Rolling Sun Book Festival returns to Mayo next week

The Rolling Sun Book Festival is back in Westport next week with a stellar line-up of events.

Firstly, award-winning and internationally acclaimed writer Colum McCann will feature on the first day of the festival on October 17.

The Dublin-born writer, who now lives in New York, will talk about his work, including ‘American Mother’, and the award-winning books, ‘Apeirogon’ and ‘Let the Great World Spin’, in the opening event of the festival on Thursday, October 17.

Mr McCann will then be joined by his friend, musician, composer and fellow-story teller, Colm Mac Con Iomaire, for the second major event of the festival, ‘Notes of Hope’, an evening of words and music in Holy Trinity Church on Friday, October 18. 

_{Colm Mac Con Iomaire}

Historian Diarmaid Ferriter whose recently-published book, ‘The Revelation of Ireland 1995-2020’, covers an eventful quarter of a century for this country. 

Author and communications expert Terry Prone and Channel 4’s International Editor, Lindsey Hilsum, are among the other writers taking part in events over the four days of the festival.

“We are really happy to again have writers of such high calibre on the Rolling Sun festival programme,” said Maria Ruddy of the festival committee.

She continued: “It is quite a varied line-up with poetry, music, history and politics all featuring, so we hope that there’ll be something to suit all book lovers.”

_{Lindsey Hilsum}

The participation of Channel 4 correspondent, Lindsey Hilsum, will mark a ‘first’ for the Rolling Sun. Ms Hilsum was due to come to Westport for the festival to discuss her new book and to join in the political panel, but the veteran war correspondent is now travelling to Lebanon to cover events there, and plans to take part via Zoom.

Her book, ‘I Brought the War with Me: Stories and Poems from the Front Line’ came out of the journalist’s experience of covering conflicts all over the world including in Rwanda, Kosovo, Palestine and Ukraine. 

She always carries a book of poetry, and in ‘I Brought the War with Me’, she collects some of her favourites alongside accounts of her experiences and memories of war.

The correspondent will discuss the power of poetry in times of strife with Mayo-based poets Geraldine Mitchell and Ger Reidy, who will also read from their own collections, at an event on Sunday, October 20.

“When we were planning this event about war and poetry, we had no idea one of the authors would be taking part literally from the front line. It should be interesting,” said Ms Ruddy.

With the US presidential election only weeks away, and an Irish election on the horizon, an expert panel comprising Diarmaid Ferriter, Terry Prone and Lindsey Hilsum will tease out all things political at the ‘Politics, Power, War and Peace’ discussion taking place on the Saturday of the festival weekend.

Tickets for all the festival events, except for the Richie Buckley and Brenda Burke jazz performance, are available online from the Town Hall Theatre website, or in person at the Clew Bay Hotel.

More details can be found on the Rolling Sun Book Festival website.