Reading at Dundalk Festival Today

Off to Dundalk this afternoon to do a spot at the Cafe reading there at the Dundalk Book Festival. I'm one of the various authors, poets and performers who will be "entertaining, inspiring and spellbinding [some hope!] audiences" at two local cafes The Panana Café in Market Square and The 23 Seats in Crowe Street. I'm on in the Panama sometime between 2 and 3 and probably will do a spot in the other cafe later.

What to read? Something funny or even amusing (I must have something like that) something topical (No! No! not the recession - but it's funny!)something easy to read and easy to "get" at one listed. Well, I'll try me best. I do have a cafe poem, just published in the Galway Review actually and online here. Wonder what the chocolate cake is like in the Panama Cafe. I've heard the coffee is good.

The Panama MC is local writer and Doghouse poet, Barbara Smith, and she and her Poetry Divas will perform their own brand of performance poetry to open and close the reading. Others who are expected to perform include writers from the Dundalk No Bother group and Ardgillen/Skerries writers as well as John King children’s writer, Christine Larkin fiction, May Toal poetry/fiction, Nessa Toale fiction, John Gilmore humourist and Richard Halperin poetry. Noel McGee will perform an extract from his one man show I Kavanagh.

Other events include Irish Crime Writers Niamh O’Connor, Declan Hughes and Declan Burke being interviewed and reading from their work at 1pm. Successful local author Jaki McCarrick will launch her new latest book at Carroll’s bookshop 5-6pm.

In the evening evening, Irish Women Writers Christine Dwyer-Hickey, Claudia Carroll and Catherine Dunne take the stage (7-9pm) to read from their books.

Full programme on the website.