Belfast Book Festival 2016 | Page 14

Peter Hollywood & Anthony Glavin Templar Poets (I) Dame Fiona Kidman The Infinte Air With Jo Egan Sarah Mussi, A.G.R. Moore, Shirley-Anne McMillan & Caroline Healy With Dawn Wood, Tom Weir, Oliver Comins & Maggie O’Dwyer Crescent Arts Centre Saturday 11 June – 1pm Tickets: £6/£4 Crescent Arts Centre Saturday 11 June – 4pm Tickets: £6/£4 Crescent Arts Centre Saturday 11 June – 5pm Tickets: Free Crescent Arts Centre Saturday 11 June – 6.15pm Tickets: £8/£6 Drowning the Gowns - Venice, 1894. Henry James takes a night-time gondola to dump armfuls of a recently deceased lady’s garments. Come along to this panel event and learn about writing for these different audiences and how to avoid common pitfalls. Dawn Wood’s first collection, Quarry was shortlisted in the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize and was followed by Connoisseur. Ingathering and Declaration are her most recent collections. Declaration takes inspiration from the Hebrew of Genesis and the Psalms. This enthralling novel, tells the story of the rise and fall of one of the world’s greatest aviators, the glamorous and mysterious Jean Batten. Irish artist Reuben Ross accidentally witnesses this bizarre event and attempts to unravel the mystery surrounding it. Reuben finds himself adrift and risks losing his mind as he discovers that there is more to this story. Peter Hollywood’s previous publications include Hawks (2013), Jane Alley (1987), Lead City & Other Stories (2002) and a novel, Luggage (2008). Colours Other than Blue - Maeve is a single mother of a teenage daughter and works as a Senior Nurse. Grieving over her father’s recent death, she begins to keep a notebook, writing down memories of her Boston childhood, Gradually another, more subterranean, sorrow emerges… Boston-born Anthony Glavin first came to Ireland in 1974. In 1987, he succeeded David Marcus as editor of “New Iri sh Writing” in the Irish Press, and has worked for New Island. 14 Writing For Children & Young Adults Caroline Healy is an award winning graduate of the Seamus Heaney Centre. Her short story collection A Stitch in Time won Doire Press’s International Chapbook Short Story Competition. Caroline is currently working on final edits for her next novel with Bloomsbury Publishing. Sarah Mussi is a multi-award winning author. The Door of No Return won the Glen Dimplex & Irish Writers’ Children’s Book Award. Bomb, 2015, was listed in The Guardian New Best Kids Books 2015 list. A.G.R. Moore has self-published two novels, The Unseen Chronicles of Amelia Black in 2011 (the first in his Unseen Saga series) and a picturesque fable about A Boy Named Hogg in 2012. Shirley-Anne McMillan, is originally from Lisburn, and is a writer and schools worker in Newcastle, Co. Down. Her Young Adult novel A Good Hiding (Atom books) is out in August 2016. Tom Weir’s The Outsider, won the iOTA Shots Award and his first collection All that Falling was launched in 2015. His years living and working abroad, along with living in remote parts of the English Countryside provide inspiration for his writing. In 1995, Oliver Comins’ work was included in Anvil New Poets Two and the editor, Carol Ann Duffy, said “…poetry which has its roots emphatically in the writer’s life.” Recent work is published in journals like The Rialto, Yellow Nib and The Spectator. Maggie O’Dwyer’s first poetry pamphlet, Yes, I’d Love to Dance was followed by her first collection, Laughter Heard from the Road, shortlisted in 2010 for the Rupert and Eithne Strong Award for Best First Collection. With Cathy Brown After breaking records and becoming an icon in the 1930s, Batten suddenly slipped out of view, disappearing to the Caribbean with her mother and eventually dying in obscurity and buried in a pauper’s grave. The compelling behind-the-scenes story of ‘the Garbo of the skies’ is a fascinating insight into the early days of flying, of mothers and daughters, fame and secrecy. Dame Fiona Kidman is a leading contemporary novelist, short story writer and poet. She has won numerous awards, and has been the recipient of fellowships, grants and other significant honours. She is President of Honour for the New Zealand Book Council, and has been awarded an OBE and a Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for her services to literature. belfastbookfestival.com 15