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01 Nov 2025
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01 Nov 2025
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A homegrown award-winning Irish artist and filmmaker has been announced as the new coordinator of Waterford's The Lit Festival, which returns this November with a fresh new look and creative direction.
Alana Daly Mulligan, a multi-award-winning "artivist" and filmmaker of Déise extraction, will oversee the reimagined festival, which remains Europe's first and only youth-led celebration of literature. The event will run from November 7 to 9 across Waterford City.
Founded in 2016 by Waterford Youth Arts, The Lit has grown into a unique platform where young people shape and lead every part of the festival, from programming and hosting to performance and production. Now in its eighth year, it continues to empower the next generation of writers, poets and storytellers.
For Alana, who co-founded The Lit Young Writers Festival and represented the event in New York in 2019 as a global teen leader, the new role marks a full-circle moment.
"It's been really full-circle for me to come back and work with Waterford Youth Arts. It's been very much like a homecoming," Alana said. "I really think I have the best job in Waterford right now."
This year's programme includes workshops with bestselling authors Adiba Jaigirdar and Meg Grehan, poetry sessions with Molly Twomey, songwriting with Tadhg Williams, and animation and filmmaking workshops with Momo Willet and Cara Loftus. A public Q&A with Skulduggery Pleasant author Derek Landy will also feature among the festival highlights.
The festival, supported by Waterford Youth Arts, Dubray Books, Waterford Council and Creative Waterford, will also debut two new awards honouring emerging Waterford creatives at its opening gala.
The Lit Festival 2025 promises a weekend of workshops, performances and creativity - all celebrating Waterford's vibrant literary spirit and the young voices shaping Ireland's future.
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