Image from ‘Age is a Privilege, Unless You Forget!’, by Debbie Castro, part of New Irish Works.
PhotoIreland is excited to announce a number of events in May 2026, from exhibitions and talks to book launches. Join us across three locations!
Publication Launch: Dyke Affair Issue 02
The Library Project
Saturday 9 May at 4pm
The evening will be a chance to celebrate the latest issue, as well as Issue 01, both of which are stocked at The Library Project. We’ll have contributors from both issues reading their work, including poetry, essays, and fiction.
Dyke Affair, a tiny press by and for dykes everywhere, was formed in January 2025, at a time when far-right ideologies are gaining ground and queer people are increasingly targeted around the world. DIY queer publishing that’s passed from hand to hand, friend to friend, and lover to lover, is more important than ever, as a tool of resistance and celebration of our lives and voices.
Dyke Affair’s editors are based in Dublin, Paris, and Lisbon, though they publish work by dykes all over the world. So far, they have published two issues of Dyke Affair, as well as a poetry pamphlet, allowing them to donate funds to queer mutual aid (The Small Trans Library, Visual AIDS, individual transition funds on GoFundMe, etc).
Exhibition: New Irish Works 2026
International Centre for the Image
15 May–9 August
Launch: Thursday 14 May at 6pm
Artist Tour: Saturday 16 may at 12pm
Under the name New Irish Works, PhotoIreland presents at the International Centre for the Image an exhibition of new works, many of which are being exhibited for the first time, by 10 outstanding artists: Austin Hearne, Billy Kenrick, Ciara Richardson, Debbie Castro, Dorje De Burgh, Emily O’Connell, Garry Loughlin, Kate Nolan, Mandy O’Neill, and Miriam O’ Connor.
Launched in 2013, New Irish Works is a triennial project by PhotoIreland that represents and promotes the growing diversity of contemporary photographic practices in Ireland. It aims to enrich the Irish ecosystem with much-needed new voices and curatorial approaches, facilitate much-deserved opportunities, and invigorate the Irish photography scene.
Events are free – booking required
Publication Launch: Bia! Zine Issue 03
International Centre for the Image
Saturday 16 May at 6pm
Join us for an evening of live storytelling, drinks, and connection as we celebrate the launch of Bia! Zine Issue 03 at the International Centre for the Image!
Bia! Zine Issue 03 brings together stories and art from nearly 60 contributors connected to Ireland from across Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, and mixed-heritage communities to explore their diasporic identity through food. This issue traces how identity is formed in the kitchen through memory, unravels in movement, and is repaired through care and resistance, ultimately inviting readers to consider food not only as personal, but also as relational, fluid, and a site for radical cultural possibility.
Bia! (meaning ‘food’ in Irish and ‘come’ in Igbo) is a zine and project exploring immigration, identity, and belonging in Ireland through food and memory.
Free event – booking required
Find out more here
Talk: What is an artbook? Publishing as an artistic practice
International Literature Festival Dublin (Merrion Square)
Tuesday 19 May at 12.30pm
PhotoIreland presents a talk on artbooks and photobooks as objects of artistic output and cultural value.
Visitors will be introduced to many examples of artbooks, ranging from zines to photobooks, to design books, and more, drawn from PhotoIreland’s unique artbook library and Ireland’s only dedicated art bookshop, The Library Project.
The presentation will consider how books function not only as documentation or catalogues, but as spaces for experimentation, storytelling, and artistic output in their own right.
A selection of artbooks will be available for purchase at the event.
Free event – booking required
Talk: Alternative forms in queer literature
International Literature Festival Dublin (Merrion Square)
Thursday 21 May at 12.30pm
Join The Library project at ILFD and explore alternative forms in queer literature through Vernal Thaw: A Novel of Love at a Slant by Franky Cannon in conversation with Jade Wilson, co-editor of Dyke Affair.
This is a conversation about experimentation in form, style, genre, and alternative publishing pathways through Franky Cannon’s Vernal Thaw: A Novel of Love at a Slant. Moving across autofiction, illustration, and erotic geographies, Cannon’s work resists linear storytelling and conventional publication strategies, instead assembling a shapeshifting, hybrid text that queers form and content.
A selection of publications will be available for purchase at the event.
Free event – booking required
Find out more here
Publication Launch: Vernal Thaw: A Novel of Love at a Slant by Franky Cannon
The Library Project
Thursday 21 May at 4pm
Join us as we launch Franky Cannon’s Vernal Thaw: A Novel of Love at a Slant, published by Set Margins’, which traces the entangling and unraveling of a queer relationship through love and tumult over the course of a year in Vermont. Franky, a young adjunct professor haunted by encounters with violent men, falls into an intense relationship with Vera, an older neurosurgeon shaped by a childhood in homophobic Soviet-era Ukraine. As they attempt to build a life together, their shared desire snags on unhealed wounds. An ambiguous darkness drifts between literature, dreams, and reality—ghostly forms beneath the ice, a midwinter house flood, the death of a mutual friend, secret longings—testing the tenuous intimacy between Franky and Vera.
