Colm Tóibín, Laureate for Irish Fiction 2022-2024 Photo: Barry Cronin
Upcoming Events
The Art of Reading
The Art of Reading, Laureate
Colm Tóibín’s book club, will hold a couple of exciting in-person events in the coming months. Taking place in local libraries around the country, the Laureate sits down with a guest writer to discuss the Art of Reading book of the month. Please note, we'll post a recording of these events on the our website here.
Click here to access the 2024 Art of Reading brochure.
Caoilinn Hughes - The Alternatives
- When: Saturday 21 September at 12.30pm
- Where: Ballymahon Library in Co. Longford
- Booking: This event is currently full
Michael Magee - Close to Home
- When: Tuesday 24 September at 7pm
- Where: Tramore Library in Co. Waterford
- Booking: Please book in by contacting Tramore Library on 051 849594
Elaine Feeney - How to Build a Boat
- When: Thursday 31 October at 6.30pm
- Where: Enniscorthy Library in Co. Wexford
- Booking: Booking information will be available in due course
The Laureate for Irish Fiction Annual Lecture 2024
'Taking a COLOUR for a Walk'
Laureate for Irish Fiction Colm Tóibín will present the Annual Laureate Lecture at VISUAL Carlow in November.
- Date: Sunday 3 November
- Location: VISUAL Carlow, Old Dublin Road, Carlow, R93 A3K1
- Booking: Tickets are free but booking is required. Tickets will be released soon on the VISUAL Carlow website.
Past Events
The
Laureate for Irish Fiction Annual Lecture 2023
'A Dream on Wings: Poetry
and the Underworld'
Laureate for Irish Fiction Colm Tóibín will present
the Annual Laureate Lecture at Seamus Heaney HomePlace in
November.
The
Lecture entitled ‘A Dream on Wings: Poetry and the Underworld’ will
feature performances by Cathy Belton and Martin Hayes.
- Date and Time: Friday 3 November at 7:30pm
- Location: Seamus Heaney HomePlace, 45 Main Street, Bellaghy, BT45 8HT
On Writing Librettos, Laureate for Irish
Fiction Colm Tóibín and composer Alberto Caruso
Laureate for Irish Fiction, Colm Tóibín, has written a libretto for an opera of his novel The Master with composer Alberto Caruso. In this special event Colm Tóibín will be in conversation with Alberto Caruso as they discuss their collaboration and the process of writing the libretto ahead of the premiere of The Master at the Wexford Festival Opera 2022. The evening will feature Colm Tóibín reading from his novel The Master and some excerpts from the opera will be performed on piano by Alberto Caruso.
- Date and Time: Thursday 20 October 2022 at 7pm
- Location: Wexford Arts Centre, Cornmarket, Wexford.
- Tickets: www.wexfordartscentre.ie/
Alberto Caruso, born in Trento, lives in Rome. After graduation in piano, composition and orchestra conducting mentored by Carlo Maria Giulini, began scoring films guided by Franco Mannino, Luchino Visconti’s composer. After three years in
Los Angeles assisting Henning Lohner at Hans Zimmer studios, he scored Madhouse, Sunday Lunch, Call it Democracy, Cardiofitness, Without Writers. Tokyo Chamber Opera commissioned his opera based on The Little Prince by Saint-Exupéry; he wrote the
libretto in Japanese and Italian and conducted the premiere in Tokyo 2008 and Turin 2015. Together with Colm Tóibín, librettist for The Master, they did a workshop organized by University of Colorado Boulder, directed by Ron Daniels. He performed
at Festival Due Mondi Spoleto, Festival Cervantino Guanajuato, Opera Puebla Mexico, Joondalup Festival Australia.
The Laureate for Irish Fiction Annual Lecture 2022
'Ships in Full Sail: A Life in Music'
Laureate for Irish Fiction Colm Tóibín will present his first Annual Laureate Lecture at Town Hall Theatre Galway in November, in association with Cúirt International Festival of Literature and Galway Music Residency.
The Lecture entitled 'Ships in Full Sail: A Life in Music' will feature music performances by Iarla Ó Lionáird, Maighread and Tríona Ní Dhomhnaill and ConTempo Quartet.
- Date and Time: Sunday 6 November at 8pm
- Location: Town Hall Theatre, Galway
Iarla Ó Lionáird
Maighread and Tríona Ní Dhomhnaill
ConTempo Quartet
Colm Tóibín, Laureate for Irish Fiction, at West Cork Literary Festival 2022
Colm Tóibín will appear at West Cork Literary Festival in 2022. Join us and hear him as he discusses his latest novel, The Magician, and speaks about his appointment as Laureate for Irish Fiction 2022-2024.
Colm’s magnificent new novel opens in a provincial German
city at the turn of the twentieth century, where the boy, Thomas Mann, grows up
with a conservative father, bound by propriety, and a Brazilian mother,
alluring and unpredictable. Young Mann hides his artistic aspirations from his
father and his homosexual desires from everyone. He is infatuated with one of
the richest, most cultured Jewish families in Munich, and marries the daughter
Katia. They have six children. On a holiday in Italy, he longs for a boy he
sees on a beach and writes the story Death in Venice. Thomas Mann
is the most successful novelist of his time, winner of the Nobel Prize in
literature, a public man whose private life remains secret. He is expected to
lead the condemnation of Hitler, whom he underestimates. His oldest daughter
and son, leaders of Bohemianism and of the anti-Nazi movement, share lovers. He
flees Germany for Switzerland, France and, ultimately, America, living first in
Princeton and then in Los Angeles. In a stunning marriage of research and
imagination, Colm explores the heart and mind of a writer whose gift is
unparalleled and whose life is driven by a need to belong and the anguish of
illicit desire. The Magician is an intimate, astonishingly
complex portrait of Mann, his magnificent and complex wife Katia, and the times
in which they lived—the first world war, the rise of Hitler, World War II, the
Cold War, and exile. This is a man and a family fiercely engaged by the world,
profoundly flawed, and unforgettable. Through one life, Colm Tóibín tells the
breathtaking story of the twentieth century.