Dalkey Book Festival was set up to celebrate and hopefully foster the wealth of literary talent in and around the town.
Festival directors, David McWilliams and Sian Smyth, work with the support of a superb team of volunteers and the Dalkey Business Group to ensure the festival’s success. We rely on the goodwill of many in the Dalkey community and the local businesses who have offered support and provided venues for the festival events. And of course without the authors and performers, there would not be a book festival.
The idea for the festival arose when David McWilliams attended a meeting of The Dalkey Business Group in late April 2010. The community wanted to do something for itself to tackle the problems of dwindling trade in the recession. There was a desire to cooperate at a local level and to take things into our own hands. David wrote about the idea of local communities fighting back in his weekly column in the Irish Independent and following an overwhelmingly positive response, he suggested that one of the valuable resources unique to Dalkey might be all the writers who live here and have experienced the town in one shape or form over the years. And so the idea of a book festival was born. We hope you will enjoy the second Dalkey Book Festival.
