MUSIC NEWS: After Body & Soul and Castlepalooza, the muddy fields of the midlands take a break from festival season this weekend. Probably for the best as Beyonce gets her Beyhive in Formation for a show that’s not quite sold out at Croke Park tomorrow.

Renowned playwright Frank McGuinness talks to Colette Sheridan as his very first play is set to grace the Everyman stage this month

Kevin Stevens has written a book about tolerance. He talks to Sue Leonard about the fear caused by racial bias and misunderstanding in today’s world.

Galway International Arts Festival

Local actor Cathy Belton is proud to be leading the charge at the Galway Arts Festival, writes Padraic Killeen

Check out our guide to the best of tonight's TV.

Billy O’Callaghan looks at two collections of short stories, one uneven and the other a series of enduring, almost timeless classics.

MUSIC NEWS: You’ll be hearing a lot of Jamie xx in the coming weeks, with his appearance at Forbidden Fruit tomorrow coming just a day after the release of his much anticipated album, In Colour. 

Peter Murray wonders why, in an eclectic collection of writers’ responses to works on show at the National Gallery the majority of contributors chose pieces that allowed them avoid eye-to-eye contact with the subject.

2014 has been a remarkable year for Irish writing by any standards.

Irish authors have taken pieces in the National Gallery as inspiration for prose and poetry, writes Peter Murray

A 38-year-old author last night scooped the richest literary award confined to Irish writers for her first novel.

More than three decades after winning her first Hennessy literary prize, writer Deirdre Madden has been inducted into the Hennessy Literary Awards Hall of Fame.

The 40th anniversary of the death of one of our truly great female writers will be remembered at the 2014 Limerick Literary Festival from tonight until Sunday. Many well-known names will participate in the festival which honours Limerick-born novelist and playwright Kate O’Brien.

FOR Barbara Brennan it’s a case of déjà vu all over again. The Dublin thespian, one of the nation’s finest actresses, is currently playing Lady Catherine de Bourgh in tThe Gate’s lavish adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.

There are a couple of distinguishing aspects to Dublin’s largest book festival.

The shortlists for “the biggest celebration of Irish writing” was announced yesterday.

Frank McGuinness has a new play at the Abbey, his first novel has just been published, he lectures at university, and lunch is the working man’s take-out, ham roll, eaten between interview, phone calls and the next appointment, which is looming before the hour is up.

Theatre - The Hanging Gardens, The Abbey, Dublin

HAVING served as director of Project Arts Centre for ten years, Willie White took the reins of the Dublin Theatre Festival in late 2011. He didn’t have to travel very far. The festival offices are located just a few yards from the Project in Temple Bar. But conceptually, the distance between the two jobs is more of a jump.

At home his kids called him head-the-ball, their fondness for Seamus Heaney the father more than a match for their awe of him as artist.

Cheltenham hero Bryan Cooper stole the show again in Wexford yesterday, completing a fine double on locally-trained Gates Of Rome and Blazing Beacon.

As he readies a tour of Brian Friel’s classic play, Adrian Dunbar is adamant it doesn’t need any heavy-handed directorial interventions, writes Pádraic Killeen.

MUSIC NEWS: He hasn’t gone away, y’know.

A teen groom, now a 41-year-old grandfather of three, was among six married men who were ordained deacons at the weekend.

Joe Dowling is back at the Abbey to direct an adaptation of James Joyce’s classic short story The Dead. He talks to Pádraic Killeen

The tradition of travelling theatrical troupes has been revived in Cork, writes Jo Kerrigan

The grieving characters in Carthaginians respond to Bloody Sunday by camping out in a cemetery, says Colette Sheridan

Actor David Kelly got one final standing ovation as his coffin was carried out of his local parish church at the end of his funeral Mass in Dublin yesterday.

*Barbara Scully

The new Cork Literary Review will be promoted across America this week, writes Colette Sheridan

Sport has got it badly wrong in the new reality where people are going to count every cent, and the era of building big stadia, and expecting to charge high prices to fill them, is over.

Oscar-winning writer Neil Jordan was a man of relatively few words today as he was awarded his latest prestigious literary honour.

WILLIE Mullins and Ruby Walsh shared a double with Scholar’s Mate and Our Monty in the two handicap hurdles at Punchestown yesterday.

DO you know what really annoys the arse off me?

Top novelist Anne Enright today entered the Hennessy Literary Awards Hall of Fame.

GROUPS from Waterford and Clare won the two major awards at the 56th North Cork Drama Festival in Charleville.

THE Bloody Sunday atrocity in Derry in 1972 has spawned more songs, films and poems than any other atrocity of the Troubles, a new book claims.

A host of stars are expected to turn out for a charity movie premier in Dublin tonight.

Four of Ireland’s renowned playwrights have joined forces with four celebrated actors for the Dublin Theatre Festival, it emerged today.

TRIBUTES poured in yesterday to Fair City and stage actress Joan O’Hara, best known in recent years for her portrayal of Eunice in RTÉ’s Fair City.

Actress Joan O'Hara best known for her role as Eunice Phelan in the television soap opera Fair City has died, RTE said today.