Dalkey, that “vestibule of a heavenly conspection,” as Flann O’Brien has it, is having a book festival this weekend (16th-18th of June). It already kicked off, in a sense, in town at the Born Gais Theater with Bernie Sanders giving a brief shout, but this weekend is when it all really kicks off, in the…

So, by pure chance I got to see Joseph O’Connor at the Listowel Writer’s Festival in beautiful Listowel, Co. Kerry, Ireland back in May. But this makes it sound like a Bigfoot sighting. Well, this Bigfoot stood in front of a room of a couple hundred people or so. He talked a little bit about…

The thing that surprised me, and the members of the first few rows, which became a Sea World-esque no-go zone, the most was the amount of blood. I had no idea that Christopher Moore and Carl Hiaasen were mortal enemies and that Books Inc. had obviously thrown them together for the sheer spectacle of it…