Author of story which inspired An Cailín Ciúin coming to Donegal

This year’s Allingham Arts Festival lineup is certainly a promising one, and a highlight for many will be the participation of Claire Keegan. 

The acclaimed short story writer and novelist is the author of Foster which inspired An Cailín Ciúin, the Irish language movie that is taking the world by storm.

Ms Keegan is certainly on the crest of a wave, with her novella Small Things Like These longlisted for the Booker Prize. 

Small Things Like These is a concise but eloquently written story that gives a perceptive insight into life in a small town in the run up to Christmas. From the intimacies of family life to the challenges of having a Mother and Baby Home in the town, it tells an incredible amount of story in only 116 pages. 

The book has already won the Prix Littéraire des Ambassadeurs en Irlande, The Kerry Prize for best Irish novel and The Orwell Prize for Political Fiction.

Raised on a farm in Wicklow, Ms Keegan studied in the US and Wales. Her works of fiction are translated into 30 languages. Antarctica won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature and was a Los Angeles Times Book of the Year. Walk the Blue Fields won the Edge Hill Prize for the finest collection of stories published in the British Isles.

Foster won the Davy Byrnes Award — then the world’s richest prize for a story — and was recently named by The Times UK as one of the top 50 works of fiction to be published in the 21st Century. Her stories have been published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Granta, and Best American Stories.

Her appearance is set to be a literary highlight for this year's festival.

Further information, festival news and updates can be found at www.allinghamfestival.com and on The Allingham Festival Facebook page