Granard gears up once again for Booktown festival

Granard Booktown is returning for it’s third year with another exciting lineup in store for attendees across the county and country.

The festival will be kicking off this Friday, April 11 at 5pm with Conor Gearty, a professor of Human Rights Law at LSE and an Honorary Kings Counsel and Peter Geoghegan.

At 6pm Rebecca Tallon de Havilland can be seen in Fay’s Bar, Seamus O’Rourke will be featured in the Library at 7pm. The remainder of the Booktown weekend will be see contributions from poets, playwrights, authors and journalists who have given so much to the written word.

Each day will feature a special guest as the last speaker of the day. This Friday, renowned Irish author Claire Keegan will be speaking at 8 pm in the school hall of Granard’s Sacred Heart National School.

Claire Keegan is best known for her book ‘Small Things Like These’ which was recently adapted to the silver screen and starred Oscar-winning actor Cillian Murphy.

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The film was highly successful and highly awarded. Claire has studied in New Orelans, saw her first collections of stories published in 1999 and has been nominated and won multiple prestigious awards for literature time and time again.

Anyone interested can attend her conversation with acclaimed Irish writer Sinéad Gleeson.
Saturday will see another special guest make the journey to Granard Book town.

Carole Cadwalladr, the renowned Pulitzer-nominated journalist with the Guardian, the Observer, and Cambridge Analytica investigator.

She is the recipient of multiple journalistic awards, and for those interested can be found in conversation with renowned Irish journalist Bryan Dobson this Saturday evening at 8pm in Sacred Heart National School.

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Last but not least, the esteemed Irish author, John Banville will be sitting down with Belinda McKeon at 6:30 pm in Sacred Heart National School.

John Banville has written dozens of award-winning works of literature. He is the winner of the Booker Prize for his 2005 novel ‘The Sea’. His infamous crime series featured Dublin pathologist Quirke under the pseudonym Benjamin Black has solidified him as one of the juggernauts of the Irish Crime genre.

Along with these special guests the festival will be providing a whole host of writers throughout the weekend that are absolutely not to be missed. The programme is available on the Granard Booktown website as are tickets.