Kevin Power and Rob Doyle

When two of Ireland’s most talented male authors both release books in the same year dealing with similar themes, what happens is a unique and lively event at Dingle Lit Fest! Rob Doyle’s latest book looks at the impact literature of all genres has had on the wider world following a year spent reading one book per week. While in his newest work, Kevin Power examines the effect of criticism on the written word and how that impacts the artist after experiencing a 10-year bout of writer’s block between his first two books.

In this event, both authors will engage with an audience of avid readers on their approach to literature, covering such topics as: What makes a good book? Why do we re-read certain novels? What is the worst book you’ve ever read?

What is the current climate of modern literature? And perhaps most interestingly, where are all the young male novelists? As such, audience members should come armed with questions and opinions. 

The Written World: Essays and Reviews

These pieces, ranging from reviews of Susan Sontag to the meaning of Greta Thunberg, apocalyptic politics, and literary theory, represent a decade’s worth of thinking about books; a record of the author’s attempts to honour art, and through art, the world. In The Written World, Power explains how he became a critic and what he thinks criticism is. It begins with a personal essay, ‘The Lost Decade’, about his mental and writing block after publishing Bad Day in Blackrock and his decade-long journey to White City. The pieces gathered by Power are connected by a theme – this is a book about writing, seen from various positions, and about growth as an artist and a critic.

In Autobibliography, Rob Doyle recounts a year spent rereading fifty-two books – from the Dhammapada and Marcus Aurelius, via The Tibetan Book of the Dead and La Rochefoucauld, to Robert Bolaño and Svetlana Alexievich – as well as the memories they trigger and the reverberations they create. It is a record of a year in reading, and of a lifetime of books.

Provocative, intelligent and funny, it is a brilliant introduction to a personal canon by one of the most original and exciting writers around. It is a book about books, a book about reading, and a book about a writer. It is an autobibliography.

Anna Stein

Anna Stein is a literary agent at the New York offices of ICM/CAA, but based remotely—very remotely!—in North Cork. She represents literary fiction and narrative non-fiction. Her clients include Hanya Yanagihara, Douglas Stuart, Ben Lerner, and Maria Semple. She represents North American rights for Irish writers Roddy Doyle, Claire Keegan, Colin Barrett, and Sara Baume.