Venue: St John’s Theatre & Arts Centre

Time: 8 PM

From being one of the ‘Bombing Irish’ of Mrs Thatcher’s era to a reviled ‘Plastic Paddy’ back ‘Home’ in Ireland, New York Times bestselling author Kate Kerrigan hilariously explores what it takes to finally fit into small town Ireland in her taboo-breaking one woman show – AM I IRISH YET?

Exploring identity, culture, exile, AM I IRISH YET? is a fabulously funny, bittersweet journey into the dreams and disasters of every Irish kid who grew up with the ‘wrong’ accent calling somewhere else Home.

‘Brilliant. So well-crafted, a most accomplished performer. Funny, honest and poignant. The audience loved it.’ Mary Kenny, Irish Post

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Date: Thursday 28th May 2026

Venue: Listowel Arms Hotel Main Room

Time: 8 PM

Oscar Wilde’s only grandson offers his insight into his grandfather’s life

Oscar Wilde died in November 1900, exiled in Paris and exhausted by scandal and prison life. The details of his life in the limelight are well known; what has regularly been ignored are the reverberations of the scandal for decades after his death: the myths and legends that have been created, the quarrels between his friends and enemies, the court cases…

His only grandson, Merlin Holland, has dedicated himself to studying Oscar’s life and works, and their wider legacy. In?After Oscar: The Legacy of a Scandal, Merlin debunks many inaccurate or entirely fictitious stories that have grown up around this iconic figure. Join Merlin for much-needed light on the repercussions of a life and a scandal.

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Date: Thursday 28th May 2026

Venue: Listowel Arms Hotel Main Room

Time: 6.30 PM

Elevating the Essay

Andrew O’Hagan and Brian Dillon are two exceptional writers who elevate the essay into a powerful and distinctive literary form.

Andrew O’Hagan’s On Friendship(Faber 2025)is a reflective collection of essays exploring the many facets of the friendships that make us great and the relationships that shaped his life, from schoolmates to the Stone Roses and Edna O’Brien. In these gorgeous personal reflections, O’Hagan illuminates the many ways and reasons that people come together, and how our lives are all the better because we do.

Brian Dillon presents Ambivalence (Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2026), tracing his formative years in Dublin, following the early death of both his parents. It is at once a memoir of that city in the 1980s and 1990s, an uncynical portrait of the adolescent andearly-adult mind, and an intimate defence of radical thinking about literature and life, presented in vivid fragments.

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