Join Angeline King, a seasoned dialect writer and novelist, to explore techniques for integrating dialect into historical fiction.

Angeline will draw on the methods identified in her PhD thesis to show you various approaches to dialect from leading literary novelists. The work of Nan Shepherd, Martina Devlin and Lewis Grassic Gibbon will be explored. The objective will be to write the opening of a novel.

This programme will be helpful for both beginner and advanced writers. We will all have the chance to share our own dialect and explore the power it has in print, whether it be Ulster English, Ulster-Scots or any other regional dialect.

Suitable for complete beginners and experienced writers alike.

Lunch is included. Limited spaces, please book early.

Angeline King

Angeline King, a novelist from County Antrim, is the author of six published novels, a history book on Irish dancing and a children’s book. Her new novel, Snow in Leiden, is set in the Dutch Republic in 1685. Her contemporary diary novel The Secret Diary of Stephanie Agnew was written during her Writer in Residence post at Ulster University (2020 to 2023), when she completed a PhD exploring women writers who write in Scots or Ulster-Scots, diary novels, and the Agnew and Ó Gnímh family history. Angeline’s essays, poems, reviews and short stories have been published in The Irish Times, The Belfast Telegraph, Fortnight, The Bangor Literary Journal, CAP anthologies, The Honest Ulsterman, the Ulster Historical Foundation’s Familia and The Routledge Companion to Seamus Heaney (pending).

Sponsors

Festival sponsors: Donegal County Council and the Finn Valley Voice.

About the Frances Browne Literary Festival

The Frances Browne Literary Festival celebrates the life and legacy of Frances Browne (1816 to 1879), the "Blind Poetess of Ulster". Rooted in her hometown of Ballybofey-Stranorlar, Co. Donegal, the festival brings together poets, writers, musicians and communities from Ireland and beyond to share in her spirit of creativity, inclusion and multilingual expression.

Frances Browne is the most important writer to emerge from Donegal’s Finn Valley. Her masterpiece, the children’s storybook Granny’s Wonderful Chair, was a bestseller all over the world, but she also deserves to be remembered for her unswerving opposition to slavery and all sorts of injustice. The festival works to bring Frances’s writing and astonishing life story to new generations, and to celebrate contemporary writers who continue in her tradition.

Full programme and festival information: www.francesbrowneliteraryfestival.com