute to Day of the Imprisoned Writer, Kurdish poet İlhan Sami Çomak will be speaking with co-chair of Irish PEN/PEN na hÉireann Liz McManus (National Library of Ireland). While imprisoned in Istanbul for 30 years, Çomak released eight volumes of poetry. Turkey’s longest-serving student prisoner, Çomak was only released from prison last November and received the Jack Hirschman Poetry Prize for his work in justice, peace and human dignity in June. Dublin Book Festival Nov 5th - 9th. Many events are free but require prebooking. dublinbookfestival.com Other highlights include Emerging Voices with Gethan Dick, Aisling Rawle, Garrett Carr and Seán Farrell in conversation with Aingeala Flannery in The Grafton Hotel as the debutant novelists explore themes from hope and love to resilience and ambition, Women Writing History with Evelyn Conlon And Sinéad Gleeson talking to Clodagh Finn in The Great Hall, IMMA, Royal Hospital Kilmainham, as they trace the seismic impact of women activists in Ireland through the decades and Out On The Page with Soula Emmanuel, Seán Hewitt and Anne Walsh Donnelly in conversation with Neil Hegarty to discuss the importance of queer visibility in writing, and the many ways in which such representation can work, serve the community – and shine a light in a still-challenging world. (Irish Writers Centre, Parnell Sq) To experience Dublin through a literary lens, author Pat Liddy will lead a two-hour historical tour of the old city every day of the festival. Overlay James Joyce’s Ulysses with the modern city with Robert Nicholson and in Dublin 8, the In Our Shoes walking tour illuminates the Liberties. And on Saturday, visit a brewing company to learn about the story of the Dublin pub. DBF will also incorporate workshops detailing how to: construct a zine, acclimatize to spoken word poetry in two hours and how to move forward after a children’s book deal (all in Irish Writers Centre). Further, author Dearbhaile O’Hare will guide an interactive session on how to utilize writing to support wellbeing through sickness and health in conjunction with the ARC Cancer Centre on Friday (Irish Writers Centre). Over the week, panels will discuss several common threads, from those as literal as notable Irish American history (Royal Dublin Society Library & Archives) to the broader themes of migration, family and belonging (Museum of Literature Ireland). Hear about the creative process of translation on Saturday (The Chapel IMMA) and the difficulties of grappling with unspeakable atrocities in fiction on Friday (Museum of Literature Ireland). Kicking off a series of cross-disciplinary discussions between academia and journalism, Phil Mullen and Afua Hirsch will examine the history and present of the Black community across Ireland and Britain (The Chapel IMMA). Children can join in on the weekend too (when accompanied by an adult), with a wide spread of activities like creating custom tarot cards as well as talks, like Dave Rudden’s how-to on designing the perfect villain. In the heart of the festival at the IMMA campus, families can drop in all day to plant their own bulb or sapling, swap their old books for new, traipse across the grounds on a treasure hunt and spark their children’s skills at the Creativity Station. And for the child that can’t figure out what to read, the Book Doctors at IMMA can prescribe the perfect read.