Distinguished political speaker announced for packed festival slate this month

The 2026 Kennedy Summer School opens on Thursday, August 27 with a night bringing together diplomacy, music and literature on one stage, and organisers are urging early booking as tickets move quickly for the festival’s flagship opening evening.

Geraldine Byrne Nason, Ireland’s Ambassador to the United States, will officially open this year’s School at St Michael’s Theatre from 6.30pm.

A native of County Louth, the Ambassador has served as Ireland’s envoy to the UN, where she led the country’s successful campaign for a seat on the UN Security Council, and has held postings in Paris and Brussels over a distinguished career with the Department of Foreign Affairs.

Following her opening remarks, she will sit down for a fireside chat with Professor Mary C Murphy, Director of the Irish Institute at Boston College, whose research centres on post-Brexit Northern Ireland and EU-US relations.

The session, introduced by Kennedy Summer School Chair Eileen Dunne, marks the return of the Irish Institute at Boston College to the festival, continuing a tradition associated with the late Bob Morrow.

Marking the New Ross Piano Festival’s twentieth anniversary, artistic founding director Finghin Collins will perform a short recital in the theatre as part of the evening, before a drinks reception in the theatre courtyard.

The night continues at 8pm with Voices of Irish Writers, a panel bringing together three of the most acclaimed novelists working in Ireland today, moderated by academic, writer and film-maker Professor Bríona Nic Dhiarmada.

Author Neil Tully will discuss his debut novel The Visit, published in March to widespread critical acclaim and described by Colm Tóibín as brilliant and intriguing; the novel is set in New Ross in June 1963, in the days before President John F Kennedy’s historic visit, giving it a particular resonance for a Kennedy Summer School audience.

He is joined by Martina Evans, the Cork-born, London-based novelist and poet whose new collection Drunken Driving is a Poetry Book Society Choice for Summer 2026, and Belinda McKeon, novelist, playwright and Associate Professor at Maynooth University, whose debut novel Solace won the 2012 Faber Prize.

Professor Bríona Nic Dhiarmada, who will moderate the Voice of the Irish Writers panel, said the line-up reflected the strength and range of Irish writing today.

“New Ross has always been a place where Irish storytelling and Irish history meet, and this year’s panel captures that beautifully,” she outlined.

“Neil Tully’s novel brings us right back to New Ross in the days before Kennedy’s visit, while Martina Evans and Belinda McKeon show how vital and varied Irish fiction and poetry are right now. It promises to be a rich and lively conversation.”