Howard Marks & Peter Hook
Howard Marks rose through Oxford University and the British Secret Service to become what the Daily Mirror described as “one of the most sophisticated drugs barons of all time.” His 1996 autobiography Mr. Nice was an international bestseller, and has just been made into a major movie starring Rhys Ifans.
Peter Hook – legendary bassist with two of the most influential bands in British pop music history, Joy Division and New Order – has always been out there on his own somehow, as an artist, an icon and as the architect of his own oblivion. Having recently reinvented himself as a respected DJ, author and raconteur, Hooky will be ‘fessing up, pouring forth and telling all to Howard on the Leviathan Stage, including the tragi-comic tale of the Manchester nightclub, The Haçienda, and the two seminal groups that paid for it.

Louis De Paor & Ronan Browne
Flame-haired academic and poet Louis de Paor – the Robert Plant of the Irish poetry scene – first came to national prominence touring with fellow Corkonian John Spillane under the name Gaelic Hit Factory. His most recent bilingual collection Agus Rud Eile/And Another Thing was published by Cló Iar-Chonnachta earlier this year. The dark but hopeful poems concerned a man on the brink of middle-age, and an accompanying CD featured De Paor reading them to haunting musical accompaniment by piper Ronan Browne, a former member of The Afro Celt Sound System. You won’t need to be an Irish speaker to enjoy their chilled-out performance in An Pobail Gaeilge (hosted by Kila’s Rossa O Snodaigh).

Julian Gough
The former Toasted Heretic frontman turned novelist and award-winning short story writer caused something of a literary upset earlier this year when he launched a scathing attack on Ireland’s writers from his Berlin bunker, describing them as “a pompous, provincial literary community” which has “become a priestly caste, scribbling by candlelight, cut off from the electric current of the culture.” Writing on his blog, Gough didn’t just attack the new generation of Irish authors. “The older, more sophisticated Irish writers that want to be Nabokov give me the yellow squirts and a scaldy hole,” he sneered. “If there is a movement in Ireland, it is backwards.” Expect fisticuffs with the likes of Dermot Bolger and Roddy Doyle when Gough participates in what promises to be an incendiary literary debate on the Arts Council Literary Stage.

Olaf Tyaransen
Hot Press’s contributing editor and ‘writer-at-large’ unwittingly found himself embroiled in international controversy last year following his Chatroom interview with Tommy Tiernan (the comedian’s satirical rant about the hol****st didn’t go down well in certain quarters; so much so that his tours of America and Canada were subsequently cancelled). Olaf will be performing interviewing duties in our Chatroom again this year, and will also be appearing on the Word Stage at 5pm on Sunday, where he’ll be reading extracts from, and telling back stories about, the many celebrity interviews featured in his forthcoming collection Selected Recordings: 2000-2010. His interviewees include everyone from Dolly Parton, Courtney Love and Sinéad O’Connor to Johnny Adair, Hugh Hefner and Ron Jeremy.

Declan Lynch
Having cut his journalistic teeth at Hot Press in the ‘80s and ‘90s, Athlone-born humorist Declan Lynch is now best-known for his satirical, and occasionally surreal, writings in the Sunday Independent. Lynch is the author of three novels (including the bestselling The Rooms) and an ever-growing number of non-fiction works, most recently Days Of Heaven, a brillaint memoir of Ireland during the Italia ’90 campaign. Declan will be appearing on the Arts Council Literary Stage, participating in a Declan Burke-hosted discussion on crime novels with Arlene Hunt and fellow Sindo columnist Gene Kerrigan.