NORTHSIDE WORDS

Zoë Miller, Sheila O'Flanagan, Roisin Meany, Ciara Geraghty

Originally conceived as the Donaghmede Festival of Words, by the time we got to the first actual festival it had become the Donaghmede Literary Festival.

Unfortunately, I only found out about it when it was almost over and just managed to get to the final session on Saturday Evening (28/9/2019). This was titled Women's Words with Sheila O'Flanagan and consisted in Sheila interviewing three women novelists. It turned out to be most interesting.

Let me introduce everybody.

Pat McCabe

Pat is manager of the Donaghmede Shopping Centre. Great credit is due to him for organising this festival. The setting is professional. The last time I saw the room it was an art gallery. This time when I walked in I thought I was in a theatre. The line up of participants is impressive and the three day programme is packed.

Pat tells me that this is the first literary festival to be held in a shopping centre and it's happening on the northside.

Sheila O'Flanagan

Sheila didn't start out as a professional novelist, nor did any of the three novelists she was interviewing. But once she got stuck in, in her thirties, she took off. As she reports "I’ve written more than 20 novels as well as 3 collections of short stories and 2 novels for children all of which have been bestsellers both in Ireland and overseas".

This evening her task was to bring out the best in her three fellow novelists, which she did with consummate ease. Sheila has had another, I'm sure more demanding role in all of this. She is the programme manager for the festival and the range and depth of the programme is a tribute to her.

Ciara Geraghty

Ciara started off in insurance and in her mid thirties went on a writing course and she's been writing ever since.

Ciara is from around the corner so she didn't have far to travel this evening.

Roisin Meany

Roisin started off as a teacher and eventually decided to write a book and it just went all the way from there. To date she is the author of sixteen adult novels and two children’s books, and her works have been translated into several languages.

She traveled up from Limerick City, where she lives, for this evening's event. She was born in Listowel where literature runs in the blood. A case of briseann an dúchas.

Zoë Miller

Zoë took a big risk to get here. She had to cross the Liffey, a fact mentioned by Pat in his introduction. She has since tweeted: I'd cross the Liffey any time for the wonderful and warm Donaghmede welcome.

Points made by one speaker tended to be echoed by the others.

• you need to discipline yourself to write
• set yourself a target number or words per week/month
• it doesn't get any easier
• courses and workshops can be beneficial
• you invariably draw on your own life experiences either directly or indirectly
• women tend to write from a woman's point of view and experience
• you generally don't have a particular audience in mind
• of course you hope some (a lot) of people will read what you write
• you are however writing for yourself and the marketing comes later
• get a good agent

The Q&A (question & answer session) was animated and there was good interaction between authors and audience.

I asked if they wrote with a female audience in mind and had they any comment on the gender composition of the night's audience. I've included their answer to the first part above.

As to audience composition on the night, I had the impression they hadn't paid particular attention to it. In fact there were about half a dozen men in a packed "hall" as far as I could see. To be fair, the subject was women's writing and the panel was all female. In the circumstances I guess the gender composition of the audience was un-pass-remarkable.

The posters were glossy in a uniform format and well designed. I'm showing the one above as I worked with Anna's father and would like to have attended her session. But I see it's for eleven to fourteen year olds. There are, of course, some of my detractors who would say that age bracket was highly appropriate.

This will give you an idea of how the room/hall/theatre looked.

While the overall design was excellent I thought there was something unbalanced about the logo, particularly where the A in LITERARY appeared white and a little on its side. It was only as I ended up with it in front of me for a whole evening that I spotted the pencil and what the artist was trying to do.

Could I maybe suggest a tweak along these lines? Though I do have to admit once you do see the pencil in the original it does immediately strike you thereafter.