Three years ago we took a gamble here in the midlands and set up something different to help a rural town. Three years ago Granard in Co Longford became a book town. What is a book town, you might ask? Well, it is a small town that puts books at its centre with bookshops and book festivals.
It’s an international model that occurs all over the world, from Hay on Wye in Britain to Featherston in New Zealand. There are book towns globally and it’s a wonderful community.
We wanted to build something for Longford, my home county, and bring together writers from all over the world to a small town for a weekend and create something cultural that would punch above its weight. So how is that experiment going, you might ask? Well, three years in, we’ve welcomed thousands of visitors and hosted some of the biggest names in literature and ideas, from Booker Prize winner Paul Lynch to accessibility campaigner Sinéad Burke.
There have been late nights along this road and much work but the Granard Booktown Festival has, I think, established itself as a festival that is embraced and looked forward to each year. This year’s festival is just a couple of weeks away (April 11th-13th), but really, it’s been years in the making.
This year, we welcome some more huge names in global literature, from Claire Keegan to John Banville. Bringing arts to rural Ireland is an important thing. Living in rural Ireland shouldn’t mean that one always has to go to a city to access the arts. That’s why festivals in rural Ireland count for so much and mean so much to the people in the countryside.
This year, with so much going on in the world, the festival has a range of writers and thinkers to try to make sense of the tumult we are all in. We welcome journalist and author Peter Geoghegan, whose Sunday Times bestseller Democracy for Sale looked at the presence of dark money in elections, an issue that hasn’t gone away. The present tumult also has echoes of the past, and that’s where we will hear from Nelofer Pazira Fisk on her late husband Robert’s book Night of Power on the Middle East.
Making sense of the world is something that one of our headline guests, Carole Cadwalladr, has been doing for years; indeed, she was a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for her work on the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal. Carole possesses great insight into world affairs and will be interviewed by one of our great broadcast journalists, Bryan Dobson.
I once remarked that we were trying to create a Dingle of the midlands here in Granard. A town that always had something going on, something to look forward to and something to enjoy. I feel with each passing year we are getting closer to that goal. From local pubs full of traditional music to packed venues listening with attentive ears to ideas from around the world.
Building something for the people of the midlands has taken work, but it has also been a great pleasure. Our board members donate their time and skills to allow us to offer a wonderful festival each year.
Making our festival accessible is something we have strived to do from the first day. We offer ISL (Irish sign language) at all our events, and each venue is accessible friendly. We want to ensure the festival can be enjoyed by everyone and anyone, and that has made a huge difference to our focus and output.
This year’s festival looks set to be our biggest yet. Already, Keegan’s event has sold out, and tickets are flying out the door for our many other talks. To bring writers of such calibre as Banville or Liz Nugent lifts all our spirits here in Granard. We get to hear from writers and thinkers whose books and work can change our lives.
That’s the great thing about a book: a really good one can change how you see the world and, if you are lucky, change how you think about the world. That’s something we want to do here in Granard: keep turning people on, keep changing minds. From a gripping thriller to a literary novel or poetry collection, books can be companions for life.
This companionship has been a bedfellow of mine and the team’s for three years now. We look forward to this year’s festival and bringing great art to a small town once more and showing a Céad míle fáilte to our writers and patrons.
The idea of a Dingle of the midlands is getting closer each year and it’s providing something wonderful for our little county. I hope to see you there next month. There will be something for everyone - most of all, ideas that inspire.
John Connell is the codirector and co-founder of Granard Booktown Festival. He is a writer and farmer in Co Longford.
