RESERVE YOUR SEAT HERE.

Book launches and short readings at Alexanders of Ballybofey, hosted by novelist Angeline King.

The four books

• The Stories of Drumboe Castle by Pat Holland
• Zero is Everything by Jennifer Leong
• The Lost Isle of St Columba by Alan Millar
• Treibheanna agus Trodaith: Muintir de Mhiotais agus Scéalta na hÉireann by Dubhán Ó Longáin

The four works span local history, poetry, Irish and Ulster-Scots, and each author will read briefly from their own new writing.

The Stories of Drumboe Castle gathers three hundred years of stories from a castle demolished in 1946: the pirate who founded a town, the first shots of the 1798 rebellion, the wedding breakfast with the Duke of Wellington, the Drumboe Martyrs, the soup kitchens and famine relief works, and the sixties model Pattie Boyd. Twenty years in the making.Publisher: Voice Books

The Lost Isle of St Columba is written in Ulster-Scots with English translations, and records Alan Millar’s journey from his native Ulster to the Inner Hebridean island of Colonsay, where he rediscovered the legacy of Saint Columba and first heard of the monastic isle of Hinba, a place whose location has baffled scholars for decades. The Lost Isle of St Columba: Colmcille Press, the Donegal County Council Artists Bursary, and the Arts Council of Northern Ireland

Zero is Everything Through divine inspiration, Jennifer Leong emerges with a new poetry form: the DuaTresPentaStep. Zero is Everything embodies a distinct poetry site running from A to Z, intermingling rhythm with our daily fallenness and the yearning to spiral up and out; “Off they go on trays/Each tenderly placed/ Prepared to transform/ Into daily bread.” In a world increasingly withered by algorithmic feeds and fatigue, the poet relentlessly points us to the Creator of light, love, and life. Publisher firstfruits

Treibheanna agus Trodaith: Tribes and Troops is Dubhán Ó Longáin’s newest publiation

And Young Voices

The evening also marks the launch of New Voices From East Donegal, a unique anthology featuring stories written by students from Sessiaghoneill National School, Robertson National School and Welchtown National School. Inspired by Frances Browne, New Voices: Writing, Scrievin, Scríbhneoireacht was developed in writing workshops facilitated by the poets Dubhán Ó Longáin and Alan Millar, who also co-edited the anthology. It features writing in Irish, English and Ulster-Scots.

New Voices From East Donegal is funded by Frances Browne Literary Festival with the support of Donegal County Council

About the participants.

Angeline King, chair
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. She was Writer in Residence at Ulster University from 2020 to 2023, and completed a PhD exploring women writers who write in Scots or Ulster-Scots. She also leads a workshop on dialect in historical fiction on the Saturday of the festival.

Pat Holland
Pat Holland has presented the local history section of the Finn Valley Voice for over twenty years. The Stories of Drumboe Castle is his seventh book. His books celebrate the Finn Valley, its people and traditions, its great and lesser-known characters, its streets and hills and waterways.

Jennifer Leong
Festival guest, from Singapore. Jennifer Leong is a Pushcart Prize-nominated Singaporean poet and advocate who began writing to raise funds for autism causes in2021. Lacking a formal background in writing, she quickly made her mark by inventing the "DuaTresPentaStep" poetic form which she attributes to divine inspiration. Her signature piece, "Hills," written in this unique structure, won the Spirit of the Festival Award at the Frances Browne Literary Festival in 2022 when she was 60.  Known for exploring reverse poetry, catharsis, and Southeast Asian 
multilingualism, Jennifer actively engages with the local literary scene, including SingPoWriMo and the National Library Board, where she leads workshops bridging photography, memory, and verse. In the year Singapore turned 60, she co-founded NoesisConverseNation with two others. It is a multilingual showcase that traverses various arts genres. At its first two iterations, Chinese calligraphy, dance, music and virtual reality were created in responsive spontaneity and shared space with poetry readings. She is indescribably grateful that NoesisConverseNation takes place at National Gallery Singapore and fundraises for Poetry Festival Singapore.  
Also known as Soy Avocado on social media, Jennifer loves collaborations both in poetry and other genres, locally and internationally. She aspires to advocate for hope in whatever she does. 

Dubhán Ó Longáin
Dubhán Ó Longáin is a poet, short story writer, researcher and teacher of Irish from Donegal. His PhD thesis was on the Fiannaíocht, and he contributes regular articles on Irish folklore to the journal Nós. He is writer in residence at Maynooth University for the 2025-26 academic year, and has lectured in Irish or related topics at Ulster University, the University of Limerick, Atlantic Technological University, Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza in Poland and Uppsala University in Sweden. Coiscéim published his first collection, IDEO Locator, in 2020. I dTreo na gCrann is his second.

Alan Millar
Alan Millar is a journalist, writer and poet from the Laggan Valley, East Donegal, now based in Ballymoney, Co. Antrim. A TCD graduate with a particular interest in the Ulster-Scots language, he is the only Irish person to have won the Scots Language Society’s Hugh MacDiarmid Tassie (2021), and won the inaugural Linen Hall Library Ulster-Scots short story competition in 2021 and the poetry section in 2023. His first collection, Echas frae tha Big Swilly Swally, appeared in 2023 and he was nominated for Scots Writer of the Year that same year. He is a regular contributor to Kintra on BBC Radio Ulster, and in 2024 began a doctorate at Ulster University on the United Irish newspaper Northern Star. In 2025 he joined the Board of the Ulster-Scots Agency as Irish government nominee, co-edited the trilingual schools’ collection Abhainn Burn River, and became Ulster-Scots editor of Yellow House Press.

Funders & 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