Fermanagh Live Festival, 3rd-6th October – Bram Stoker: The Story Behind the Legend

Fermanagh Live are delighted to welcome Paul Murray to talk about Bram Stoker, his influences and impact on popular culture over the last 100 years as part of the fantastic FLive line-up!

Be part of the audience as Paul Murray shares his fascinating insight on the man who created Dracula, looking at what influenced one of the most gripping and enduring stories of our times.

Today, the Twilight series continues a love affair with Vampires that has fascinated people since ancient times. Though it can be said that this latest love affair started with Bram Stoker’s Dracula over 100 years ago in 1897.

A graduate of Trinity College, Dublin and with an illustrious career in the diplomatic service spanning 40 years, Paul Murray is also an award-winning writer and novelist, whose biographies include ‘A Fantastic Journey: The Life and Literature of Lafcadio Hearn’ and ‘From the Shadow of Dracula: A Life of Bram Stoker’.

It’s when talking about Bram Stoker that Paul really comes into his own, delivering engaging lectures that are also entertaining. He has appeared on radio and television and in a number of documentaries, while continuing to publish on the subjects of both Lafcadio Hearn and Bram Stoker.

Bram Stoker, originally from Ireland and a minor but distinguished Victorian novelist, took six years to write Dracula. Published in 1897, it cleverly unfolds in a late Victorian England of plate cameras, phonographs and other nascent technologies. The contemporary setting thrilled his readers, bringing an element of reality to an otherwise darkly supernatural tale. Paul will take you through the novel’s extraordinary literary influences, which ranged from east European travel books to scientific tracts on South American blood-sucking bats.

Join Paul for this free event on Thursday 3rd October, 6pm at Enniskillen Library to find out more about the man who wrote Dracula, a story that continues to grip the world so irresistibly.

Find out more at FLive.org.uk, like facebook.com/fermanaghlive or follow @fermanaghlive on Twitter – #FLive2013.