Kildare Readers Festival connecting readers with top authors from October 2 - 8

The annual Kildare Readers Festival takes place this year from 2nd to 8th October 2023.

Kildare Readers Festival is brought to you every year in October by Kildare County Library and Arts Service in association with the Irish Writers Centre, and events are completely free.

The ethos is to connect readers with authors and artists, working to bring the very best from the world of literature to  audiences through the provision of exciting, innovative and accessible events.

Since its inception in 2010,  festival audiences have continued to grow and the Council said it looks forward to presenting the very best from the world of literature and the arts.

The main festival weekend takes place primarily in the Riverbank Arts Centre in Newbridge with satellite events held in County Kildare Libraries in the week leading up to it.

Highlights this year from the Riverbank include:

• Chat LGBT: A Question of Queer Irish Literature on Thursday 5th October at 8pm where Katherine O’Donnell and Declan Tuohy talk about their debut novels with Neil Hegarty;
• on Friday 6th October at 8pm Sophie White and Rick O’Shea will be Creeping It Real where they discuss the rebirth of female horror writing;
• on Saturday 7th October at 10am we’ll have the ever-popular Ten Books You Should Read with Eithne Hand and Gerry Stembridge, where our guests will select five books each that they would recommend and why we should give them a try;
• at 12pm Kathleen Murray will be talking with Ed O’Loughlin about her debut novel The Deadwood Encore about a seventh son of a seventh son;
• on Saturday evening at 8pm we’ll be joined by Dr. Katriona O’Sullivan where she will be discussing her memoir Poor: Grit, Courage, and the Life-changing Value of Self-Belief with Sinead Gibney; and we finish with our traditional Sunday Sessions
• on Sunday 8 th at 10:30am where soprano and child of Holocaust survivors Judith Mok and poet Michael
  O’Loughlin talk to author Dermot Bolger

All events are completely free to attend and can be booked on http://kildarereadersfestival.ie/.