I travelled to Wexford last weekend to see two Irish fiction-writing greats, Marian Keyes and Sophie White, at the Write by the Sea literary festival in Kilmore Quay. Sophie was interviewing Marian in St Peter’s Church – many literary festival events end up in churches – and from my audience vantage point in the pews I could see the solemn head of Jesus peeping over one of the freestanding festival posters. It added some lighthearted balance to the Stations of the Cross scene looming from the wall over my head: Jesus is stripped of his garments.
As a writer, literary festivals are one of the great perks of the job. My Complete Aisling co-author Sarah Breen and I have travelled the length and breadth of Ireland. I experienced both Cork and Limerick cities for the first time thanks to invites to speak at book events. I met Marita Conlon McKenna in Dingle and gushed to her about The Blue Horse and Under the Hawthorn Tree. I saw Cillian Murphy queuing for a portaloo in an ostentatious scarf at the Borris Festival of Writing and Ideas. I sang Oasis songs in a beer garden in Listowel beside Anthony Horowitz, author of the phenomenally successful Alex Rider teen espionage series and scores of other books.
Our first trip to Listowel Writers’ Week was in 2018, after the publication of our debut novel. The event was not in a church, but a hotel ballroom, and Sarah and I were vibrating with excitement before it even kicked off. We’d been furnished with “Britney mics”, those spindly personal microphones that wrap around your head and ear and end in a little cotton bud near your mouth.
I was so overcome with the glamour that at the book-signing segment after the main chat (and a glass of wine), I began autographing books “It’s Britney bitch!”. If you have one of those books, I apologise. You probably just wanted a simple “Hiya Aisling (great name), lots of love from Emer and Sarah” to send to your daughter in Australia.
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That evening we did the proverbial dog on it, setting ourselves up in John B’s bar. Billy Keane himself brought us upstairs to see his father’s work space and sent us away with a John B Keane souvenir each. God only knows how many hours we spent in that pub, but at one stage we were out the back at a sing-song while the aforementioned Horowitz looked on in amusement. The following morning was the one and only time we’ve ever skipped the hotel breakfast in our seven years of book travels. The 10am text exchange from that day is immortalised in my WhatsApp archives.
Me: Have you survived the night? I somehow have your phone charger.
Sarah: I just woke up. I don’t know if I can face the breakfast here. What if Anthony Horowitz is there?
Me: I’m fantasising about ducking out unseen.
Sarah: Oh my God, the dream. Bundle me out in the boot of the car.
Me: Let’s just drive to Ballybunion and have breakfast there. We might see Jimmy Page. (Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page was also at Listowel Writers’ Week that year, but as far as we could remember we hadn’t befriended him in John B’s during the chorus of Don’t Look Back In Anger.)
What followed couldn’t have been written by Monty Python
We hatched a plan to sneak out of the hotel to try to avoid all the people we’d become bosom, gin-fuelled buddies with at 1am. We weren’t trying to be rude, you understand, we just had an all-encompassing, body-shaking, breakfast-skipping case of The Fear. I collected Sarah from her room and we dragged our wheelie suitcases into the lift, planning to exit in the foyer and make a swift beeline for the front door of the hotel.
What followed couldn’t have been written by Monty Python. As we attempted our escape, newfound friends from the evening before appeared as if by magic to wish us well. It truly seemed as if people were appearing from behind plant pots and out from under cars to intercept us, a kind of chaotic movie musicalesque scene. As we exited the car park, the farce – delightful in hindsight – continued, as the man who’d served us our 2am chips at Jumbo’s takeaway sailed past in a van waving cheerfully and shouting “there’s the girls!” At least three similarly friendly encounters occurred as we left Listowel behind us.
We returned to Listowel in 2022 and, thank God, made it down for the hotel breakfast with a little less fear and no danger of running into Horowitz. And look, if you do have one of the “Britney, bitch” books, maybe someday it’ll be a collector’s item.
