All set for exciting literary festival

Talks, workshops and programmes

The 2025 Dromineer Nenagh Literary Festival opens on Thursday, October 9, with a poetry reading in the Wine Buff by Claire Hennessy and Paul Perry.

Other highlights of the weekend include a screening of Frank’s Road, directed and produced by Eamonn Dillon. This documentary tells the story of Frank Buckley, a seemingly ordinary driver for Paddywagon tours who has lived an extraordinary life. Frank’s unconventional journey through life has seen him swing from triumph to tragedy and back again, on the way forging a successful career in the music business, co-founding an international charity and becoming an acclaimed modern artist, amongst other things (Nenagh Arts Centre, October 11 at 11am).

Eamonn Dillon has been active as a film-maker, specialising in documenting real life stories, for much of the last decade. Last year he enjoyed the greatest success of his career to date when his most recent film, Frank’s Road, was named best documentary short at The Art of Recovery Film Festival in Lake Worth Florida in November. The film then had its Irish premiere at Dublin’s Mansion House, the residence of the city’s Lord Mayor, in February where it was again rapturously received.

Drama also features in this year's programme. The Cure by Cónal Creedon will be staged in the Nenagh Arts Centre on Saturday, October 11, at 1pm. It’s a sleepy Saturday morning in Cork, a man stands on Half Moon Street and just around the corner, Christmas.

The hangover fear is starting to dawn. He is waiting for a pub, any pub, to open so he can get ‘the cure’. As he waits, he thinks, thinks and waits, as he stands there his past walks towards him, a Christian Brother, the Christian Brother, Brother Keenan. How will he deal with this encounter, he asks himself? We travel back to his childhood spent in Cork city, redolent with the smell of slaughter-houses, pubs and sweet-makers. Starring Ciaran Bermingham (Sexy Laundry, Game of Thrones, The Young Offenders), directed by Al Dalton (At The Moment, Everything is Missing, Tall Tail), and written by award-winning novelist, playwright and documentary film maker Cónal Creedon, The Cure is not to be missed.