THU 30 OCT 2025 AT 7:15PM
DOORS OPEN / RECEPTION 6:30PM
THE LONG CENTER FOR PERFORMING ARTS

Through poetry, story or song, performers each have up to seven minutes to respond to the theme of the evening. SOUL / ALMA will feature readings from Belfast-based poets Leontia Flynn and Dawn Watson, and former Poet Laureate for Texas, Jenny Browne. They will be joined by Austin-based actor Samantha Ledezma Montenegro, and musicians Andrea Magee and Lesly Reynaga, with a special preview of a music video from Belfast artist Arborist.  

Hosted by the Seamus Heaney Centre’s Director Glenn Patterson, audiences can expect an evening of exceptional new writing and music with soul at its heart.  

-----

Leontia Flynn has published five collections of poetry and two pamphlets, including a translation of Catullus.  She has received the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the Irish Times Poetry Prize and a Cholomondeley award, and has twice been nominated for the T. S. Eliot Prize. Her most recent collection, Taking Liberties, appeared in 2023 and a Selected Poems is forthcoming with Carcarnet Press.  She was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2022 and is a Professor at the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s University, Belfast.

Glenn Patterson has published eleven novels and a pair of novellas - Two Summers - along with six works of non-fiction, the most recent of which, The Northern Bank Job (Head of Zeus), is based on his award-winning BBC Sounds podcast. With Colin Carberry, he wrote the feature film Good Vibrations (BBC Films) and the subsequent stage musical. Their latest play When Elvis Met the Beatles had its world premiere this summer at the Ogunquit Playhouse, Maine. Patterson is Director of the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s University Belfast.

Dawn Watson is a poet from Belfast, Northern Ireland. She is the author of We Play Here (Granta Poetry). A Guardian Poetry Book of the Year, it was shortlisted for the PEN Heaney Prize 2024 and the John Pollard International Poetry Prize. The book was described as an “extraordinary, game-changing narrative long poem”. Her chapbook The Stack of Owls is Getting Higher is published by The Emma Press. Dawn’s work appears in journals such as Granta and The Poetry Review, and on BBC Radio 4. She completed a PhD in poetry at the Seamus Heaney Centre in 2022 and is a lecturer in creative writing at Queen’s University, Belfast.