heinrich boll cottage

Friday April 30th.

6.30pm

- Cyril Gray Memorial Hall  Dugort

Registration / Welcome.   

Full Weekend      €90.                                                                                                               

7.30pm

- Official opening by;- Dr.  Martin Mansergh  TD.  

Minister of State with responsibility for OPW and Arts.
The Announcement and presentation of   prizes for the Heinrich Böll Memorial    Essay for second level students, by Dr.  Martin Mansergh   TD.
Launch by Dr.  Martin Mansergh TD.  of Heinrich Böll’s Irisches Tagebuch in Context - proceedings from the Böll conference held at Limerick University in 2008.
Editor Gisela Holfter .UL. 

8.00pm

- Illustrated lecture by Jim Cruickshank ;     The Life and work  of Grace Henry.

Saturday May 1st

11.00am – 5.00pm

- Exhibition of collection from Heinrich Böll Archive continues through weekend. 
Cyril Gray Memorial Hall Dugort.

10.30am

- Guided walk from Bervie to Dooagh- footsteps of Paul Henry.
Led by Tomas Mac Namara & John Mac Namara.  Meet at the shore beside the Bervie.
(Good walking  gear  necessary)                                     

1.00pm

- Lunch at Gray’s Guest House Dugort.

3.00 – 5.00pm

- Heinrich Böll Cottage open to members of the public. 

2.30 – 3.30pm

- Hugo Hamilton. 

Hugo Hamilton is the best-selling author of The Speckled People (4th Estate), a German-Irish memoir which has so far been translated into 15 languages. His unique experience of growing up in Dublin during the 50s/60s with a fervent Irish nationalist father and German mother who came to Ireland in the aftermath of World War 2, has found resonance right across the globe. Hailed by many as a ‘masterpiece’ (Colm Tóibín) and an ‘instant classic’ (Roy Foster), his account of German-Irish childhood addresses all the ‘great issues of the 20th century’ (Nuala O'Faolain). Described by Joseph O'Connor as a ‘book for our times and perhaps for all time’, it won the prestigious PRIX FEMINA étranger in France, as well as the BERTO PRIZE in Italy, and appeared on the New York Times notable books list. His equally ‘rich and compelling’ second memoir The Sailor in the Wardrobe which continues this complex dual upbringing in a ‘language war` where he was prohibited from speaking English, has also been hailed an ‘enchanting piece of work’ (Terry Eagleton).  He is the acclaimed author of five novels and one collection of short stories, all of which reflect on the increasingly compelling issues of cultural divisions, belonging and identity. The Speckled People was optioned by Neil Jordan. His new novel entitled Disguise (4th Estate) was published on the 5th June 2008. Hugo Hamilton lives in Dublin.  His next novel 'Tresspassing' will be published in Spring 2010.

3.45 – 4.45pm

- Illustrated Lecture by René Böll

- Focusing on the work of Anna Marie Boll – marking the 100th anniversary of her birth.
Cyril Gray Memorial Hall Dugort. 

5.00pm

- Reading by Dr Gisela Holfter.  Imagery and sound in the Irish Journal
Cyril Gray Memorial Hall Dugort.

Dr. Gisela Holfter is Senior Lecturer in German and Joint Director of the Centre for Irish-German Studies at the University of Limerick. She received her MA in 1992 (Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA) and her PhD  in 1995 (Universität Köln, Germany). Since 1996 she is at the University of Limerick, researching predominately Irish-German relations, exile studies, contemporary German literature and languages for specific purposes. Together with Dr Joachim Fischer she founded the Centre for Irish-German Studies in 1997. Dr Holfter has published a monograph on German travel literature, ten (co-) edited books, several dozen book chapters and refereed journal articles, and over the past ten years she has presented some forty conference papers- more than half of these being at international level, among them invited keynote lectures. Her two current main areas of research are Heinrich Böll and Ireland on which she is currently writing a monograph and German-speaking refugees in Ireland 1933-1945.

7.30pm

Evening   programme at   St. Thomas’s Church,  Dugort.

- Reading by Kathrin Schmidt winner of German Book Prize 2009.

Kathrin Schmidt, born in Gotha in 1958, worked as psychologist, editor and social scientist before she began to write poems and novels. She received numerous awards,  i.e. the Leonce and Lena Prize in 1993. Her novel "The Gunnar Lennefsen Expedition" (1998) received the development award of the Heimito-von-Doderer Prize and also the Price of the State of Carthingia at the 1998 Ingeborg Bachmann Competition.
Her novel "You do not die" was awarded the German Book Prize 2009 as best book in German. Her book is an outstanding achievement: she illustrates the experience of the loss of orientation and language after a brain damage and shows a way of recovery which leads to two directions: backwards and forwards.
Kathrin Schmidt lives in Berlin.

8.30pm

- Reading  by John Banville.   

Irish novelist John Banville was born in Wexford in Ireland in 1945. He was educated at a Christian Brothers' school and St Peter's College in Wexford. He worked for Aer Lingus in Dublin, an opportunity that enabled him to travel widely. He was literary editor of the Irish Times between 1988 and 1999. Long Lankin, a collection of short stories, was published in 1970. It was followed by Nightspawn (1971) and Birchwood (1973), both novels.

Banville's fictional portrait of the 15th-century Polish astronomer Dr Copernicus (1976) won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize (for fiction) and was the first in a series of books exploring the lives of eminent scientists and scientific ideas. The second novel in the series was about the 16th-century German astronomer Kepler (1981) and won the Guardian Fiction Prize. The Newton Letter: An Interlude (1982), is the story of an academic writing a book about the mathematician Sir Isaac Newton. It was adapted as a film by Channel 4 Television. Mefisto (1986), explores the world of numbers in a reworking of Dr Faustus.

The Book of Evidence (1989), which won the Guinness Peat Aviation Book Award and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction, Ghosts (1993) and Athena (1995) form a loose trilogy of novels narrated by Freddie Montgomery, a convicted murderer. The central character of Banville's 1997 novel, The Untouchable, Victor Maskell, is based on the art historian and spy Anthony Blunt. Eclipse (2000), is narrated by Alexander Cleave, an actor who has withdrawn to the house where he spent his childhood. Shroud (2002), continues the tale begun in Eclipse and Prague Pictures: Portrait of a City (2003), is a personal evocation of the magical European city.

John Banville lives in Dublin. The Sea (2005) won the 2005 Man Booker Prize. In The Sea an elderly art historian loses his wife to cancer and feels compelled to revisit the seaside villa where he spent childhood holidays. His latest novel is The Infinities (2009).                                     

9.30 – 10.00pm

- Open Forum Discussion with;-
Hugo Hamilton,  Kathrin Schmidt,  John Banville

Sunday  May 3rd .

10.00am

- Clare Island Walk
Meet at Cloch Mór pier for day long visit to Clare Island.  Transfer on ferry.                
Guided walks with archaeologist Eoin Halpin

to Clare Island Abbey, and other sites of archaeological, cultural, geological and historical interest.
Lunch at Bay View Hotel, - return to Achill at 4.00pm.
(Good walking and weather gear a must)
Link to Clare Island Map

Accomodation ;      www.achilltourism.com

Mary Lavelle Burke;                 087 772 0192             
John Mc Hugh                            086 232 5516.           
email; hbollachill@anu.ie