The Queen of Dirt Island
Donal Ryan interviewed by Camilla Dinkel
Venue: Dingle Skellig Hotel
Date: Friday 18 November 2022
Time: 19.00 – 20.00 IST/GMT
Tickets: €15
Featuring music by Eoin Duignan
The Queen of Dirt Island
Donal Ryan faoi agallamh ag Camilla Dinkel
Ionad: Dingle Skellig Hotel
Dáta: Dé hAoine 18 Samhain 2022
Am: 19.00 – 20.00 IST/GMT
Costas: €15
as
DONAL RYAN is an award-winning author from Nenagh, County Tipperary, whose work has been published in over twenty languages to major critical acclaim. The Spinning Heart won the Guardian First Book Award, the EU Prize for Literature (Ireland), and Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards; it was shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Desmond Elliott Prize, and was voted ‘Irish Book of the Decade’. His fourth novel, From a Low and Quiet Sea, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award 2018, and won the Jean Monnet Prize for European Literature. Strange Flowers, was voted Novel of the Year at the Irish Book Awards and was a number one bestseller. Donal lectures in Creative Writing at the University of Limerick.
The story of the Aylward women is not the story Donal Ryan planned to share for his sixth novel, and yet after completing his first draft theirs was the story that kept whispering to him. And so, despite being past his deadline, he pushed aside the book he’d finished and started again. The Queen of Dirt Island is the result, which focuses on a family of Irish women and examines what happens when family pressures come against societal pressures – especially for women.
Copies of the publication will be on sale by the Dingle Bookshop at the event. The author has agreed to sign copies at the end of the talk.
Eoin Duignan is a gifted musician and composer and has lived in Dingle since 1979. His enchanting and uplifting melodies have touched the hearts of listeners, both young and old, down through the years. The casual listener will be drawn as if by magic to the music’s inner core; entranced not only by the shapes and turns of melody but also well-spring of emotions that the pieces portray.
Camilla Dinkel is the owner of the Dingle Bookshop and founder of Ponc Press. Camilla is director and founding member of the DIngle Lit’s festival committee. A resident on the Dingle Peninsula for over 20 years, Camilla is a fluent Irish speaker.
