DC Irish Writers Festival Events at Sova

Sova plays host two free events for Solas Nua's DC Irish Writers Festival over the next few days. Stop by and feed your brain.

Also, the same group has a little something going on in the area later this spring that relates to Swampoodle.

Solas Nua, the only organization in the U.S. dedicated exclusively to contemporary Irish Arts Presents: The DC Irish Writers Festival (March 3rd - 7th)

10 creative and innovative Irish writers will give you a whole new perspective on Irish writing during this 5-day engaging festival. featuring Sean O’Reilly, Leanne O’Sullivan, Sweary Lady (aka Lisa McInerney), the Stinging Fly’s Declan Meade, Emer Martin, Ailbhe Keogan, Julian Gough, Leontia Flynn and jazz singer, Melanie O'Reilly, performing with original texts by Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill and Sean O'Riordain.

Sova will be hosting the following writers this weekend, and Monday:

Saturday - Julian Gough at 7pm - Julian Gough was born in London to Tipperary parents, and raised in Ireland. while studying philosophy at university in Galway, he began singing with the Underground, and very literary, rock band Toasted Heretic. they played London, Paris and New York, released four albums, and had a top ten hit in Ireland in 1991 with Galway and Los Angeles, a song about not kissing Sinead O’Connor.

His first novel, Juno and Juliet, was published in the UK and U.S. in 2001. His short story The Orphan and the Mob won the BBC National Short Story Award (the biggest prize in the world for a single story), in 2007. his second novel, Jude: Level 1, was shortlisted for the 2008 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Award, alongside work by Alan Bennett, Garrison Keillor and Will Self. (the Sunday Tribune described it as “possibly the finest comic novel since Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman”. ) his story The Great Hargeisa Goat Bubble was the first short story ever published by the FT. It was subsequently adapted into a radio play by the BBC and broadcast twice on Radio 4. In early 2010, the Sunday Tribune chose Jude: Level 1 as their Irish Novel of the Decade.

His collected poems and lyrics, Free Sex Chocolate, were published by Salmon in 2010. He represented Ireland in the Dalkey Archive’s anthology, Best European Fiction 2010, and his third novel, Jude in London, will be published by Old Street in september 2011. Julian now lives in Berlin. he is probably best known for stealing will self’s pig.

Monday - Leanne O'Sullivan at 7pm (followed by the festival's after party) - Leanne O'Sullivan was born in 1983 and comes from the Beara Peninsula in Co. Cork. she has published two collections of poetry with Bloodaxe Books, Waiting for My Clothes (2004) and Cailleach; The Hag of Beara (2009). she received the Ireland Chair of Poetry Bursary in 2009, and in 2010 was awarded the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature.