Possibly the best free literary festival of the year, and it’s only two days away! With John Banville, Donal Ryan (above), Claire Keegan, Hugo Hamilton and John Kelly there is some great Irish talent on display to say nothing of the international line up. You can find full bios on all the authors involved here and full the full programme is here.

ISLA Literary Festival – Twenty Writers from Seven Different Countries and Thousands

Location: Instituto Cervantes, Lincoln House, Lincoln Place, Dublin 2

Date: 17th, 18th and 19th October

Opening speech by John Banville, 17th

Free Admission

Simultaneous interpreting available for attendees in Spanish and English

The 3rd ISLA Literary Festival sets itself as a unique event in Dublin and Ireland. ISLA (from Irish, Spanish and Latin American) Literary Festival welcomes well known and emerging writers and other personalities with a strong connection to the literary world from these three traditions. John Banville will inaugurate the festival on Friday 17th discussion about Portraying Through Writing, in which he will participate with the versatile Spanish writer José Ovejero and the avant-garde Chilean author Diamela Eltit. The evening will conclude with the round table Building Identities with Spinning Heart’s Donal Ryan, poet and literary translator Anamaría Crowe Serrano and the experimental writer Christodoulos Makris.

Saturday’s theme is We All Like Stories. We will commence talking about the value of short stories with Claire Keegan, Basque author Harkaitz Cano and Irish poet Mary O’Malley. In the round table Ambiguous Word, The Specked People’s author, Hugo Hamilton, Galician poet Marta Dacosta and Irish language writer and broadcaster Manchán Magan will discuss the challenges of living in between two or more languages.

The last discussion of the day will be dedicated to the cultural and literary legacy of Mexican author Octavio Paz. The panel will be followed by a poetry reading in English, Spanish, Basque at 4pm, and will take part in the first or Galician. For those interested in Gabriel García Márquez and Octavio Paz, they can continue the evening enjoying the screenings of Buscando a Gabo and Vida y obra de Octavio Paz. Both documentaries focus on the personal lives of these Nobel Prize winning writers.

Sunday ́s Book Culture will start with the panel about Facing Literatures: Fiction and Non Fiction with the author of Red Sky in Morning Paul Lynch, the Northern Irish writer and broadcaster Malachi O’Doherty and Argentinean poet and novelist Américo Cristófalo. We will close the festival with Access to Culture, with Irish writer and broadcaster John Kelly, the director of El Cultural, Spanish journalist Blanca Berasategui and Chilean writer Waldo Rojas. ISLA is a multilingual and multicultural event for those who enjoy reading, translation, poetry, short stories, memoirs, travel books or novels. It’s a dialog between cultures, an encounter between these three literary traditions and an incomparable occasion to get close to some of your favourite writers in Spanish.

Schedule of events is below and full details here.

Friday, 17th October 2014 – Identities

3.30pm – Doors open

4pm – 4.30pm – Official opening speech by Irish writer John Banville
4.45pm – 6pm – Portraying through Writing: Latin America – Ireland – Spain – Chaired by: Helena Buffery (University College Cork)

Authors
John Banville (Ireland)
Diamela Eltit (Chile)
José Ovejero (Spain)

6.15pm – 7.30pm – Building Identities  – Chaired by: Philip Johnston (University College Dublin)

Authors
Donal Ryan (Ireland)
Christodoulos Makis (Cyprus)
Anamaría Crowe Serrano (Ireland)

Saturday, 18th October 2014 – We All Love Stories

11.00am – 12.15pm
Tell me a Story
Chaired by: Jean-Philippe Imbert (Dublin City University)

Authors
Harkaitz Cano (Spain)
Claire Keegan (Ireland)
Mary O’Malley (Ireland)

12.30pm – 1.45pm

Ambiguous Words
Chaired by: Martín Veiga (University College Cork)

Authors

Hugo Hamilton (Ireland)
Marta Dacosta (Spain)
Manchán Magan (Ireland)
1.45pm – 3.15pm Break

3.15pm – 4.30pm
Following the Footsteps of Octavio Paz

Authors
Antonio Rivero Taravillo (Spain)
Armando González Torres (Mexico)
Ciaran Cosgrove (Ireland)
4.45pm – 5.45pm
Reading Poetry
Presented by: Bill Richardson (NUI Galway)

Authors
Marta Dacosta (Spain)
Harkaitz Cano (Spain)
Waldo Rojas (Chile)
Mary O’Malley (Ireland)
Anamaría Crowe Serrano (Ireland)
Antonio Rivero Taravillo (Spain)
6.00pm – 6.50pm
Film screening: Buscando a Gabo
Documentary on Gabriel García Márquez by Luis Fernando Bottia
2007 (Colombia). 50 min.
In Spanish + English subtitles

7pm – 8.25pm
Film screening: Vida y obra de Octavio Paz
Documentary on Octavio Paz by Carlos Armella
2014 (Mexico). 84 min.
In Spanish without subtitles

Sunday, 19th October 2014 – Book Culture

11.00am – 12.30pm
Facing Literatures. Fiction and Non Fiction
Chaired by: Ciaran Carty

Authors
Américo Cristófalo (Argentina)
Paul Lynch (Ireland)
Malachy O’Doherty (Northern Ireland)
12.45pm – 2.15pm
Access to Culture
Introduced by: Susan Cahill

Authors
Blanca Berasategui (Spain)
Waldo Rojas (Chile)
John Kelly (Ireland)