Australian composer and violist Brett Dean plays in Cork and other Irish centres, writes Cathy Desmond

I’ve just been writing a letter to a German painter whom I met on a long trip outdoors last February; some readers may recall my dispatches from Namibia and the Kalahari Desert, writes Damien Enright.

Erik got into writing through his passion for reading.

I’M just back from Achill, a wet windy outpost of mountains and cliffs, where it gets dark later than anywhere else in Europe.