On Friday, I met up with Jeremy Gould in Cork.  We talked over the options for Listowel Writers’ Week 2010.

We had to consider whether we’d continue this blog for another year? We’re in touch with Patrick Stack of course. The three of us are keen to publish this blog again for the 40th anniverary festival, at the start of June.

We are planning.  This means imagining how we’ll do it.  Most importantly, how shall we involve others?

We intend to invite others to join us.
We’ll do our best to set up a team of people - so that the workload won’t be too much for anyone.  We’re going to draft in invitation - so that people can see whether they’d like to help keep this blog going.

Please get in touch if you’d like to help in any way.

Gabriel Byrne & taxi driver

George Rowley sings

Pauline Fayne reads “Carol”

John McCarthy reads

“Two doves mating“

• Street song in Listowel

Sheila O’Flanigan will be running a workshop this year…

New blogpost from Emerging Writer.

Time to get ready to enter your writing for Listowel Writers’ Week competitions…

Joy of Writing too…

Good to see the word getting out on the internet.

Here’s Arts Grant Finder “blog” spreading  Listowel’s writing competitions on 26 January.

Seems to be a useful place to look for stories about the arts round the world.  I even spotted a feature on El Bulli closing for 2012 & 2013.  Perhaps El Bulli will close up and never be again, and I won’t ever get there…

There’s a nice report today in The Kerryman newspaper.  The message seems to be :

Get your booking for a writer’s workshop in early this year: unprecedented demand for places.

Michael Lynch, chairman of Writers’ Week Listowel organising committee, encourages you to book now.

John Sheehan accompanies Mickey MacConnell as he sings “Only our rivers run free “ …

“The Black Hills of Dakota” in J B Keane’s pub in Listowel

Google Alert brought this to my attention. Great footage of sessions form the 2009 Festival.

Congratulations and gratitude  to MisApprehension to putting this up on YouTube.

Jennifer Farrell, Nuala O’Faolain and Listowel Writers’ Week are featured in this lovely piece of writing of memoir…

UisceBots is from Dublin, a blogger since April 2006.  He doesn’t want anyone under 18 reading his stuff.

I admire this piece.  Tis good isn’t it?

Today Listowel Writers’ Week  joined the new world. The Festival published its revamped website, which looks great.

But it had a good website last year.

The great leap forward is the simultaneous launch of its Facebook page and Twitter identity.  This change is significant.  It’s just in time for the 40th anniversary of LWW Literary Festival.  I’ve immediately sent a request to be admitted as a Facebook Friend.

In my opinion, it would have been better if the Festival set up its Facebook presence differently - made it possible to become a “Facebook Fan” of Writers’ Week. But the big step it to get out where the public is.

The Festival is in Listowel for a few days every year, but there is a whole world of people who can’t make it to Listowel.  There are so many who would be interested to know what’s going on.  This Facebook presence give everyone a chance of linking up with the spirit of Listowel Writers’ Week.  John  B Keane and Bryan McMahon would have approved. They always wanted the Festival to break the boundaries of the parochial.

The Twitter move is dramatic.
Once you go on Twitter, you have to engage. People follow you, and you can’t afford to ignore them - it damages your reputation if you offer nothing to your followers.  You have to tweet.  People can see how serious you are about sharing, linking, engaging…  Twitter is a medium which exposes a lot of your soul.
As soon as I got alerted to @writersweek on Twitter, I followed.  I urge you all to do the same.  Nothing will do more to raise the profile of LWW, all round the world, than a really good presence on Twitter.

It’s still not clear to me what this blog’s plan for LWW2010 is to be.
We are completely independent of the Festival Committee. We love the Festival. We’d love the Committee to love us, but we have no right to expect it.  During 2009 Festival, the organising committee were civil to us.  But if they liked anything we did, they didn’t let us know.

I have huge emotional attachment to Listowel Writers’ Week Festival.
It would be wonderful to continue to blog it again.  I am completely convinced that all Festivals that are any good should be blogged.  It’s all about making the hard work of organising the Festival visible to the audience of the future. All valuable Festivals deserve to be out there, reaching round the globe.

We’ve heard a lot about the Irish Diaspora, what about the Listowel Writers’ Week Diaspora?

This is surely a day for celebration.  May the Fesitival of the Future be a credit to the joyful spirit of its founders…

From BiblioBuffet a useful list of book festivals in 2010. Lots in Ireland, including Listowel….

Looks like an interesting blog too