Nun's Island Theatre was dressed in fairy lights with a stage that looked like it had been taken straight from your nan's spring garden for the opening of Cúirt 2026.
On Tuesday, April 21, 2026, the debut fiction event featuring Galway native Tom O'Connell and Dublin writer, curator and photographer, Brendan Mac Evilly, held the attention of the crowd.
Reading aloud from their respective novels with an air of calm confidence, despite a few audience interruptions and fuzzy microphones, O'Connell's Lichtenberg and Mac Evilly's Deep Burn lyrically depicted dystopia, art saga, and violent endings with no redemption arcs.
The moderator asked questions on world-building, language, art, backstories and structuring a novel to an audience of rapt listeners. Each writer was candid about their journey of becoming a debut author, with O'Connell commenting that it was something he was still figuring out: "It can be a scary thing to consciously make a decision to pursue writing, but I definitely don't regret it."
For Mac Evilly, he kept an open mind when structuring his novel about ludicrous art and developing a conscious theme. "I don't think I set out to write a satire, but once you write accurately about that preposterous [artistic] situation, it starts to make fun of itself."
It was clear to everyone in the theatre that each author possessed deep knowledge and respect for their chosen art form. The event finished with an audience Q&A, and a pat on the back for both writers, setting the tone for the rest of Cúirt 2026 as a festival of incredibly passionate creatives.
