Dr. Mai Yamani was born in Cairo to an Iraqi mother and a Hijazi father.  Her articles have appeared in newspapers around the world, and she frequently appears on CNN, Al Jazeera, and BBC World. Dr. Yamani is an established commentator on Muslim and Arab politics, in particular on Saudi Arabia.  In addition to her academic and media work, she has acted as a consultant to international banks, oil companies and other foreign governments.

His 2006 novel, THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS, was made into an award-winning film. The novel itself won 2 Irish Book Awards and a host of international awards. It spent more than 80 weeks at no.1 in Ireland and topped the New York Times Bestseller List, and was the bestselling book in Spain in both 2007 and 2008. Worldwide, it has sold more than 5 million copies in 42 languages.

His eighth novel, NOAH BARLEYWATER RUNS AWAY, a book for younger readers, was published in October 2010 and reached no.1 on the Irish Bestseller Chart. It was also shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards Children’s Book of the Year.

His ninth novel, THE ABSOLUTIST, will be published in the UK in May 2011.

Maeve Binchy was born in County Dublin and was educated at the Holy Child convent in Killiney and at University College, Dublin. After a spell as a teacher in various girls’ schools, she joined the Irish Times. Her first novel, Light a Penny Candle, was published in 1982, and since then she has written more than a dozen novels and short story collections, each one of them bestsellers. Several have been adapted for cinema and television, most notably Circle of Friends and Tara Road.

Maeve Binchy was awarded the Lifetime Achievement award at the British Book Awards in 1999. In 2007 she joined an august band of writers including Seamus Heaney and John Banville when she was presented with the Irish PEN/AT Cross Literary Award to recognise a lifetime of literary achievement. She is married to the writer and broadcaster Gordon Snell and lives in Dalkey, Co Dublin.

Kevin Gildea is a comedian, writer, performer, actor, panelist, cultural commentator, play write, cosmonaut, matador and liar. Kevin has just won 3rd prize in the RTE Radio PJ O’Connor Play writing Competition making him the only human to ever win first (2008), second (2007) and third prize in this competition. He has received a bursary from the Arts Council and is writing his first novel. As a comedian The Sunday Times has described him as “Highly Original and Explosively Funny” while the Guardian has variously described him as “Creative”, “Quirky”, “Pioneering and “Made of Flesh.”

She is a regular contributor to RTE’s Tubridy on 2FM, the History Show with Myles Dungan, the Daily Show and TV3’sTonight with Vincent Browne. Margaret has also presented Newstalk’s Business Breakfast and was known for her slogan “telling it like it is”. This native New Yorker was born to Irish parents who emigrated in the 1960s. Margaret, a self-confessed historical archive nerd, moved to Ireland in 1995 to research a book … and never left.

Her books include: Saving and investing for life, Bob Marley and Every Blade of Grass, an Irish girl’s Civil War story.

Eamon Morrissey has been working with the words of Brian O’Nolan (Flann O’Brien, Myles na gCopaleen) for over 35 years. In 1974 he first adapted and presented ‘The Brother’. Happily ‘The Brother’ is still going strong all these years later.

Eamon also adapted ‘The Third Policeman’ for a successful stage production. Although written in 1939 ‘The Third Policeman’ was not published until after O’Nolan’s death in 1966, but in true Mylesian fashion, Brian O’Nolan also adapted much of ‘The Third Policeman’ for another novel which was published as ‘The Dalkey Archive’ in 1964.

Although Eamon’s walkabout will not include diving into a cave at the Vico Swimming Club, it will include more familiar items, including ‘A Pint of Plain’.

The Shed Poets Society is a group of six women who meet each week in Dalkey in a terraced garden that overlooks Killiney Bay, Co. Dublin. The poets have published a number of poetry books both individually and as a group. Shed Poets books include: Rising Tide, High Tide and Tidings.

The Shed Poets are Bernie Kenny, Rosy Wilson, Maureen Perkins, Carol Boland, Marguerite Colgan and Judy Russell.

Check out their website at www.shedpoetssociety.blogspot.com

After a short reading, children can create their own” Fantastic Far Flung Facts For Fun’ books , using some animal books and animal encyclopedias from the library, and a little notebook, animal stickers and markers which will be provided for this workshop.
For children from 8 to 11 years.

His earlier plays have found audiences in more than ten countries, including South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

He has had four plays produced by RTE and twice won PJ O’Connor awards. He was nominated by the Irish Playwrights and Screenwriters Guild (IPSG) for a ZEBBIE award in 2009.

His last play, The Cant, about the secrets of an Irish traveller family, won the inaugural McGuire Prize in the US in 2010 and was produced in America to critical acclaim. He is presently Playwright in Residence with The Irish Classical Theatre Company in Buffalo, who will produce his next play, The Game.

He has just completed his second novel and is working on a screenplay about an Irish-American couple whose lives are affected by the terrorist attack in New York in 2001.

Shopping In Chains was written for the Dalkey Book Festival and features many local characters.

Roddy Doyle says, “Kevin Barry is a unique, a one-man school. His work is hilarious and unpredictable- and always brilliant.”

She writes a column for The Gloss Magazine. In addition to her regular column, Clodagh also writes for the Irish Times, The Sunday Tribune, Aer Lingus Magazine, Delicious Magazine, Image Interiors, and RED Magazine. Clodagh has appeared as a cook and promoter of local produce on RTE, BBC2, TV3, ITV, BBC1 and NBC and is a regular chef presenter for UKTV’s Market Kitchen.

Clodagh’s first book The Irish Farmers’ Market Cookbook was a bestseller. Her second book, Fresh From the Sea was published in 2009. Her third book, Homemade, was published in 2010.

Clodagh filmed two television series to accompany her Irish Farmers Market Cookbook, entitled Fresh From the Farmers Markets . The series was picked up by media outlets in the UK, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.

Her third series, Fresh From the Sea, opened to rave reviews in June of 2009 on RTE 1. The series also aired in New Zealand and the UK. The fourth series of the same name aired June 2010 on RTE 1.

In 2010, Clodagh teamed up with the Village at Lyons in Co. Kildare to open the doors of her new cookery school called The Village at Lyons Cookery School with Clodagh McKenna. Additionally, she opened the Canal Café by Clodagh along with her fabulous kitchen store called The General Store by Clodagh. The Village at Lyons, located only 30 minutes from Dublin City Centre and is situated along the Grand Canal, is a perfect retreat for from the hustle of everyday life. Visitors can take part in hands-on cookery courses taught by Clodagh or they can pick up a picnic lunch from her café to enjoy along the banks of the Grand Canal. Clodagh has also organised a Farmers Market every Friday at the Village at Lyons which features some of her favourite producers from around the country.

Roddy has written for the stage and his plays include Brownbread and Guess Who’s Coming For The Dinner. He co-adapted with Joe O’Byrne his novel The Woman who Walked into Doors and he co-wrote with Bisi Adigun a new version of The Playboy of the Western World.

He also wrote the screenplays for The Snapper, The Van, Family, When Brendan Met Trudy and he co-wrote the screenplay for The Commitments.

He lives and works in Dublin.

Not only has Tommy success at home in Ireland and the UK but also in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and America.

In April 2009 Tommy set the Guinness World Record for the longest Stand-Up Comedy Show by an individual by a staggering 36 hours and 15 minutes. So far in 2010 Tommy has performed in The Royal Albert Hall and completed a sell out solo tour of Australia and New Zealand, The Udderbelly Festival in London, The Toronto Just For Laughs Festival in Canada, The Edinburgh Festival to 5 star reviews & headlining “The Michael McIntyre Comedy Roadshow” in the UK, a number of Irish “World Tours”, a run at “Comix” in New York, a 6 week Solo UK tour and  Vicar St. in November and December. Phew!

2011 began with a run at Vicar Street in Dublin, then off to Australia & New Zealand for his solo tour, which has doubled in size since last year, then a solo tour of Canada, a new live DVD and a UK solo tour not to mention his continuing “World Tours” of Ireland.

Tommy has 5 children and is married to Yvonne. They live in Galway and, when in Dublin, Tommy stays in Dalkey.

Her first novel, Another Alice (1996) was nominated for the Irish Times Irish fiction prize. Her second novel Nothing Simple (2005) was shortlisted for the Irish Novel of the Year at the inaugural Irish Book Awards. Her most recent book In Your Face (2007), a memoir of her diagnosis of and treatment for oral cancer, was named as a favourite book of 2007 by several commentators.

Born in Dublin, she has lived in London and America before returning to Ireland in 1990.

Conor McPherson was born in Dublin in 1971. He starting writing and directing while attending University College Dublin where he took a masters degree in Philosophy in 1993. His plays include Rum & Vodka, The Good Thief, This Lime Tree Bower, St Nicholas, The Weir, Dublin Carol, Port Authority, Shining City and The Seafarer. Films include I Went Down, Saltwater, Samuel Beckett’s Endgame, The Actors and The Eclipse. For his work in the theatre Conor has received the Laurence Olivier Award, three Tony Award nominations, The Evening Standard, Critics’ Circle, George Devine, Meyer-Whitworth and Stewart Parker Awards. For his films Conor has received three Best Screenplay IFTA Awards, a Best Screenplay Award from the Spanish Association of Screenwriters (I Went Down), and the CICAE Award for Best Film at the Berlin Film Festival (Saltwater). The Eclipse (co-written with Billy Roche and directed by McPherson) has won the Melies D’Argent Award for Best European Film and the IFTA Award for Best Film 2010. Conor was appointed Adjunct Professor at the UCD school of English, Drama and Film in 2010.

Yvonne  also writes journalistic articles, short stories, television scripts and poetry.

She  recently spent  three months  in New York as part of her research for her second novel, What Might Have Been Me, which will be published in 2012.

Oliver James is a clinical psychologist, documentary maker and best selling author of Afffluenza and The Selfish Capitalist. He asks why so many people despite being rich and free from traditional restraints experience obsessive, envious tendencies that make them twice as prone to depression, anxiety and addictions. In his book Contended Dementia, he considers a novel approach for carers of people with dementia.

Ian Robertson is a clinical psychologist, Professor of Psychology at Trinity College Dublin and founding director of the Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience. He is author of Mind Sculpture, The Minds Eye ,Stay Sharp and several academic books on brain function. His research and books examine how experience changes the brain.

Niamh Sharkey is an award-winning author and illustrator of children’s picture books, including The Ravenous Beast and I’m A Happy Hugglewug. Her new picture book On the Road with Mavis and Marge (Walker Books) won the 2010 DAA Junior Book of the Year.

www.niamhsharkey.com

After a couple of years toying with ideas, she joined a creative writing group and began to write The Baby Trail. The bitter-sweet comedy of a couple struggling to conceive hit a nerve in publishing circles. It was snapped up by Penguin Publishing in the UK and Ireland and has, to date, been translated into twenty languages.

Since writing The Baby Trail, Sinead has moved back to Dublin where she lives with her husband, two sons and baby girl.

Her second book A Perfect Match has been published worldwide. The US version of A Perfect Match is called The Right Fit. Her third novel – From Here to Maternity – is the final instalment of the Emma and James trilogy. Her fourth book – In My Sister’s Shoes – is about two sisters who help save each other. Her fifth book has been published under two different titles: Whose Life Is It Anyway? in Ireland and Keeping it in the Family in the UK.

Her sixth book, Pieces of my Heart, about a family dealing with a terrible crisis, has recently been published.

Declan Kiberd is the author of Inventing Ireland: The Literature of the Modern Nation, which was awarded the Irish Times Literature Prize and is one of the most influential works on Irish culture published in recent years. His Irish Classics, published in 2000, was shortlisted for the Irish Times Prize and won the prestigious Lannan Prize in the USA. He is Professor of Anglo-Irish Literature at University College, Dublin.

Martina Devlin is an author and newspaper columnist. Her most recent book, Banksters, a number one bestseller, was a non-fiction co-authored book about the Irish banking collapse. Her novels include Ship of Dreams, about the Titanic shipwreck and its aftermath – inspired by a family connection with the disaster. She won a Hennessy Literary Prize and has been shortlisted twice for the Irish Book Awards. A former Fleet Street journalist, she writes a weekly column for the Irish Independent and the Sunday World Magazine. She was 2009 writer in residence at the Princess Grace Irish Library in Monaco.

Tim Pat Coogan is Ireland’s best known historical writer. His first book, Ireland Since The Rising, published in 1966, was a pioneering work, the first history of the fifty years that followed the 1916 Rising. It gave a new generation an insight into the civil war, partition, the emergence and constitutional development of Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and the unconstitutional development of the IRA.

His subsequent book, The IRA, first published in 1970, became the definitive work on the subject and has been reissued in several editions and languages.

His biography of Michael Collins, published on Collin’s centenary in 1990, created a remarkable rekindling of interest, on both sides of the Atlantic, in Collins and his times. As a result of Coogan’s research another new generation became fascinated not only by the legendary hero and the challenges he faced, but in the relevance of his dealings with the Six Counties to today’s events. There followed man acres of newsprint coverage, TV programmes, a film starring Liam Neeson and a popular brand of Irish Whiskey, called after the legendary hero.

Coogan’s other works include On The Blanket, a study of the dirty protest which preceded the hunger strikes of 1981, a biography of de Valera, Long fellow, long shadow; the first major work on the Irish diaspora, Wherever Green is Worn (2000) and Ireland in the Twentieth Century (2003).

Coogan’s career as an author and journalist (he was editor of the Irish Press between 1968 and 1987) has taken him around the world interviewing figures as diverse as Ronald Reagan and Mumar Ghadafi and made him a well known personality on both radio and TV.

His new memoir was published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson in September 2008.

Brian Keenan was born in Belfast. He has degrees in English and Anglo-Irish Literature. He became a lecturer at The American University of Beirut and was taken hostage in 1986. Four and half years later, following his release, he wrote an Evil Cradling, which won The Irish Times Irish Literature award for non fiction, Time Life P.E.N Award, The Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize and The Christopher Award in New York. He is also the author of the novel, Turlough, and two travel books, Between Extremes (with John McCarthy) and Four Quarters of Light, an Alaskan journey. His most recent book is I’ll Tell Me Ma, a childhood memoir. His next project will be a book of short stories set in contemporary Lebanon. He lives in Dublin with his family.

Gordon Snell has written many books for children and adults and is also well known as a scriptwriter. He lives in Dublin with his wife, best-selling author, Maeve Binchy. He is the author many well-loved children’s books including Amy’s Wonderful Nest and Tina and the Tooth Fairy in the O’Brien Panda series for younger readers, and The Supermarket Ghost. He is also the author of The Rhyming Irish Cookbook.

John Waters was born in Castlerea, Co Roscommon, in 1955. Despite the best efforts of a number of local schools, he remained uneducated in any acceptable sense. He held a range of jobs after leaving school, including railway clerk, showband roadie, pirate radio manager, petrol pump attendant and mailcar driver.

He began part-time work as a a journalist in 1981, with Hot Press, Ireland’s leading rock ‘n’ roll periodical, becoming a full-time journalist with the paper in 1984, when he moved to Dublin. As an journalist, magazine editor and columnist, he has specialised in raising unpopular issues of public importance, including the repression of Famine memories and the denial of rights to fathers.

His other books include, Jiving at the Crossroads (Blackstaff,1991);Race of Angels (4th Estate/Blackstaff,1994):Every Day Like Sunday? (Poolbeg, 1995); An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Modern Ireland (Duckworth 1997); The Politburo Has Decided That You Are Unwell, (Liffey, 2004); and Lapsed Agnostic (Continuum, 2007). He has written plays for radio and the stage, including Long Black Coat, (1994), Holy Secrets, (BBC, 1996),Easter Dues, (1998), and Adverse Possession (BBC,1998).

He has been a columnist with thr Irish Times for almost 20 years and currently also writes columns for The Irish Mail on Sunday, The Irish Catholic, and Tracce/Traces, the international magazine of the Catholic movement Communion and Liberation. A resident of Dalkey for 19 years, he has one daughter, Róisín, and they live on Dalkey Hill.

John’s latest book is Beyond Consolation

In the late spring of 2008 the writer and newspaper columnist Nuala O’ Faolain went on a national radio programme to tell the Irish people that she was dying of cancer. She did not believe, she said, in an afterlife, and found no consolation in religious ideas. She was terrified of death and surveyed in despair the short time left to her.

The interview, which transfixed Irish society, seemed to give voice to something unspoken in the culture of a society on the verge of sliding out of a brief period of prosperity and optimism. O’Faolain had many times been the spokesperson for her own generation of women seeking liberation; but here, reviewing a culture she had inhabited and helped to ferment, she emerged as a spokesperson for the generations of modern Irish people who had, at the end of their interventions in human society, conjured up for themselves an abyss of unhope

With this broadcast as his point of departure, John Waters
examines this trajectory of Irish culture to this point of despair.  Tiptoeing through the reductions of language we take for granted, he seeks to excavate the journey of Irish society from what appeared to be a profound traditional faith to this moment of what seemed like nihilistic clarity. He reflects on this culture and his own life within it to explore why modern culture has come to glory in a form of pessimism that must destroy it: the belief that doubting the infinite and the eternal is evidence of intelligence.

How reasonable is it, asks John Waters, to believe in nothingness?

Gary Jermyn, known affectionately as Dalkey’s poet laureate, will perform extracts from Flann O’Brien’s Dalkey Archive, officiate at the Midsummer Book Quiz and make us laugh with a performance of My Life as A Chat Show Host , described by the Irish Independent as “hip, entertaining, streetsmart and erudite

Born in Dublin in 1959, Dermot Bolger is one of Ireland’s best known writers. His ten novels include The Journey Home, The Woman’s Daughter, The Family on Paradise Pier and New Town Soul – his first book for young adults which is set in Blackrock and published last year. His award-winning plays have been staged in many countries and his latest play, The Parting Glass, deals with the hand of Thierry Henry and the collapse of the Celtic Tiger. It is a direct sequel to his 1990 play, In High Germany, in that both plays explore Irish life through the experiences on an Irish football supporter forced to emigrate. A poet, he has edited many anthologies, including The Picador Book of Contemporary Irish Fiction and is a regular contributor to Irish newspapers.

Mark Little is the founder of Storyful.com, an online news service which will curate useful content from the noise of social media. For almost 20 years, he worked for RTE. He was the network’s first Washington correspondent and served as foreign correspondent, reporting on all the major global news events of the past decade. In 2001, he won an Irish national media award for his reporting from Afghanistan. He was appointed presenter of RTE’s flagship current affairs show, Prime Time in 2002.

He wrote and presented the documentary series, Who’s Afraid of Islam and American Dream – dead or alive? He is the author of the books, Turn Left at Greenland and Zulu Time. His most recent book, The New America, examines fundamental social and political changes in the United States. Mark is married, has three children and lives in Dalkey.

From Athlone, Co. Westmeath, Declan Lynch began his writing career at the age of seventeen with Ireland’s rock ’n’ roll magazine Hot Press. He now writes for the Sunday Independent. He is the author of several books including Ireland on Three Million Pounds a Day, Free Money: The Gambler’s Quest, and the acclaimed novel The Rooms.

Days of Heaven Italia 90 and the Charlton Years – Declan Lynch

They were the best days of our lives. This is how so many of the Irish remember Italia 90 and all that came with it — the atmosphere of wild celebration, the scenes of chaos, the fine madness. Declan Lynch recalls the great moments — Packie’s save and his leap into immortality; Pavarotti’s ‘Nessun Dorma’ and U2’s ‘Put ’Em Under Pressure’; Kevin Sheedy’s sweet strike; and all that drinking. Days of Heaven is full of hilarious accounts of how the Irish abandoned reality in that glorious time called Italia 90. But it wasn’t just the fortunes of the football team that were changing during the Charlton Years. The economy was about to be utterly transformed; the Church was on the verge of disaster; there were Irish people winning Oscars and selling millions of rock ’n’ roll albums; there were new voices in the media; and a woman was running for President. And there was Jack, our most unlikely icon. In this brilliant book, Declan Lynch brings it all together, the sporting, the social and the autobiographical. Dermot Morgan and Father Michael Cleary were part of the story too; U2 and UB40 made their contributions alongside Eamon Dunphy and Charles Haughey. Days of Heaven brings us back to this extraordinary time. And it brings it all to life again.

Easily the most entertaining book about Irish football ever written’ Hot Press

‘Declan’s book captures that sense of gleeful madness brilliantly’ – Keith Duggan

‘I absolutely loved it’ Gerry Ryan

‘*****’ – Dermot Bolger, Irish Mail on Sunday

‘Lynch does a fine job of reminiscing about these golden times, which those lucky enough to live through won’t easily forget’ – Sunday Business Post

A native of Dalkey, Declan Hughes is the author of the Ed Loy PI series: The Wrong Kind of Blood; The Colour of Blood; The Price of Blood/The Dying Breed and All The Dead Voices. His books have been nominated for the Edgar, CWA New Blood Dagger, Shamus, Macavity and Theakston’s Old Peculier awards, and The Wrong Kind of Blood won the Shamus for Best First PI Novel. Declan is also an award-winning playwright and the co-founder and former artistic director of Rough Magic Theatre Company. His latest novel is called City of Lost Girls.

Michael James Ford has been working in the Irish Theatre as an actor, writer and director since 1981. In recent years he has been particularly associated with The Gate Theatre where his appearances as an actor include The Old Curiosity Shop, The Deep Blue Sea, The Constant Wife, See You Next Tuesday, A Christmas Carol, Blithe Spirit, Salome, Arcadia, Cyrano de Bergerac, Lady Windermere’s Fan, Pride and Prejudice, The Double Dealer, Romeo and Juliet and The Rivals. He has also appeared at The Abbey in Observe the Sons of Ulster, The Merchant of Venice and Souper Sulllivan.. He has worked with many other theatre companies including Calypso, Storytellers, Meridian, Island, Red Kettle, Rough Magic, The Focus, Charabanc, Druid, Second Age and Bickerstaffe.

His film appearances include Dark Angel, Kidnapped, The Boxer, Michael Collins, Widow’s Peak and Becoming Jane. Television includes Fair City, Rebel Heart, and The Ambassador.

From 1999 to 2005 Michael was Artistic Director of Bewley’s Café Theatre in Dublin for whom he has directed many plays including Roman Fever, So Long Sleeping Beauty, Crabbed Youth and Age, A Fishpond All on Fire, Too Much of Nothing, Oscar and the Sphinx, One Too Many Mornings and Buridan’s Ass.

His one-man versions of Wilde’s The Happy Prince and The Remarkable Rocket have been widely acclaimed and he has toured throughout Ireland and played in Egypt, Finland and the USA. As a writer he has had several stage adaptations performed including The Star Trap, Dinner in Mulberry Street ( Bewley’s ) The Diamond Lens ( New Theatre ) and Mister Vasek ( RTE Radio ). His play Hedy Lamarr and The Easter Rising was commisioned by Oran Mor in Glasgow and was also seen in Dublin and Edinburgh. He is currently working on a new full length play for the Offaly Drama Project.

Poe’s chilling The Cask of Amontillado is being performed in the we-kid-you-not venue of St Begnet’s Graveyard.

David Mc Williams is an economist, broadcaster, bestselling author and columnist with Sunday Business Post and the Irish Independent. He writes online at DavidMcWilliams.ie.