At the seaside with literary giants of the global stage
Curating the Dalkey Book Festival is a joy, writes Sian Smyth
If you had told my 20-year old-self that she’d end up curating a literature festival, she would have been delighted. Books have always been my first love. Had you told her that running a book festival involved as much worrying about portaloos, generators and traffic cones as enjoying the work of great writers, she might have had second thoughts.
In truth, organising a literary weekend is much like organising anything else – it comes down to detail, systems and management.
Granted, a festival is a unique event and you have to have a bit of a neck to approach internationally renowned writers and thinkers, but the worst thing they can do is say no. And when you think about it, no one ever got offended by an invitation.
Once a writer says yes, the fun begins.
Who to put them with, on what panel, on what topic? Should we deploy them on their own for their fans to have an intimate experience or should we have them riff with another writer, offering the audience a sometimes unexpected twist?
I try to think of the audience, the people who pay money to listen to their favourites. Without our audience, there is no festival; all festivals live and die by footfall.
We’re blessed at Dalkey to have a loyal and committed gang of repeat offenders, almost like a large extended family, who come back and support us year after year. Many come in a group, old friends who might set aside the festival weekend to get together and may not see each other again until next year’s Dalkey festival.
They are our life blood and I
thnat.d never forget
A decade ago, Salman Rushdie called us “the best little festival in the world” but in 2024, with writers coming from many countries, and an expected 20,000 plus tickets, I suppose the festival isn’t that little any more.
We kick off on June 13 and run until Bloomsday, June 16. The busy programme is packed with literature, history, culture, science and world affairs, bringing together over 100 speakers from across the world in 77 events over four days in one beautiful town.
Dalkey is our backdrop and it’s hard to imagine a better location for literature.
When the small streets are thronged and bars and restaurants are full, there’s a sort of magic to the place. One of the joys for me is seeing writers having a casual drink with readers, chewing the cud.
In the weeks leading up to the launch, I’m often wide awake in the middle of the night thinking about ticket sales and whether the festival programme is as good as it could be.
Sales are not only an economic imperative – full venues improve the atmosphere and boost a speaker’s confidence – no one wants to talk to an empty room.
I don’t want to jinx it this year but we tend to sell out events, due to lots of hard work, listening to our audience, attracting the best talent, relentlessly promoting, and – I hope – intelligent programming.
While it’s an honour to meet people like James Shapiro and David Brooks, the nitty-gritty of festival production revolves around things like stage heights and whether speakers forgot to mention bringing partners before returning to the perpetual stress of selling tickets.
It is an enormous privilege to invite writers who I admire, including those who are less celebrated. Curating is not just about securing big names, although if I’m honest getting an email from Tom Hanks is actually quite exciting.
This year, long-time friends of the festival like Anne Enright, Paul Murray, Kevin Barry, Donal Ryan, John Boyne, Fintan O’Toole and Sinéad Gleeson will be back. Joining them are some other giants of literature including Claire Keegan, Colm Tóibín and Paul Lynch as well as some debut authors.
Curating is a bit like cooking; it involves good ingredients, balance, variety and taking a risk some unexpected flavouring can pay off.
As we cover politics and world events, we try to cover the most pressing issues of the day – from unpicking violence in the Middle East to the war in Ukraine and threats to the stability of global order, the swing to the right in Europe, and the future of Irish politics.
To confront these issues, we have Katja Hoyer from Germany, David de Jong from Holland, Robert Shrimsley of the Financial Times and James O’Brien from the digital news service Leading Britain’s Conversation.
I try to sense what’s in the ether and this year, it seems to me, people are talking more and more about artificial intelligence and we have a special series of events on how we will live with it.
With the world’s eyes on Gaza, Palestinian voices appear in a number of events including Isabella Hammad and Karim Kattan as well as author of A
Day in the Life of Abed Salama, Nathan Thrall. Jeremy Bowen, the venerated BBC correspondent in the Middle East, will join us direct from Jerusalem as will CNN’s legendary anchor Christiane Amanpour.
Despite global events, there is room for more light-hearted sessions. For example, there’s an event on writing satire and there’s humour with Paul Howard and Paddy Cullivan. From the world of entertainment, I’ve invited David Baddiel, Neil Jordan and Stephen Rea and, a wild card, Henry Winkler, or the Fonz as he is to me.
My 20-year-old self would probably take portaloo worries, given the joy of being able to curate a festival like Dalkey. It started small, and it has survived. Maybe that’s not surprising for a festival based in Ireland, a nation of storytellers.
Curating isn’t just big names, though an email from Tom Hanks is quite exciting