The University of Ulster's Many Voices Festival of Literature
The University of Ulster's Many Voices Festival of Literature, now in its fourth year, is establishing itself as a high-profile celebration of the spoken and written word. This programme of readings in prose and poetry, creative writing workshops for adults and children, talks and discussions will run from Tuesday 20 to Saturday 24 February. This year, in collaboration with local arts officers and writing groups, events will be taking place in Ballycastle, Ballymoney and Portstewart as well as on the Coleraine campus so that communities throughout the Causeway Coast area can enjoy the wealth of talent on offer.  

Cathal O'Searcaigh, one of Northern Ireland's pre-eminent poets today, who writes mainly in Irish, will join editor, writer and translator, Frank Sewell, who is also a lecturer in the University, for a reading in the Antrim Arms in Ballycastle on Wednesday 21 February. Two of Northern Ireland's best-selling thriller writers, Colin Bateman and John Connolly, will appear in Ballymoney Town Hall on Friday 23 February. Bateman created and wrote the hit BBC series Murphy’s Law starring James Nesbitt. Connolly will give the audience a preview of his forthcoming novel, The Unquiet, due to be published this spring.  

The internationally renowned short story writer Bernard MacLaverty who wrote the screenplays for Cal and Lamb will appear in the University on Saturday 24 February to read from his latest, widely acclaimed book of stories, Matters of Life and Death. For anyone interested in developing their skills as a writer the poet Kate Newmann will be giving a creative writing workshop in the University's Coleraine campus on Saturday morning.   

She will then give a lunchtime reading from her own poetry collections accompanied by guitarist Bill Campbell who will perform his settings to some of her poems as well as playing a solo guitar piece. There will also be a unique creative writing workshop for children in Flowerfield Arts Centre on Saturday afternoon when Paul Howard, the illustrator of such well known books as The Bravest Ever Bear, will illustrate the participants ideas to steer them as they build their own story.

Belfast Festival
2007 will see the Belfast Festival at Queen's reach its 45th anniversary. Every year, the largest festival of its kind in Northern Ireland brings the best of international art to Belfast and brings international attention to the city's dynamic arts practitioners. The Festival covers all art forms including theatre, dance, classical music, literature, jazz, comedy, visual arts, folk music and popular music, attracting over 50,000 visitors.

Started running a small event based on the campus of Queen's University, Belfast, the university, its students and the Belfast public saw that it was good and the infant Belfast Festival at Queen's was born. Ten years later and the Festival was ten times bigger and had already attracted such names as Dizzy Gillespie, Ravi Shankar, Sviatoslav Richter, Laurence Olivier and Jimi Hendrix!

In the 1970s the Festival was a cultural oasis in a landscape dominated by political upheaval and it was to act as a catalyst for the city's future cultural renaissance. By the early '80s under the directorship of Michael Barnes, a former History lecturer, the Festival had expanded into a two week long arts extravaganza across the whole of the city and was hosting everything from Moscow State Ballet and the Royal Shakespeare Company to Dexy's Midnight Runners and the Flying Pickets!

Billy Connolly and Rowan Atkinson had visited the Festival before they were famous and were welcomed back, while Michael Palin vowed never to take his one-man show anywhere else on earth such was his love of the event. The dusty archive files lurking in the caverns of the Festival House basement read like a who's who of prominent artists during the latter half of the 20th century.

Source:http://www.belfastfestival.com
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