International Lit Fest Dublin 2026

Thanks for hosting us, lovely Dublin! Philip Reeve and I spent two days at the International Lit Fest Dublin leading Adventuremice events: a Friday with children brought in from schools, and a public festival event on the Saturday.

Spot the festival’s iconic seahorse!

I was too busy to get any photos of the events theselves, but here’s Philip posing with his drawing of Dublin that he did in a surprisingly short amount of time:

And we signed lots of books!

Besides our Adventuremice events, Philip also talked about his latest Mortal Engines books with Irish authors Peadar Ó Guilín and Gráinne O’Brien.

Dubray Books hosted all the book sales; here we are with bookseller Susan Walsh. Thanks, Dubray!

One of the fun things about book festivals is running into other authors, some whom we’ve met before (such as Paddy Donnelly here, who illustrated the covers, maps and chapter heads for Philip’s Utterly Dark triology) and authors we haven’t been lucky enough to meet yet (such as Swedish duo Anders Sparring and Per Gustavsson).

We didn’t have a lot of free time, but since the festival was based in Merrion Square Park, we were able to pop into the National Gallery of Ireland for a couple hours… which was TERRIFIC. (Do go, if you ever get the chance!) I need to go back there just to see all the stuff I missed this time.

Huge thanks to the fabulous Janet Smyth, the festival’s Family and Children’s Programmer who, together with Anisha Pal, made everything run smoothly.

And extra bonus, we got to hop onto the DART train to pop down to Dun Laoghaire to see fabulous author friend Sarah Webb and her family, a trip highlight!