Our Picks For The Roundstone Storytelling Festival
The Roundstone Storytelling Festival is taking place on the 18th to the 20th of September 2026 this year in Roundstone, County Galway. The festival is the creation of Bog Bodies Press, an award-winning independent Irish publishing house which has worked with 340+ contributors from 28+ countries across 10+ languages, and is stocked in 55+ independent bookshops worldwide.
The 3 day festival is dedicated to the intersection of storytelling and literature. However, most importantly The Roundstone Storytelling Festival is dedicated to participation from attendees, from open mic events to trad music sessions to themed participatory storytelling circles to a collective publication-making workshop, there’s something for everyone.
This year, we’ve teamed up with Bog Bodies Press to highlight some of the names you won’t want to miss this September.
Sure look, it’s clearly not going to stop raining any time soon. But with February in full swing, we may as well romanticise it. With everything from dream pop and hip hop to sweaty techno on offer this month, consider this your official excuse to fall back in love with bringing yourself out to a midweek gig.
Seán Óg Ó Murchú
Seán Óg Ó Murchú, a Cork-born writer and activist currently working out of Belfast, will be giving a talk on his approach to writing on the Saturday of the festival. Ó Murchú is a storyteller who is able to effortlessly capture the realities of spoken language in his writing by using colloquialisms and phonetic rhythms in his writing.
This is particularly apparent in his deeply moving debut novella which was released this year, ‘Erin go Brách’, which follows a love story across a class divide in Belfast. The talk will dive into how dialect, Gaeilge, colloquialisms and spoken language influence his writing style.
If you’ve been following District recently you are likely already familiar with Ó Murchú’s work from his recent piece about the Belfast Riots. His work has also appeared in RTÉ, The New Arab, and Craic Magazine. You’re not going to want to miss this one.
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/seananseanchai/ (@ seananseanchai)
Órla McGovern
Award-winning storyteller, performer and writer Órla McGovern will bring The Wild Heart to Roundstone. During this performance, Órla will use her innate storytelling talent to explore questions through the storytelling such as: What is the wild heart? The whisper of nature? The origin of things? Or perhaps even the awakening of truth in a person?
McGovern is based in the west of Ireland, but has performed everywhere from the Finnish forests to the Glens of Antrim. She’s also the author of Dublin Folk Tales for Children and Wild Waves & Wishing Wells, and Artistic Director of Galway storytelling collective Moth & Butterfly. This will be storytelling at its most captivating.
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/theorlamcgovern/ (@ theorlamcgovern)
Mahmoud Bichtawi
Palestinian artist, performer and filmmaker Mahmoud Albishtawi will be leading a storytelling circle on Saturday, connecting festival attendees in Roundstone with those at a community center in the Shatila refugee camp for Palestinians in Lebanon via video link.
Albishtawi’s artistic style is known for being constantly connected to reality yet simultaneously full of fiction. He has performed and exhibited internationally, with appearances in Paris, Oslo and Brussels, and his work is deeply rooted in lived experience.
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/mahmoud.beshtawi/ (@ mahmoud.beshtawi)
Aindrias de Staic
Aindrias de Staic is the person to go and see on the Sunday of Roundstone if you want to see the art of a traditional Irish seanchaí in full flight. Aindrias de Staic has worked towards mastering the art of storytelling by captivating audiences both abroad and at home with tales about folklore, music, and place for more than 20 years.
Aindrias de Staic’s performance at The Roundstone Storytelling Festival is not going to be his standard storytelling session. Instead, he will perform Analogue de Staic, a performance which draws on rediscovered cassette recordings from 1970s and 1980s West Clare. This uses archival fragments of traditional tunes and local folklore, to ask what happens when forgotten stories find their way back into the world?
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/smalltownseanchai/ (@ smalltownseanchai)
Dublin writer Charlie Jermyn will read from his debut book, The Boy, The Bucket and The Persistent Tide, alongside new, unpublished work, accompanied by live original music on the Friday of the festival.
Jermyn is a writer who has lived around the world, in places such as Hong Kong, London and Milan, as well as Ireland. Now based in Amsterdam, Jermyn writes about travel, landscape, music and art, with work published by The Irish Times and Bog Bodies Press among others. If you’re after a merging of music, storytelling and literature from a contemporary perspective, this is well worth putting in the diary.
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/ciaolemagne/ (@ ciaolemagne)
