The 14th annual Immrama Festival of Travel Writing in Lismore, County Waterford has been launched.
Special guests this year include Vietnamese-Canadian best known as the nine-year-old child depicted in the Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph taken during the Vietnam War on June 8, 1972 Kim Phuc Phan Thi along with one of the BBC's most distinguished correspondents and award-winning broadcaster and author Fergal Keane
Kim is an icon of the cry for peace, the unforgettable girl behind the photo running naked from the planes bombing a temple where she and her family had taken refuge during the Vietnam War. Kim will travel to Ireland for the first time to take to the stage at the Immrama Festival of Travel Writing on Saturday, June 18th at 3pm.
Fergal Keane has been awarded numerous awards and honours including, a BAFTA, the George Orwell prize for literature, the James Cameron Prize and the Edward R. Murrow Award from the US Overseas Press Association, an OBE for his services to journalism. He is also the author of a number of bestselling books. Fergal will take to the podium at Immrama on Saturday June 18th at 8pm.
Launching the 2016 programme was the Mayor of Waterford Councillor John Cummins, “I am honoured to launch the programme for the fourteenth annual Immrama Festival of Travel Writing.
This festival has from its very inception brought some of the biggest names in travel writing and broadcasting to Ireland and with those names it has also brought international audiences and has shone an international spotlight on this beautiful Heritage Town.
This is a festival which I believe is like no other in the country, it is forward thinking and global reaching and the 2016 programme is the epitome of this ethos;
June 16th to June 19th are going to be a particularly inspiring number of days in Lismore this year.”
The festival has also announced a brand new young travel writer’s competition; this is open to secondary school students all across Ireland. Entrants are asked to submit an 800-word story about their travel experiences.
Phil Cottier, CEO of Epselon is a committee member living in Lismore who's involved in the schools competition,
"So we've created a competition for every single TY student in Ireland.
We've sent all the schools the packs for them to start writing their stories and post them on our blogsite which went live today.
Hopefully over the next couple of weeks we'll have hundreds if not thousands of students writing stories that hopefully one day will get published.
Top five people will get published in the Irish Times, that's what we're planning."
Full details of the festival schedule for tickets and details on the new travel writing competition at the Immrama Lismore Festival of Travel Writing 2016 see www.lismoreimmrama.com
Image caption:
Kim Phuc Phan Thi best known as the nine-year-old child depicted in the Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph taken during the Vietnam War on June 8, 1972 will tell her story at the Immrama Festival of Travel Writing in Lismore County Waterford this June 16th to 19th 2016. - Photo credit: Illustration and top photo by Anne Bayin. Bottom photo by Nick Ut/Associated Press
