Upcoming Granard Booktown Festival launches with exciting list of headliners and authors

The 2026 Granard Booktown Festival was officially launched on Saturday afternoon, February 28, in the Granard Library.

John Connell, author of the ‘Cow Book’ (2018), is a writer and farmer, who is also the co-founder and co-director of the Granard Booktown Festival alongside Ronan O’Toole and there is a lot of anticipation ahead of the popular event.

The town of Granard will once again come alive with books from April 16-to-19.

This year, the festival will have the comedian Jarlath Regan as the Friday headliner in conversation with Aoife Barry.

Award winner Sebastian Barry will be in conversation with Bryan Dobson as the Saturday headliner and they will close the festival with former state pathologist turned crime writer Dr Marie Cassidy in conversation with renowned journalist Paul Williams.

“I published a book called the Cow Book in 2018,” explained John about the festival’s origins.

“I did a number of book festivals. One of them was in Scotland, the Wigtown Book Festival. It’s a town that puts literature at its centre.

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“Someone said Longford might be a good place to do it. It wasn’t until I met Ronan that we began to consider it. One thing after another, we got a team of people and slowly the concept of having a Booktown in Granard took hold.

“One of the driving aims for Ronan is you don’t need to be in a city to access arts. It’s bringing the arts to rural Ireland and an atmosphere for creative thinking, writing and ideas.”

John is proud of how the festival is going from strength-to-strength as it reaches its fourth year.

Whenever leading up to one of these annual festivals, there is the programme launch, which goes through who is coming to the festival in terms of writers and thinkers.

Following that, tickets go up. Such a festival, as John states, takes a year to compile, but the committee are now in the exciting phase.

The festival will also remember two former guests: Manchan Magan and Conor Gearty, over the weekend with special events.

Other events include RTE’s Miriam O' Callaghan on her bestselling book, journalist Gavan Reilly on the secret life of Leinster House, smash hit writer Aisling Rawle (The Compound), and author of the hit book on rapper Tupac Shakur, Dean Van Nguyen.

“We will have, for the first time, creative writing workshops. We’ve Aoife Barry, the journalist.

"We also have Stephen Sexton, and we have the writer, Claire Keegan, doing a workshop.

"It’s the first year we’re announcing workshops. We expect there will be a big pick up who’d like to brush up on their creative writing skills or dip their water for the first time. As for the other events, we’ll have poetry, non-fiction, novels and crime thrillers.”

Aoife Barry’s workshop ‘Finding Writing Inspiration in the Everyday’ is €75 for tickets; Stephen Sexton’s ‘Turn! Turn! Turn! Poetry Workshop’ is €75; and Claire Keegan’s ‘How Fiction Works’ is €125.

There will be a secondhand bookshop on the weekend, as well as having the writers’ books for sale at the festival, with Newsround, their book-selling partner.

John added: “We’re very excited to be back for another year. We’re looking forward to seeing all our old friends and regular patrons, as well as new people.

"We’re happy to be celebrating literature in all its forms, especially Longford and Granard as a place for arts and literature.

"We’re thankful to our funders both public and private, our board members who do all of this voluntarily. We’re thankful for all the work they do to make this a success.”

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