Tickets are selling fast for the 18th Ennis Book Club Festival which takes place from Friday to Sunday, March 1-3.

It will kick off on March 1, at 12pm with the launch of We Are Human Too at the Temple Gate Hotel. This ground-breaking book, edited by Anne Marie Flanagan delves into the neglect, abuse and lack of liberty faced by disabled people in Ireland.

Poet Paula Meehan will read from her latest collection The Solace of Artemis at 2pm and at 4pm novelist Claire Kilroy will chat about Soldier Sailor, her first novel in over a decade. She will be joined by writer, editor and broadcaster Sinéad Gleeson who will talk about her much-anticipated first novel, Hagstone, due this year. Claire and Sinéad will be in conversation with author, Edel Coffey. These events are also at The Temple Gate.

Writers from the West, for which Una Mannion, Mike McCormack and Sarah Gilmartin will be in conversation with Derek Hand, is in Glór at 6pm, followed by author Brian Leyden and multi-instrumentalist Séamie O’Dowd who will marry stories and music from across the decades in an evocation of romance and courtship in Ireland, emigrant Britain and America.

Crime novelists Denise Mina, Andrea Mara and Doug Johnstone will be in conversation with Andrea Carter to round off Friday’s events. Doug Johnstone’s books include The Space Between Us and The Opposite of Lonely. Denise Mina’s novels, set in Gasgow, are gritty and compassionate. In No One Saw a Thing, Andrea Mara explores every parent’s worst nightmare, the disappearance of a child. Host Andrea Carter is the author of Death Writes and the Inishowen novel series.

Mark O’Connell, author of A Thread of Violence, will be in conversation with poet and critic Theo Dorgan on Saturday morning in Ennis Courthouse.  A Thread of Violence gives an insight into of one of the most notorious Irish murderers of the 20th century, Malcolm Macarthur, and this conversation promises to be a fascinating exploration of truth and lies, coincidence and doubt.

An annual favourite, Ten Books you Should Read, takes place in Glór at 11.30am, featuring contributions from Rónán Hession and Liam Ó Maonlaí, with Cónal Creedon. It will be followed at 2pm by another festival staple, Debut Novelists, featuring Lauren Mackenzie, Michael Magee and Colin Barrett in conversation with Peter Murphy.

Pictured: Journalist and author Justine McCarthy will be among the guests for the Sunday Symposium on March 3.