Check out our programme of events in May at the International Centre for the Image, The Library Project and the International Festival of Literature Dublin.
Saturday 09th May
4pm
Book Launch: Dyke Affair Issue 02
Thursday 14th May
6pm
Launch: New Irish Works 2026
Saturday 16th May
12pm
Artist Talk/Tour: New Irish Works 2026
6pm
Book Launch: Bia Zine Issue 03
Tuesday 19th May
12:30pm
Talk: What is an artbook? Publishing as an artistic practice
Thursday 21st May
12:30pm
Noon Fix: Alternative forms in queer literature
4pm
Book Launch: Vernal Thaw: A Novel of Love at a Slant, Franky Cannon
All events are free but booking is required. Click on the links provided to get your ticket. No booking required for Vernal Thaw Book Launch.
Book Launch: Dyke Affair Issue 02
Join us at 4pm on Saturday, 9th May to launch the second issue of Dyke Affair at The Library Project.
The evening will be a chance to celebrate the latest issue, as well as Issue 01, both of which are stocked at The Library Project. We'll have contributors from both issues reading their work, including poetry, essays, and fiction.
Dyke Affair, a tiny press by and for dykes everywhere, was formed in January 2025, at a time when far-right ideologies are gaining ground and queer people are increasingly targeted around the world. DIY queer publishing that's passed from hand to hand, friend to friend, and lover to lover, is more important than ever, as a tool of resistance and celebration of our lives and voices.
Dyke Affair's editors are based in Dublin, Paris, and Lisbon, though they publish work by dykes all over the world. So far, they have published two issues of Dyke Affair, as well as a poetry pamphlet, allowing them to donate funds to queer mutual aid (The Small Trans Library, Visual AIDS, individual transition funds on GoFundMe, etc).
Pre-orders available here
New Irish Works 2026
Austin Hearne, Billy Kenrick, Ciara Richardson,
Debbie Castro, Dorje De Burgh, Emily O’Connell,
Garry Loughlin, Kate Nolan, Mandy O’Neill, Miriam O’Connor
PhotoIreland presents the 5th edition of New Irish Works in 2026, a triennial programme of activities launched in 2013 to support Irish photographers, bringing new works by 10 selected artists to local and international audiences at the International Centre for the Image
Under the name New Irish Works, PhotoIreland presents at the International Centre for the Image an exhibition of new works, many of which are being exhibited for the first time, by 10 outstanding artists: Austin Hearne, Billy Kenrick, Ciara Richardson, Debbie Castro, Dorje De Burgh, Emily O’Connell, Garry Loughlin, Kate Nolan, Mandy O’Neill, and Miriam O’Connor.
Launched in 2013, New Irish Works is a triennial project by PhotoIreland that represents and promotes the growing diversity of contemporary photographic practices in Ireland. It aims to enrich the Irish ecosystem with much-needed new voices and curatorial approaches, facilitate much-deserved opportunities, and invigorate the Irish photography scene.
New Irish Works is a unique artist support programme for Irish and Ireland-based artists at any stage of their careers, comprising public-facing activities such as the New Irish Works exhibition, as well as a growing range of behind-the-scenes professional development opportunities tailored to lens-based practitioners. Artists are selected by a jury composed of national and international experts representing a diversity of art fields and specialisations, and they benefit from the programme over the 3-year duration.
Browse the collection of publications featuring the artists here
Bia! Zine Issue 03 Launch
Join us for an evening of live storytelling, drinks, and connection as we celebrate the launch of Bia! Zine Issue 03 at the International Centre for the Image
Bia! Zine Issue 03 brings together stories and art from nearly 60 contributors connected to Ireland from across Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, and mixed-heritage communities to explore their diasporic identity through food. This issue traces how identity is formed in the kitchen through memory, unravels in movement, and is repaired through care and resistance, ultimately inviting readers to consider food not only as personal, but also as relational, fluid and a site for radical cultural possibility.
Bia! (meaning ‘food’ in Irish and ‘come’ in Igbo) is a zine and project exploring immigration, identity and belonging in Ireland through food and memory.
Pre-order your copy here
What is an artbook? Publishing as an artistic practice
PhotoIreland at ILFD
PhotoIreland presents a talk on artbooks and photobooks as objects of artistic output and cultural value.
Visitors will be introduced to many examples of artbooks, ranging from zines to photobooks, to design books, and more, drawn from PhotoIreland’s unique artbook library and Ireland’s only dedicated art bookshop, The Library Project.
The presentation will consider how books function not only as documentation or catalogues, but as spaces for experimentation, storytelling, and artistic output in their own right.
A selection of art books will be available for purchase at the event.
PhotoIreland cultivates, supports, rewards, and showcases contemporary visual arts practices, running the International Centre for the Image and Ireland’s Art Bookshop, The Library Project.
Noon Fix: Alternative forms in queer literature
The Library Project at ILFD
Explore alternative forms in queer literature through Vernal Thaw: A Novel of Love at a Slant by Franky Cannon in conversation with Jade Wilson, presented by The Library Project. Encompassing autofiction, illustration and erotic geographies, Cannon’s fascinating hybrid text queers form and content.
This is a conversation about experimentation in form, style, genre, and alternative publishing pathways through Franky Cannon's Vernal Thaw: A Novel of Love at a Slant. Moving across autofiction, illustration, and erotic geographies, Cannon's work resists linear storytelling and conventional publication strategies, instead assembling a shapeshifting, hybrid text that queers form and content.
Vernal Thaw traces the entangling and unravelling of a queer relationship through love and tumult over the course of a year in Vermont. While most texts about polyamory explore what happens when a relationship opens up, Franky Cannon reverses this trope; monogamy is the experiment and a major source of anxiety for the narrator.
In conversation with journalist and co-editor of Dyke Affair, Jade Wilson.
A selection of publications will be available for purchase at the event.
Book Launch: Vernal Thaw: A Novel of Love at a Slant, Franky Cannon
Join us for the launch of Vernal Thaw: A Novel of Love at a Slant by Franky Cannon on Thursday 21 May at 4pm at The Library Project
Vernal Thaw: A Novel of Love at a Slant traces the entangling and unraveling of a queer relationship through love and tumult over the course of a year in Vermont. Franky, a young adjunct professor haunted by encounters with violent men, falls into an intense relationship with Vera, an older neurosurgeon shaped by a childhood in homophobic Soviet-era Ukraine. As they attempt to build a life together, their shared desire snags on unhealed wounds. An ambiguous darkness drifts between literature, dreams, and reality—ghostly forms beneath the ice, a midwinter house flood, the death of a mutual friend, secret longings—testing the tenuous intimacy between Franky and Vera.
Pre-order your copy here
