← All events
theatre · Friday 3 July 2026 · 7:00pm 
CTRL: Readings by Chandrika Narayanan-Mohan and Brenda Romero
At Clonmel Junction Arts Festival venues · Clonmel, Co. Tipperary
At Clonmel Junction Arts Festival venues · Clonmel, Co. Tipperary
Video games as literature, as autobiography, as a way of making sense of grief - that is the territory of CTRL: Essays on Video Games, a 2026 Lilliput Press anthology edited by Dean Fee, and this reading brings two of its contributors to Clonmel. Chandrika Narayanan-Mohan is a Dublin-based poet and writer whose work has appeared in The Stinging Fly and Poetry Ireland; her essay in the collection is titled ‘To Wander, to Stop’. Brenda Romero is a Galway-based game designer and writer, whose essay uses an unconventional format - a hand-drawn map of her childhood home - to explore grief and non-linear memory. If that sounds unusual for a literary evening, that is rather the point.
The event is part of Clonmel Junction Arts Festival’s 2026 EXCHANGES programme, a ten-day festival running from July 3 to 12 with cultural exchange as its theme. Literary events at Junction tend to be intimate and conversational - the kind of evening where you hear a piece read, and then hear the writer talk about why they made the choices they did. Given the subject matter of CTRL - essays ranging across personal experience, grief, identity, and what games reveal about how we think - this is likely to be more discussion than performance. Narayanan-Mohan and Romero bring very different perspectives: one a poet working in the Irish literary tradition, the other a practitioner who has spent decades inside the games industry and is now writing seriously about what it means.
Clonmel is the county town of Tipperary, in the south midlands, and is well connected by road. From Dublin, the M8 motorway takes you south toward Cashel, with Clonmel reached via the N24 - roughly two hours in easy traffic. From Cork, the N8 north and then the N24 east covers the journey in around ninety minutes. J.J. Kavanagh & Sons operates a regular coach service from Dublin’s Heuston area to Clonmel, taking around two and a half hours. There are also train connections via Limerick Junction on the Waterford to Limerick line, though the service requires changing trains. Town-centre parking is available at the Showgrounds Shopping Centre and along the Quays.
Clonmel sits on the River Suir and is one of the busier market towns in the south of Ireland, with good independent restaurants and a lively arts culture that extends well beyond the festival week. There is more to see in Clonmel and across Co. Tipperary.
Heading to Clonmel Junction Arts Festival venues in Clonmel? Tipperary has plenty more to see. Read the Clonmel area guide, find what else is on, and explore the towns and villages nearby.