Monday April 27th: The sun shone for the first RUSH FESTIVAL OF WRITING, which took place on Saturday, April 25th and saw some of the country’s best writers descend on the seaside town for a day of conversations and workshops.
The day began with two workshops for children at the beautiful Rush Library, which was formerly the town’s 18th century church, where former Children’s Laureate na nÓg Niamh Sharkey held a workshop based around her latest picture book Penguin TV before encouraging attendees to take to the floor and share their own drawings by joining her infamous giant ‘doodle’.
Alan Nolan brought his unique energy to his Draw Your Own Superhero workshop with a hilarious presentation on his own work, as well as talking readers and writers aged 8-12 on how to design their own comic book creations.
The day continued at the nearby festival hub at Rush Community Centre, where festival co-founder Lauren Murphy quizzed celebrated authors Sinéad Gleeson and Anna Carey on their creative practices in an illuminating conversation about how and why they write - as well as practical advice on how to get your work published. On a similar theme, acclaimed author Belinda McKeon led a two-hour afternoon workshop for adults on Creative Writing, with one attendee saying it was “particularly beneficial” for developing character and story.
At The Strand Bar & Restaurant, Irish cultural icon and raconteur Eamon Carr regaled a captive audience in an enthralling conversation led by journalist Pat Carty, which took in his work as a poet, songwriter and journalist. The Horslips man also shared some amusing stories about his first time in Rush many years ago!
The evening events took place in front of capacity crowds at the Millbank Theatre, where at 5pm crime fiction writers Catherine Ryan Howard and Andrea Mara proved as entertaining in conversation as they are in the written form. The world-beating duo discussed the pros and cons of the big-budget TV adaptations of their work, how they stumbled upon the genre of crime fiction, their sources of inspiration and more in a lively discussion led by Sinéad Cuddihy of Tired Mammy Book Club.
Finally, following a short speech by Mayor of Fingal Cllr. Tom O’Leary, who spoke of the importance of the creative arts and the particular abundance of talent in North County Dublin, the festival’s headline event began at 8pm with one of Ireland’s greatest writers, John Banville in conversation with author Kevin Curran.
Their hugely entertaining discussion was both profound, enlightening and humorous as Mr. Banville noted the importance of imagination in writing, his experience of winning the Man Booker Prize - noting how “all prizes are just like the big red toy fire engine you get at Christmas” - and how all of his books are “reserved sins”, while playfully threatening to direct the hordes of tourists that have descended upon his locality in Howth towards Rush.
