Sue Rainsford will be reading from her second novel, Redder Days.

Presented by the Irish Writers Centre

Join our four selected IWC/DBF Young Writer Delegates as they share creative work developed during the festival with mentor Sue Rainsford.

Now in its fourth year, the Irish Writers Centre Young Writer Delegate Programme has partnered once again with the Dublin Book Festival. Four writers between the ages of 18 and 26 will be welcomed to the programme by the Irish Writers Centre. The writers will attend a variety of events at Dublin Book Festival and will be encouraged to reflect on their experiences. Their mentor Sue Rainsford will lead the writers in a series of workshops as well as providing informal advice and guidance on succeeding in and enjoying life as a writer.

At this showcase, our four selected IWC/DBF Young Writer Delegates Abby Connolly, Eilish Mulholland, Kel Menton and Róisín Ní Riain will share some of the creative work developed during the festival.

In this three and a half hour workshop we’ll consider a range of approaches to composing the artist statement,  moving between the concise and functional to the experimental and explorative.

Working with texts by a diverse range of artists and art writers, this session is designed to equip you with a template you can work from in the future and with an understanding of how writing and reading can function as tools of inquiry within your practice.

Book your place here.

Workshop Online via Zoom

This newly commissioned piece by Sue Rainsford blends prose and images in an exploration of deficiency and nourishment, destruction and regeneration, and the patterns of cause and effect that move through matter.

Link will be available from 7:30pm on Tuesday, 13 October

Adrian Duncan in “Twitter Conversation” with Sue Rainsford. Follow along as they chat about A Sabbatical in Leipzig.

1.33 Iontas Building

Maynooth University

Tuesday 10th March 2020

3-5pm

Caroline Bergvall is an international poet, artist, and performer who works across art-forms, media, and languages. Projects alternate between books and printed matter, performances, site-specific installations and sound-works. The recipient of many arts commissions, awards, and fellowships, she is a noted exponent of writing and performance methods adapted to contemporary audiovisual and contextual situations, as well as multilingual identities. Her latest book Alisoun Sings (2019) is the final volume in a trilogy of works (following Meddle English in 2011 and Drift in 2014) using medieval and contemporary sources and languages. She is performing her sunrise performance Ragadawn as part of Galway 2020 in March ’20.

With Kevin Barry,  Siobhán McSweeney, Sue Rainsford and Patrick Freyne

In Conversation with Seán Rocks

Friday 15 November

Time: 7.00pm – 8.00pm

Venue: Main Theatre, Smock Alley Theatre

€10/€8 concession, Booking advised

Join us for an evening of conversation and music with RTE Radio 1’s cultural guru Sean Rocks in conversation with Kevin Barry and contributors to the new edition of Winter Papers including actor Siobhan McSweeney,  writers Sue Rainsford, Patrick Freyne and more! Now in its fifth volume, Winter Papers is an annual anthology for the arts in Ireland and beyond.  Featuring fiction, essays, photography, visual art, along with artist in-conversation pieces, its annual publication is an eagerly anticipated event.

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Kevin Barry is the author of three novels and two story collections.  He also writes plays and screenplays. He lives in Co Sligo.

Siobhán McSweeney trained at Central School of Speech & Drama, London and Ecole Philippe Gaulier, Paris. She has worked at the Royal Court, RSC, National Theatre, Donmar, The Abbey and The Lyric, Belfast. TV and film credits include; Derry Girls, Porters, Extra Ordinary, The Fall, No Offence, and London Irish.

Sue Rainsford is a recipient of an Arts Council Literature Bursary Award, the VAI/DCC Art Writing Award and a MacDowell Colony Fellowship. Her debut novel, Follow Me To Ground, received the Kate O’Brien Award. She is Writer-in-Residence at Maynooth University.

Patrick Freyne is a writer of journalism, essays and stories. He works for the Irish Times and his work has appeared in the Dublin Review and Banshee. A collection of his essays will be published by Penguin Ireland in 2020.

As part of Irish Book Week, join us for an afternoon of readings in Dublin's famous Hodges Figgis and gain a fascinating insight into the writing processes of three contemporary debut writers.

Sue Rainsford will read from Follow Me to Ground, her "seethingly assured" debut novel (The Guardian).

Adrian Duncan will read from his own debut, Love Notes from a German Building Site, which was recently released in the UK by Head of Zeus and hailed by the Irish Times as "a captivating debut".

Wendy Erskine, nominated for the Edge Hill Prize 2019, will read from her debut collection of short stories, Sweet Home.

Register here.

Critical Practices: Making, Writing, Curating, Educating

The Museum is delighted to host, in conjunction with the Glass Society of Ireland, the Irish Glass Biennale 2019 Jury Speakers' Symposium on Thursday, October 24.

This selection of talks forms part of a two-day symposium and exhibition, which will open at the Coach House Gallery, Dublin Castle Garden, on October 23.

Symposium speakers include Diane C. Wright, Curator of Glass and Decorative Arts at the Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio, United States, and Paula Stokes, Artist and Co-Founder of the METHOD gallery, Seattle, United States.

Writing workshops on vocabularies of writing about making to be led by Dr. Francis Halsall and writer Sue Rainsford. 

This event will be run in conjunction with the Ireland Glass Biennale 2019 exhibition, in the Coach House at Dublin Castle as part of Creative Europe Project: ISGNE.

Booking required. Email bookings@museum.ie.

Sue Rainsford & Annemarie Ní Churreáin, recently appointed writers-in-residence at Maynooth University, will read and discuss their work at the launch of the festival.

As an artist, you will be required to write about your work for a variety of reasons including press releases, proposals and applications. Focusing on the artist statement, this session will equip participants with a text to work from, develop and adapt in the future.

Concisely conveying core elements of your practice is essential to promoting your work and ensuring its accessibility. Covering such topics as proposals, funding applications, and statements for press and marketing purposes, we will discuss the dos and don’ts in writing statements. Over the course of the day, participants will work in an interactive way with peer supported feedback, producing texts that succinctly deliver their concepts, approaches and methodologies.

While working toward developing a concise statement, this session will also explore writing as a dynamic and reflective tool. We will consider the more expansive, generative ways in which writing can serve an arts practice, operating within or alongside it. In discussing how participants might develop a long term relationship with writing that will serve their practice and its shifting demands as it develops over time, we will also cover various opportunities regarding the production of text in relation to an artwork or exhibition.

Wednesday 18 September, 11.30am to 5.00pm.

Wexford Based Artists: €20
VAI Members (Non Wexford Based): €50
General Admission: €100

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Kevin Kavanagh is proud to present SIRENS Part III, an exhibition and two performances by Celina Muldoon taking place Thursday 22nd and Saturday 31st August at 7pm. Performance duration approx 25 mins. Muldoon will also be in conversation with Sue Rainsford in the gallery at 1pm Saturday 24th August.

LIVE; BALOR; ROCK; TOWER; SOUND; RALLY; FILM; KIDS; EYE,
STREAM; LIFT; CALL; DIFF; SEE; BREAST; PLAY,
POWER; RISE; ACT; DARK; CHAOS!

SIRENS Part III is the third in a series of test events. For 2 weeks in August Kevin Kavanagh Gallery will become a site of call/response; action/reaction.

SIRENS was originally conceived out of a desire to identify mythological races based around her home in Donegal and the isolated community of the North West of Ireland. What transpired was a deep exploration into our ancient cultural heritage and the supernatural sea-faring race called the Fomorians or Fomoire. Her research involved collaboration with young people in Donegal around their ideas of identity, isolation and a sense of place while living within fringe territories. Recurring topics where relationships with space, connections between landscape and escapism and rally culture.
Muldoon collaborated with writer Sue Rainsford to explore language, text and symbolism in ancient folklore and how they might translate in contemporary culture. Working with music producer Keith Mannion they tested experimental sound techniques to create a 'battle cry' or 'Siren Call' for the contemporary world. What evolved became a re-imagining of the power structures within Irish folklore to claim space through live performance, sound and text. SIRENS live installation - performance has been presented as a solo exhibition in Pallas Projects and Studios, as a Live procession from Temple Bar Gallery to The Project Arts Centre as part of LIVE COLLISION festival and will be exhibited as part of RHA FUTURESthis November.

Sue Rainsford's debut novel Follow Me To Ground was released in May of last year with New Island Books. Published as a piece of literary fiction, the novel initially took root in research around such artists as Jenny Keane, Megan Eustace and Kiki Smith, and was presented as Sue’s final project for her MA in Visual Arts Practices at IADT.

Sue and writer Maeve Connolly  will discuss some of the prevalent themes in the novel, and how literary writing functions within and alongside contemporary art practices.

This conversation is very generously hosted by the Kevin Kavanagh Gallery.  

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Maeve Connolly is the author of TV Museum: Contemporary Art and the Age of Television (Intellect, 2014) and The Place of Artists’ Cinema: Space, Site and Screen (Intellect, 2009). Her writing has appeared in journals such as Afterall, Journal of Curatorial Studies, Millennium Film Journal, MIRAJ and she has authored catalogue texts on the work of numerous artists, including Vivienne Dick, Jesse Jones, Mairead O’hEocha, Bea McMahon, Niamh O'Malley, Susan Philipsz and Sarah Pierce. She co-directs the MA in Art & Research Collaboration at Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design & Technology in Dublin.

Located in the RHA Ashford Gallery, artist Cecilia Danell and writer Sue Rainsford will discuss Danell’s process and approach to her work, as well as reflecting upon some of the ideas prevalent within Danell’s research.

Book your ticket here.

The shortlist of writers for the Kate O'Brien Award 2019 has been announced. The nominees are:
Eileen Battersby, Teethmarks on my Tongue

Rebecca O'Connor, He is Mine and I Have no Other

Caroline O’Donoghue, Promising Young Women

Dervla McTiernan, The Ruin

Sue Rainsford, Follow me to Ground

The Kate O'Brien Award was established in 2015. It celebrates new Irish writing by a female author. It was established by the organising committee of the Kate O'Brien Weekend to celebrate Irish Women's Writing in memory of Kate O'Brien. It is an honorary award which celebrates debut Irish fiction; this award is a great affirmation for the debut winner and a recognition of the literary quality of the book. There is a presentation to the winner at the Limerick Literary Festival in honour of Kate O'Brien.

We celebrate the shortlisted authors and the winner on the Sunday of the Festival after the Kate O'Brien lecture with photographs and press coverage.

Basic Space is delighted to present writer Sue Rainsford for our December BASIC TALK.

BASIC TALKS is a series of talks with leading contemporary practitioners, taking place at The Hugh Lane on the second Friday of every month. Curated by Basic Space in partnership with The Hugh Lane, BASIC TALKS is a platform for lectures, workshops, presentations, and performances. Speakers include artists, curators, writers, and critics who will generate discourse on producing, framing and exhibiting art. BASIC TALKS is a collaboration between Basic Space and The Hugh Lane, exploring alternatives in the dissemination of contemporary art and its discourses.

Admission is free but spaces are limited to 50 so please arrive promptly to avoid disappointment.

BASIC TALKS ~ Sue Rainsford, takes place in conjunction with Pallas Projects/Studios Exhibition: Periodical Review #8

A performative discussion covering some important things like fisting and whatnot.

EMERGING AUTHORS SERIES II
In the second of our Emerging Authors events, expect a wealth of insights from four of Ireland’s most daring new voices. Caitriona Lally’s debut novel, Eggshells (HarperCollins), draws readers into the perspective of an eccentric, lonely woman as she wanders the streets of Dublin. Aoibheann McCann, with short story, non-fiction and poetry publications already to her name, has recently treated readers to her first novel – Marina(Wordsonthestreet), a moving account of its eponymous central character’s solitary existence. Playwright and children’s author Darragh Martin has explored new territory this year with his first novel for adults, Future Popes of Ireland (HarperCollins, Fourth Estate imprint), a searing account of a family’s escape from the control of the Catholic Church. Sue Rainsford’s debut, Follow Me To Ground(New Island), is a sinister tale that questions our preconceptions of predator and prey. The disparate voices of these four authors are drawn together by a shared focus on the isolated lives of characters who struggle to belong, and who are ultimately forced to carve their own paths. This conversation will be guided by eminent journalist Sue Leonard.