Everyone loves a good book, from a thriller to an engaging sports memoir. We grow and laugh and sometimes cry at a good story. It’s no surprise that we are such a literary nation because at our heart we are a nation of storytellers. We, after all, invented the céilí, that great impromptu visit and chat that lasted for hours in the good céilí houses of rural Ireland.

Taking the love of chat and the love of reading to heart is what made me the writer I am today. My debut book, The Cow Book, told the story of a family farm in Co Longford and in turn told the story of so many family farms up and down the nation. Books have been good to me and that interaction with rural Ireland got me thinking about bringing more books to Ireland over the last few years.

Rural Ireland is the wellspring of who we are as a people, but it’s also capable of so much in a time when new ideas are needed to safeguard our local communities going into an uncertain future. There are so many ideas in rural Ireland and so many talented people who only want the best for their shared home.

Ireland’s first booktown

That’s why I, along with a team of volunteers, have set up Ireland’s first booktown in Granard in Co Longford.

What’s a booktown you might ask? A booktown is a small town dedicated to books, literature and the arts. The booktown model exists all around the world, with international booktowns as far away as Australia and South Africa where towns have taken books to their hearts and in the doing helped to attract people to their rural location, bringing much-needed commerce to the towns.

Strangely, Ireland, the country of books and writers, doesn’t have an official booktown. After meeting with the director of Wigtown Festival (the national booktown of Scotland), we decided that Longford was the place to establish Ireland’s first booktown. Granard, with its lovely wide streets, forward-thinking businesses and friendly people was our natural choice.

Donal Ryan is one of the authors who will be participating in the festival.

Wigtown – now a beacon of rural endeavour and the arts – was struggling 25 years ago. That is, until they embraced books. Now every season there are events on in the town and literary tourists come from all over the world to the tiny Scottish hamlet.

Community effort

Over the last 18 months we have been working to do the very same for Granard. We quickly assembled a team of volunteers, from esteemed writer Belinda McKeon to local politicians and accessibility campaigner James Cawley Jnr. We wanted to create a state-of-the-art international literary festival in the heart of rural Ireland and turn Granard into a beacon and example for other small rural towns that new ideas can take all shapes and sizes.

It’s been a real community effort and we’ve drawn people from all over the country and world to help us. Our patrons include Emmy-nominated journalist and director of the Clooney foundation, Shaunagh Connaire, Man Booker prize winner and million-copy bestseller Richard Flanagan and RTÉ’s Rick O’Shea, founder of Ireland’s biggest book club with 40,000 members.

Names of famous writers were quickly thrown around, but we all agreed that this would be a festival with something for everyone.

Festival programme

The event takes place in Granard from 21-23 April. We have writers from all over the world coming to share their books and ideas with us. Headline writers include Prof Tim Flannery, a climate scientist and former Australian of the year. He’s also a global expert on climate change and has written global bestselling books on the topic. We will also have writer, disability activist and global fashion star Sinead Burke, as well as Man Booker shortlisted Donal Ryan and a host of other writers.

Sinead Burke will also be attending. \ Rita Slattery.

There’s also something for the children too, with children’s author David King coming to speak with his son Adam, who the country fell in love with after his appearance on the Late Late Toy show during the height of the pandemic. There will also be history talks by local writers and a trad music session each night to keep the party going.

Rural Ireland is my home and this festival is one town’s way of embracing a new idea that will help Granard continue to prosper and become an example to other small towns around rural Ireland.

We hope that this will be a new and prosperous chapter for Granard and that we will have plenty of toursits visit this April and discover a book and writer that engages and excites them.

Find out more at www.granardbooktownfestival.ie