Listowel is a heritage market town in County Kerry, Ireland. It is on the River Feale, 28 km (17 mi) from the county town, Tralee. The town of Listowel had a population of 4,820 according to the CSO Census 2016.
Described by the organisers of Listowel’s writers festival as the “Literary Capital of Ireland”, a number of internationally known playwrights and authors have lived there, including Bryan MacMahon and John B. Keane.
Festivals and events
Listowel Races
The origin of Listowel races can be traced back to an annual gathering at Ballyeigh, Ballybunion, about nine miles from Listowel. This event, which dates to the early nineteenth century, consisted of a variety of games, horse-racing and a pre-arranged faction fight which concluded the event. Due to disturbances surrounding these fights, the meeting at Ballyeigh was suspended and racing transferred to Listowel, where the first meeting took place in 1858. The racecourse is located beside the River Feale, and two of the three entrances to the course are accessed by bridge across the river. The racecourse is called “the island” by the locals due to this fact. Traditionally it was a meeting where farmers came to spend/gamble the money they made from the harvest but it has since grown into something larger and more wideranging.
The Listowel track consists of a 1-mile, 2 furlong mile oval left-handed track with National Hunt fences and hurdles. The hurdle course is adjustable after each day’s racing to give new ground. Listowel’s racecourse is within walking distance of the town centre.
Listowel Writers’ Week
Founded in 1970, Listowel is home to Ireland’s oldest literary festival. North Kerry is the birthplace of many of Ireland’s most prominent writers, including John B Keane, Bryan Mac Mahon, Brendan Kennelly, Seamus Wilmot, Gabriel Fitzmaurice, George Fitzmaurice, Maurice Walsh and Robert Leslie Boland. The Writers’ Week Festival was established to celebrate those writers and to provide an opportunity for other Irish writers to develop their talents and meet new audiences.
The concept of the Literary Workshop was first introduced at Writers’ Week in 1971 by Bryan MacMahon. At the event, writers share their skills in poetry, fiction, theatre, and screen – with workshops in song writing, comic writing and storytelling also subsequently added. Writers’ Week also provides a programme of literary events including lectures, readings, workshops, book launches, seminars, theatre, literary and historical tours, art exhibitions, music and dance.
Competitions are also held, together with a series of literary awards. The total prize fund of €35,000 includes the Kerry Group Novel of the Year and The Pigott Poetry Prize.
Participants have included: Nobel Laureate and Booker Prize-winner J. M. Coetzee, Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney, Booker Prize winners Kazuo Ishiguro, John Banville, James Kelman and Anne Enright, Poets Laureate Ted Hughes, Carol Ann Duffy, and Andrew Motion, playwrights Tom Murphy, Brian Friel, Roddy Doyle, Frank McGuinness and Hugh Leonard, poets Michael Hartnett, Leland Bardwell, John Montague, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Roger McGough, Rita Ann Higgins and Kate Cruise O’Brien, and other novelists and writers including Blake Morrison, Chris Whyte, Lionel Shriver, Colm Tóibín, Jennifer Johnston, John McGahern, Joseph O’Neill, Sebastian Barry, Joseph O’Connor, Hugo Hamilton, Edna O’Brien, Douglas Kennedy, Patrick McGrath, William Trevor, Colum McCann, Gerard Donovan, Frank McCourt, Irvine Welsh, Robyn Rowland, Andrew Lindsay, Michael Cunningham, Jane Urquhart, Anatoly Kudryavitsky, Cees Nooteboom, Michael Dibdin, Abdel Bari Atwan, Clive James, Melvyn Bragg, Alain De Botton, Lloyd Jones, Robert Fisk, Jung Chang, Terry Jones, Gabriel Byrne, and Graham Norton.
John B. Keane of Listowel wrote:”Beautiful Listowel, serenaded night and day by the gentle waters of the River Feale.Listowel where it is easier to write than not to write,Where first love never dies, and the tall streets hide the loveliness,The heartbreak and the moods, great and small,Of all the gentle souls of a great and good community.Sweet, incomparable hometown that shaped and made me.“
Listowel Food Fair
The Listowel food Fair has been running annually since 1995. The festival promotes local artisan food products, and attracts celebrity chefs, nutritionists and artisan food entrepreneurs.
