I get up at 4am—uncharacteristically, I can assure you—and make a strong cup of coffee. Sitting on the still-dark balcony, I wait for the sun to rise, breathing in air that has become notably cleaner these last few weeks, and attempting to extract some sense from this strange new world we’re living in. My husband is awake too, having never really gone to sleep, brain kept in constant agitation by endless streams of news coverage. The only sound I can hear is that of the birds, also surely trying to figure out where all the humans have gone.

Determined, courageous and full of fire for this idea, the future of craftswomanship in Florence is safe in the hands of these four founders. Having met at various fairs, events and markets, the fab four were drawn together by a shared respect for each other’s work and a belief in strength in numbers, underlying the decision to unite and conquer the artisan world. While the four craftswomen all work in different mediums, a contemporary style links the lot.

Julian Barnes, whose novel The Sense of an Ending garnered him the Man Booker Prize in 2011, will read literary selections by himself and others, sensitively paired with pieces performed by Hewitt, a Bach specialist. First brought together by their mutual friend Ian McEwan, the duo have an incisive understanding for how words and music can imbue each other with further significance, depth and nuance. Here, Barnes and Hewitt reveal more about the evening.

It’s not easy to have a successful career in the arts. It takes passion, patience, a bit of luck and above all, dedication. Luckily, that is something Mark Petrasso has in spades. Born in Australia to Italian parents, Mark has called Florence home for more than 20 years.

In a world of mass media, the reign of the ego and our eyes constantly glued to screens, it is more important now than ever to stop. Look up. And appreciate the simple beauty of light. My rule? Leave your phone at home.

I established the aim of this blog in September before I really knew where it would take me. I declared that I would “strive to chart my increasing understanding of Irish literature and film and that I would also include artists and other such figures as an attempt to illustrate the sweeping effects of literature in other forums and how they interrelate”.

I decided to move to Sicily without a whole lot of consideration. I saw an advertisement for an English teacher in a school run by an Irish woman. Considering that’s my own nationality, I saw the words: Sicily, Employment, Free Accommodation, and Easy Communication and booked my flight (although I waited until I’d received the position, of course). I arrived in Catania airport on the first of November, with only a little Italian in my tool belt and inadequate clothing for the rain and cold that

Belinda McKeon, journalist, Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Rutgers University, and twice published novelist, has recently edited a short story collection titled A Kind of Compass: Stories on Distance. This latest publication features stories by Kevin Barry and Sara Baume and contributes to Ireland’s ever-increasing claim to a land most fit for the short story form. McKeon’s novels are firmly Irish in both style and subject and interrogate the tension between traditional rural and ed

Ruth Denham, a twenty three year old visual artist from Kilkenny, already has a strong foothold in the Irish art scene. She is a recent graduate from Limerick School of Art and Design, and currently a Professional Masters of Education student at UCC. With a background in Fine Art and painting, Denham’s works are highly sought after and regularly commissioned. A book lover, Denham frequently adapts what she reads into a visual form, drawing out the characters and their surroundings. However, her

Kevin Curran, author of Beatsploitation, is a novelist and teacher in Balbriggan. He was recently awarded an Arts Council bursary for his second novel. You took part in a novel writing workshop, was that a helpful, formative experience for your novel? I studied English and Philosophy at UCD but always knew that I wanted to be a writer. I then did a Masters in Anglo-Irish writing and would have gone on to do a PhD, but decided to write a novel instead. That’s when I got involved with the Irish