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Sat 5th, and Sun 6th May 2007
Celbridge Abbey, Celbridge, Co Kildare
WINNER of 1,000 euro 1st Prize "In the Footsteps of Aidan Higgins" Prose Competition is
"From an Abandoned Trip, years ago" by Barty Begley
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Map of Celbridge
Some of the places around Celbridge mentioned in the writings of Aidan Higgins
View a map of the Roads to Celbridge
Aidan Higgins
Aidan Higgins was born in Celbridge in 1927. Perhaps his best known work is the Novel “Langrishe, Go Down” (1966) which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Irish Academy of Letters Award and was filmed with a screenplay by Harold Pinter. His three volumes of autobiography, “Donkey’s Years”, “Dog Days” and “The Whole Hog” broke the mould for autobiographical writing. His other books:- the Booker short listed, “Balcony of Europe”, “Bornholm Night-Ferry”, ”Flotsam & Jetsam”, “Images of Africa”, “Scenes from a Receding Past” are uncompromisingly original. “Asylum” is considered by many critics to be one of the finest Irish stories. His output for Radio includes works for R.T.E. and the BBC amongst which “Boomtown, Texas, USA” stands out as an extraordinary radio experience. “Windy Arbours” his collected criticism was published in 2005. Aidan Higgins is arguably Ireland’s finest living prose writer.
E. Annie Proulx on “Dog Days”
“The ferocious and dazzling prose of Aidan Higgins, the pure architecture of his sentences, takes the breath out of you. He is one of our great writers. Dog Days is a magpie’s hoard of misadventures, little grass fires of the heart and left-hand sleight. The reader who cannot take pleasure from it must be dead. I have stood stunned with admiration for the muscular power and linguistic acrobatics---to say nothing of the elegant play with language and the daring architecture---of his work for years”
Frank O’Connor
“Aidan Higgins is a born writer, in love with language and what language can do”