Where is Home? (John Hewitt panel in Armagh on Tuesday 26 July)

Slugger O’Toole is delighted to be returning to the John Hewitt International Summer School later in July.

Our panel on the evening of Tuesday 26 July will ask Where is Home? – inviting three guests from the world of politics to explore where home has been, where it is today, whether home can be one place or many, and what could shift that sense of belonging and identity in the future.

I’ll be joined on stage in Armagh’s Market Place Theatre by Alex Kane (who first arrived in Armagh in 1961 after two years in an orphanage and says that he quite liked the change!), Lilian Seenoi-Barr (SDLP Councillor for the Foyleside ward and programme manager in the North West Migrants Forum) and Sorcha Eastwood (who once lived two doors down the street from me and was a Lisburn & Castlereagh City councillor before being elected to the NI Assembly in May this year).

Doors open at 7pm. Tickets (£10) can be booked online and I look forward to seeing some of you there.

Elsewhere in the festival programme you’ll find Prof Katy Hayward (Thursday 28th at 9.45am) considering the ways in which Brexit and the Protocol are changing identities, understandings and narratives of Britishness and Irishness and redefining home and country.

Five journalists who contributed to the book Reporting the Troubles 2 – a moving testimony of never-forgotten events, victims and personal impacts – will explore their work during that era. Gordon Adair, Deric Henderson, Ivan Little, David Lynas and Eric Villiers are on stage on Thursday 28th at 7pm.

And lots, lots, more.