Novelist Claire Keegan, UK prize-winning journalist Gary Younge, and Kurdish-Irish sportsman and author of Life Begins in Leitrim, Zak Moradi, are among the guests taking part in this year’s Iron Mountain Literature Festival in Carrick-on-Shannon on the weekend of 6 to 8 October.
There will be a recording at The Dock of a special Iron Mountain Sunday Miscellany on the evening of Friday 8 October, and The John McGahern Memorial Lecture will be given by Síobhra Aiken, Lecturer at Queens University Belfast and author of Spiritual Wounds: Trauma, Testimony and the Irish Civil War. Claire Keegan will give a series of seminars over the three days of the festival on ‘How Literature Works’, focusing on the writing of John McGahern.
Also taking part in the festival will be Saud Aldarra, author of the best-selling memoir I Don't Want to Talk about Home: A migrant's search for belonging, which was shortlisted for the Irish National Book Awards' Biography of the Year. Her memoir was described by Roddy Doyle as "powerful, fascinating and deeply moving - the book pushes aside our lazy images of human migration and refugees."
Ken Boyle and Tim Desmond, authors of The Murder of Dr Muldoon on the case of the infamous killing of the local doctor in Mohill in March 1923, will also be guests at the festival, as will Irish-French writer Mary Byrne.
There will be boat trip on the River Shannon from Carrick-on-Shannon to Cootehall to visit the John McGahern Barracks, and a session of readings and music at Skerry Rynn’s bar and grocers in Ballinaglera to coincide with the Ballinaglera Traditional Music Festival.
