LibraryThing Local

Seamus Cashman comes from Conna in County Cork. He founded Wolfhound Press, the leading Irish literary and cultural publishing house, in Dublin in 1974, and was publisher there until 2001. He had two well received poetry collections published, Carnival (Monarchline, 1988) and Clowns & Acrobats (Wolfhound ... (more)Press, 2000) and his third collection, That Morning will Come: New and Selected Poems has just been published by Salmon. Pauline Fayne was born in 1954 and lives in Tallaght, Co. Dublin. Her first collection Journey was published in 1979 by Sheveck Press. Her second collection Killer of Fishes was published by Stonebridge Publications in 2001. A third collection I'm Fine, Really was published by Stonebridge Publications in October 2005. Her fourth collection Mowing in the Dark will be published by Stonebridge in 2010. Pauline’s work has been included in several anthologies, including: The White Page (edited by Joan Mc Breen and published by Salmon Press); Four Urban Voices (edited by Dermot Bolger and published by Raven Arts Press); Rainbows and Stone (edited by Michael Bouchier and published by Real Ireland). Her work has also been broadcast on RTE Radio 1 and BBC Radio 4.

Our regular reading and open mic with Steve Conway, Ross Hattaway, Eamon Lynskey, Donal Moloney, Noel O Briain, Oran Ryan among others!

Dubliner Steve Conway grew up in Churchtown. His local library was Dundrum, and he remembers with fondness his introduction to reading there at the age of five when his mother took him on what was to be the first of weekly trips to the library, and through it, to the great beyond. From 5 to 18 Steve ... (more)read his way through the library, from adventure to classics, from non-fiction to classicists. And from reading of adventures and heroes Steve set out to create his own adventures and even became a pirate on the high seas!! In his late teens, in the throes of the 1980s depression, Steve emigrated to London where he began working in a small computer firm in the South London suburb of Surbiton, providing customer service and installation advice to the pioneers in the office and home computing world. There Steve also began a love affair with the new revolution, spreading across the South East of England – the Pirate Revolution. Before you start wondering, there were no hooked hands involved, no cutlasses and swords, but there was a ship, there was a crew, there were high seas, and waves and a battle to stay one step ahead of the authorities. There was also bandwidth and waves of another type, for Steve fell in love with the pirate radio revolution which battled in this country and in the UK from the mid 1960s until the late 1990s. In Steve’s case, his, although working on a number of stations, his true love was the most famous of all the Pirate Radio Stations – Radio Caroline - which, founded by an Irish Man, Ronan O’Rahilly, sailed the high seas, fighting the battle to bring good and constant music to the homes of the UK and North Europe, (when the weather conditions were right, parts of Ireland) from March 23rd 1964 until the final Caroline Radio Ship, the Ross Revenge, ran aground on the Goodwin Sands in Kent on 20th November 1991. Steve Conway joined Radio Caroline in February 1987, and rose through the ranks from being an initially very bad news reader to being programme controller on the Station, helping to keep it going through the hurricane that really was in October 1987 and the Great Mast Fall in November 1987, and the life-threatening task of re-building the mast at sea during storms, as they could not risk arrest by bringing the ship in to shore! All this well as generally battling the elements, surviving without chocolate – and almost without food and water at one point – in order to bring consistently good music to the world! There were fine times too – the exploding donuts for one, moonlight jaunts, the ocean liner friends, birthday celebrations and Christmas gifts from shore, for others. And Steve was among the final 5 crew who were air lifted to safety by an RAF helicopter after the Ross Revenge Radio Ship ran aground on the treacherous ship swallowing Goodwin Sands in Kent – rescued only minutes after they overheard the coast guard telling the nearby ships that they may be looking for bodies in the water.

As part of the Sponsorship through Sales 1000 Book Challenge we are hosting an independents' market for independent publishers, local publications, independent cd releases etc. in Cassidy's Bar in Westmoreland St from 2pm t 6pm each Sunday to Christmas. There will be readings too and maybe even a little ... (more)music! There will be a nominal charge of 5euro for a sales table. Contact 1000bookchallenge@seventowers.ie

Literary Convention focused on the genres of Fantasy, Horror and Science Fiction Full weekend event

Literary Convention focused on the genres of Fantasy, Horror and Science Fiction Full weekend event

Literary Convention focused on the genres of Fantasy, Horror and Science Fiction Full weekend event

Literary Convention focused on the genres of Fantasy, Horror and Science Fiction Full weekend event

Literary Convention focused on the genres of Fantasy, Horror and Science Fiction Full weekend event