A perennial favourite that sells out every year, the Literary Cabaret is a guaranteed hit: combine six acclaimed and award-winning authors with one band and a table of friends for a night of art and delight! Pianist, producer, and multi-instrumentalist Benjamin Millman returns as our charismatic Musical Director, leading his band, The Oxymorons, in performing original pieces that will accompany lyrical readings from literary greats: Catherine Chidgey (The Book of Guilt), Kim Fu (The Valley of Vengeful Ghosts), Melissa Harrison (The Given World), Ferdia Lennon (Glorious Exploits), Jordy Rosenberg (Night Night Fawn), and Douglas Stuart (John of John).
Ferdia Lennon’s attendance made possible thanks to the generous support of Culture Ireland. Catherine Chidgey’s attendance generously supported by Creative New Zealand Toi Aotearoa.
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Event Participants:
CATHERINE CHIDGEY is an internationally acclaimed New Zealand novelist. Her debut, In a Fishbone Church, won major awards in New Zealand, the Commonwealth, and the UK. Subsequent novels earned recognition from the New York Times and major prizes. Recent titles include The Axeman’s Carnival, Pet, and The Book of Guilt.
KIM FU is the author of the acclaimed, prize-winning novels For Today I Am a Boy and The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore. Her most recent book, the story collection Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century, won the Washington State Book Award, the Pacific Northwest Book Award, and the Danuta Gleed Literary Award. Born in Calgary and raised in Vancouver, Fu now lives in Seattle, Washington.
MELISSA HARRISON is a novelist, nature writer, podcaster and children's author. Her 2018 novel All Among the Barley was the UK winner of the European Prize for Literature. Her work has been shortlisted for the Costa Book Award and the Wainwright Prize and longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction. She lives in Suffolk.
FERDIA LENNON was born and raised in Dublin. He holds a BA in history and classics from University College Dublin and an MA in prose fiction from the University of East Anglia. Glorious Exploits is his first novel. A Sunday Times bestseller, it was adapted for BBC Radio 4 and was the winner of the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize 2024.
JORDY ROSENBERG is the author of the novel Confessions of the Fox, a New York Times Editors Choice selection, shortlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, a Lambda Literary Award, a Publishing Triangle Award, the UK Historical Writers Association Debut Crown Award, longlisted for The Dublin Literary Award, and named one of the best books of the year by The New Yorker, Kirkus Reviews and others. Jordy’s work has been supported by MacDowell, The Lannan Foundation, The Banff Centre, and The Ahmanson-Getty Foundation. He is a professor in the Department of English and Associated MFA Faculty in the Program for Poets and Writers at UMass-Amherst.
DOUGLAS STUART is a Scottish-American author. His New York Times-bestselling debut novel Shuggie Bain won the 2020 Booker Prize and the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. It was the winner of two British Book Awards, a finalist for the National Book Award, PEN/Hemingway Award, National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, as well as several other literary awards.
