First Artists Announced
Allingham Arts Festival | November 4th–8th | Ballyshannon, Co. Donegal
Spring is in the air, the buds are popping out on the trees, but we're busy planning another five days and nights of arts, music, history, and storytelling this coming November!
The committee have been hard at work over the winter months scouring the land for the finest writers, poets, and performers to bring to Ballyshannon this November.
There’s a lot more to come, with details coming soon. For now, here's a first look at some of this year's guests.
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Róisín Ingle
Róisín Ingle is a columnist, features writer, and podcaster with The Irish Times. She is the author of two collections of her columns, Pieces of Me (Hachette) and Public Displays of Emotion (Irish Times Books), and co-author of The Daughterhood (Simon & Schuster, with Natasha Fennell), which has been published in several languages.
Her latest book, My Perfect Place in Ireland, brings together well-known Irish voices on their favourite corners of the country. Róisín regularly chairs and facilitates high-profile events across a wide range of themes — from mental health and social inclusion to feminism and entertainment — and produces and co-presents the award-winning Women's Podcast on irishtimes.com.
Michael Harding
Michael Harding is a writer, podcaster, and commentator born in Cavan in 1953. A member of Aosdána, he has received both the Stewart Parker Award and an RTÉ Arts Show/Bank of Ireland Award for his theatre work. The Abbey Theatre has staged five of his plays, including Strawboys, Una Pooka, Misogynist, Hubert Murray's Widow, and Sour Grapes, and The Tinker's Curse was nominated for Best New Play at the Irish Times Irish Theatre Awards 2007.
He is perhaps best known for his acclaimed series of memoirs, beginning with Staring at Lakes (2013) and most recently I Loved Him From the Day He Died (2024) — honest, quietly funny, and deeply human accounts of life, loss, and the Irish midlands. He writes a regular column for The Irish Times, has featured in numerous documentary programmes, and lives with his wife, the artist Cathy Carmen, near Lough Allen in Co. Leitrim.
Elaine Feeney
Elaine Feeney is an acclaimed novelist and poet from the West of Ireland, and a lecturer at the University of Galway. Her debut novel As You Were won the Kate O'Brien Award, the McKitterick Prize, and the Dalkey Festival Emerging Writer Award, and was shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize and Irish Novel of the Year. Her second novel How to Build a Boat was longlisted for the Booker Prize, shortlisted for Irish Novel of the Year, and named a Best Book of 2023 by The New Yorker, The Globe and Mail, and The Irish Times. Her third novel, Let Me Go Mad in My Own Way, was again shortlisted for Irish Novel of the Year and won the Library Association of Ireland Author of the Year Award.
A poet as well as a novelist, Elaine has published four collections including The Radio Was Gospel, Rise, and most recently All the Good Things You Deserve (Harvill Secker Vintage, 2024). Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, The Stinging Fly, The Moth, The Guardian, LitHub, and The New Yorker, among many others. She is co-founder of the Tuam Oral History Project at the University of Galway, which records and archives the first-person narratives of those affected by the Tuam Mother and Baby Institution.