The John Hewitt digital festival of literature & ideas

2021’s Symposium will be exploring the theme of reminiscence – its importance in society, its healing power, its intrinsic dangers and its restorative capacity.

Heaney is celebrated for his very precise poetic engagements with specific locations: his homestead, his family, Ireland. Indeed, he was praised for this when awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. In his acceptance speech for the prize, however, he was at pains to draw our attention to how, from his earliest days, he was drawn to 'the wideness of the world'. The lecture will consider how Heaney's writing fits into that series of contemporary discussions around the relation of poetry to place, of poetics to politics, translation, globalisation, and sovereign or national identity in a world shaped by the demands of making a difference. It intends to seek how Heaney figures in what is now the contested terrain of 'World Literature'.

Marita Conlon-McKenna is an award winning writer of fiction whose novels regularly top the best-seller list.  Her first book, Under the Hawthorn Tree, set in Ireland’s Great Famine, has become a children’s classic, widely translated and published. Marita also writes for adults and her other fiction works include The Magdalen, The Stone House and Rebel […]

John Hewitt’s radical vision for the region and its relationships - with the rest of Ireland and with the rest of the United Kingdom - was ahead of its time: Dublin-based Belfast poet and academic, Gerald Dawe, Belfast novelist and lecturer Heather Richardson, and London-based Ballycastle-born poet and critic, Cahal Dallat, discuss Hewitt’s poetry and […]

Leading poets Terrance Hayes (USA) and Mona Arshi (England) join host Paul Maddern (JHS committee member) to read their work and answer questions posed by those subscribed to the broadcast. Supported by Poetry Ireland. Biographies Terrance Hayes is one of America’s foremost poets and his seven collections have met with widespread critical acclaim, earning him […]

Eimear McBride is one of Ireland’s most exciting novelists. Her debut novel A Girl is a Half-formed Thing received a number of awards - the Goldsmiths Prize, the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction and Irish Novel of the Year. Her second book, The Lesser Bohemians (2017) was equally well-received, winning the 2017 James Tait Black Memorial Prize, […]

The Four Horsemen of the Modern Apocalypse… a talk by Misha Glenny, award winning writer, broadcaster, and commentator. In it he addresses the most pressing issues facing the international order today, and considers the capacity of governments to tackle them. Followed by discussion with Cahal Dallat. Biographies Misha Glenny is an award-winning journalist and historian […]

Replay available from 21st August 20 Donal Ryan is from Nenagh in County Tipperary. His first four novels, The Spinning Heart, The Thing About December, All We Shall Know and From a Low and Quiet Sea have all been published to major acclaim. The Spinning Heart won the Guardian First Book Award, the EU Prize […]

Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Tom French and Vona Groarke, introduced and interviewed by Nessa O’Mahony. Watch Live on Youtube Biographies Eiléan Ní ChuilleanáinEiléan Ní Chuilleanáin was born in Cork City, educated in Cork and at Oxford before spending her working life as an academic in Trinity College, Dublin. A founder member of Cyphers, a literary journal, […]

Join us for a unique event as we explore poetry written by students participating in creative writing programmes through the Prison Arts Foundation. (PAF). Creative writing allows us to communicate our interests, our stories and our experiences. The PAF residency classes not only give the student a creative learning experience but the atmosphere of the […]

Can the Arts return to health without a vaccine? Watch Live on Youtube Slugger O’Toole makes its annual pilgrimage out of Belfast to record an episode of its monthly Slugger TV discussion show for NvTv at the John Hewitt International Summer School, albeit virtually this year! Hosted by political and arts commentator Alan Meban, the panel […]