Monday 6th July

14.30 Afternoon Seminar
Maritime Hotel - €20 - To be announced

14.30 Afternoon Seminar No 1

The Maritime Hotel - € 20

Dialogue with Time
"My whole life is a dialogue with Time," wrote Auerbach in 1991 in one of her poems. This line became the title of her third book of poetry, published in Russia in 1993. Later it became the title for a chamber music program of her music and poetry. At the West Cork Literary Festival it is the title of her seminar.
“Time is not a river,” says Auerbach, in an interview with Helmut Peters for Dresdener Philharmonische Blätter, “and it certainly does not flow in one direction. According to the laws of any well-structured composition, be it a poem, a symphony, an architectural work, or a human life, the beginning apriori encompasses the end, and the end already contains the beginning.”

Lera Auerbach is a poet, composer and pianist. In 1996, she was named Poet of the Year by the International Pushkin Society. Her literary works include five volumes of poetry and prose and numerous contributions to Russian-language literary papers and magazines. Her poetry is taught in Russian schools and universities as required reading for modern literature courses.

Tuesday 7th July 

14.30 Afternoon Seminar No 2
The Maritime Hotel, Bantry - €20

Why I write about the Arab World
This will be an almost politics-free talk about Denyse’s long-standing love affair with the Arab world, and why she includes it in her novels. She will speak about the many joys and treasures to be found in Arab countries, and share some of her adventures in the Middle East which include sharing a terrace with Saddam Hussein.This seminar will also touch on the pros and cons of writing under two names.

Denyse Woods, who also writes as Denyse Devlin, was born in Boston in 1958, and is the daughter of an Irish diplomat. She studied Arabic and English at UCD and subsequently worked in Iraq.  She has traveled extensively in the Middle East and also lived in the USA, Belgium, Australia, Italy and the UK, before settling in Cork. Winner of an Irish Times Short Story, she has published five novels, including the critically-acclaimed Overnight to Innsbruck and the best-selling The Catalpa Tree. In view of the multiple foreign locations used in her work, it has often been referred to as ‘travel fiction.’

Wednesday 8th July 

14.30 Afternoon Seminar No 1
The Maritime Hotel, Bantry - €20

Creating a Collage Book – Graham Rawle

This seminar will deal with the subject of combining image with text. Graham Rawle will focus on three of his book projects: Diary of an Amateur Photographer, Woman's World and The Wizard of Oz

Graham Rawle is a writer and collage artist. His weekly ‘Lost Consonants’ series appeared in the Weekend Guardian for  fifteen years. He has produced other regular series for The Observer and Sunday Telegraph Magazine; his latest, ‘Bright Ideas’, appears weekly in The Times. Among Rawle’s published books are the Wonder Book of Fun, Lying Doggo, and Diary of an Amateur Photographer. His critically acclaimed Woman’s World, a novel created entirely from fragments of found text, is being made into a feature film. His most recent book, an illustrated reinterpretation of L. Frank Baum’s original story of The Wizard of Oz was published in 2008.

Wednesday 8th July 

14.30 Afternoon Seminar No 2
The Maritime Hotel, Bantry - €20

Poetry and Archetypes

Richard Tillinghast discusses how one way to turn the ordinary events of our lives into extraordinary writing is to tap into the deep psychic levels brought into play by legend, myth, symbol and archetypal patterns. Our creative impulses often take the form of archetypal experiences and stories. The visionary psychologist C.G. Jung thought our collective unconscious was stocked with images related to the myths that characterise all human cultures. New poems and stories sometimes find themselves repeating an ancient pattern, such as an encounter with an animal or bird that seems to ‘mean’ something to one’s deeper self. These encounters would seem to say something about restoring the ancient unity between human beings and the natural world, which we are increasingly losing. The natural world has often provided symbols for human meaning.

Thursday 9th July

14.30 Afternoon Seminar
The Maritime Hotel, Bantry - €20

Getting Published
A Panel Discussion with Faith O’Grady, Steve McDonagh and Sue Leonard

Faith O’Grady was born in Co Limerick and was educated at Trinity College,Dublin. She set up the literary department at the Lisa Richards Agency, Dublin in 1998 and represents a diverse list of fiction and non-fiction writers.

Sue Leonard  is a journalist who writes for the Irish Independent, the Irish Examiner, The Evening Herald and Books Ireland. She has interviewed in excess of two hundred authors. Born in Oxford, she now lives in County Wicklow.

Friday 10th July

14.30 Afternoon Seminar
The Maritime Hotel, Bantry - €20

Julie Parsons :  Harnessing Your Creativity –  Working through from Beginnings to Ends.
Participants will be asked to take part in a number of practical exercises designed to kick start their creativity.

Julie Parsons  has written six thrillers. "Mary, Mary" (1998), "The Courtship Gift" (1999), "Eager to Please" (2000), "The Guilty Heart" (2003), "The Hourglass (2005), "I Saw You" (2007). They have all been translated into 17 languages. She has also written 2 radio plays "The Sweet Smell Of Cigarette Smoke" and "The Serpent Beguiled Me" both of which were broadcast on RTE Radio 1. She lives in Dublin and spends most of the summer on Sherkin Island.

Saturday 11th July

9.30am Morning Seminar
The Maritime Hotel - € 20
Creative Writing with Roger McGough - BOOKED OUT

Saturday 11th July
15.00 Afternoon Seminar
The Maritime Hotel, Bantry - €20

Publishing with Darley Anderson

“There are agents.There are good agents. There are super agents. And then there’s Darley Anderson.” Lee Child

Darley Anderson is the founder and proprietor of the Darley Anderson Literary, TV and Film Agency.

He started his Agency single-handedly in 1988 beginning with three authors and a bank overdraft. Over the years Anderson has gained an international reputation as one of the very best – if not the best – talent spotters in the book business. More than thirty of the fifty plus writers represented by the Agency were completely unknown and unpublished when they sent in their first manuscript to Anderson. He worked editorially with many of them before successfully selling their first manuscripts to publishers.

Recently he has ventured into children’s books and is developing a select list of children’s book writers. Equally he’s keen to further build on his many successes with talented new Irish writers.