The Liam & Tom O’Flaherty Society is celebrating its twelfth bilingual summer festival, Féile na bhFlaitheartach, on Inis Mór with two days of events this weekend.

This year’s Féile will focus on the writings and life of Liam and Tom O’Flaherty and also will debate what the brothers might think of today’s international issues.

The Féile starts at 12 noon this Saturday in Cill Mhuirbhí, near the birthplace of Liam and Tom O’Flaherty, and will be opened by Luke Callinan, who will chair the first session.

The first part of the symposium will focus on art and solidarity with Palestine, with an Irish human rights monitor and a social activist from Palestine speaking. The second part will focus on the housing crisis in Gaeltacht areas, especially as it affects young people, with a speaker from the pressure group Bánú na Gaeltachta.

At 3.30pm islanders Eimear Donohue and Aoibhínn Ní Dhioráin will read from the works of Liam O’Flaherty in English and in Irish.

This event takes place as every year in the O’Flaherty commemorative garden next to the O’Flaherty house in Gort na gCapall. It will be presented by storyteller Máirín Mhic Lochlainn.

Eimear will read from the novel ‘The Black Soul’ (1924, in this its centenary year). Aoibhínn will read in Irish from the short story ‘Ag dul ar imirce’ (‘Going into exile’) reflecting the theme of social reality in Gaeltacht areas.

At 8.30pm in Méanscoil Éinne, Cill Rónáin, ‘Dúmhál’, a play written by Mícheál Ó Conghaile based on a short story by Liam O’Flaherty, will be performed by Cumann Drámaíochta Chois Fharraige.

The Féile’s traditional Sunday noon event (12.30 pm) in Tiì Joe Mac, Cill Roìnaìin will be addressed by historian Dr John Cunningham of Galway University and chaired by Éamon Ó Ciosáin.

Dr Cunningham will give a bilingual talk on ‘Tom O’Flaherty and Tom Glynn, two internationalist revolutionaries’. The two Galway men were contemporaries – O’Flaherty 1890-1936 and Glynn 1881-1934 – and they followed similar paths and were aligned with the International Workers of the World, the famous ‘Wobblies’ trade union, O’Flaherty in America and Glynn in Australia.

Both were journalists and active in Communist parties after the Russian Revolution. However neither man was prepared to bow to party discipline.

Those wishing to travel for the weekend can do so by ferry which departs from Ros an Mhíl at 10.30am on Saturday – but early booking is advisable through aranislandferries.com. It arrives into Cill Rónáin at 11.15am, in good time for the opening.

Return sailings to Ros an Mhíl are at 5pm and at 6.30pm on Sunday evening.

Pictured: Liam O’Flaherty…Aran festival in his honour.