Serendipity: A Reading with Bebe Ashley

For Festival 2024 our Spotlight Press is Banshee Press, fresh from their nomination as Small Press of the Year category at the British Book Awards, representing the island of Ireland.

Bebe Ashley will be in conversation with Banshee Press co-founder and editor Eimear Ryan to discuss the role of serendipity within her poetry and career. 

Serendipitous occurrences played a role in the inception of Banshee Press, as well as the publication of their first poetry book – Bebe’s acclaimed debut collection, Gold Light Shining. 

While much of a writer’s time is spent planning and plotting, the most significant developments can come as a bolt from the blue. Bebe will read from her work and discuss how fortuity and discovery have shaped her writing career and practice.

This event is presented by Banshee Press. 

​​Bebe Ashley lives in County Down. Her work is recently published in Granta, The Stinging Fly, Poetry Ireland Review, and Modern Poetry in Translation. Her debut collection Gold Light Shining was published by Banshee Press and her second collection is forthcoming in 2025.  In 2023, Bebe received the Ivan Juritz Prize for Creative Experiment (Text) and a Creative Practitioner Bursary from Belfast City Council. Her 3D-printed Braille poems will be featured in a six-month exhibition at the Museum of Literature Ireland from February 2024.

Eimear Ryan is the author of a novel, Holding Her Breath (2021), and a memoir, The Grass Ceiling (2023), both published by Penguin Sandycove. Other writing has appeared in The Stinging Fly, Winter Papers, Granta, The Dublin Review, The Long Gaze Back (New Island) and Town & Country (Faber). She is a co-founder of the literary journal Banshee and its publishing imprint, Banshee Press.