The festival originally started in 2009, called “The Written Word Weekend” and ran for three years. During that time we had guest writers such as Dermot Healy, Ita Daly, Eoin McNamee, Belinda McKeon, Tony Curtis, Marsha Mehran, Alice Lyons, Gerry Boland, Seamus O’Rourke,The Pig Executives, Wayne Frankham, The Poetry Chicks, Natalia Beylis.

In 2022 we revived the festival as  “Drumshanbo Written Word”. It was held in the Mayflower Ballroom/ Disco. We had our inaugural Poetry Film Competition with eighty entries world wide and our guests included, Claire Keegan, Nuala O’Connor, Kevin McManus and Charlie McGettigan. Our moderator was Gerry Boland and our guest story reader was Gerry Bohan. Our festival photographer was Jo Gray.