But things are different now.

There's a new sense that such celebrations are becoming an integral part of the social landscape of our small towns and cities. As writer and festival goer Pat Boran points out: "The best festivals make particular efforts to connect with the community in which they take place, as well as with the community of writers and readers."

Poet Theo Dorgan also believes that "festivals should always make an effort to reach out to the host community, through schools, through local writers groups, local reading groups etc."

Listowel Writers' Week is probably the best example of this ability to integrate with the local community, involving everyone in what is essentially a celebration of the literary spirit in general, and the literary spirit of John B Keane's home town in particular.

This year Joe O'Connor is opening Listowel with a tribute to John B, ironically enough with a humorous piece about the psychological and emotional depredations suffered by writers on the reading circuit. Listowel itself seems to hold a special place in people's affections. For O'Connor it has an unpretentious quality: "I love Listowel, which is the most fun of any literary festival I've been to, aided of course by the neat size of the town. You keep running into people and there's a cosiness and a welcoming spirit about it."

It seems that 'fun' is the new byword when it comes to describing what goes on at these events. There's a breaking down of barriers between audience and hitherto unattainable authors, and a warmth which is completely at odds with the dry old academic exercises of the past. Pat Boran has a theory about where this sense of loosening up stems from.

"There is certainly a social and convivial atmosphere at many festivals, which is in part a sense of relief that the commercial and high-tech world in which we live has not yet managed to make such gatherings irrelevant, " he says. "Writers' festivals are a celebration of that."

And while the pursuit of enlightenment and learning haven't been totally forgotten, Boran is in no doubt as to the prime function of these events. "A good writer's festival is one at which writers and literature are not treated as commodities but as intrinsic and necessary contributors to the wider cultural life, in an environment that should be less trade fair and more celebration . . . hence the word 'festival' I suppose."

These same festivals also have a certain therapeutic quality for the less fortunate in our society.

Consider the lonely writers, plying their trade in sequestered silence, now pale and blinking as they stagger out into sunlight.

They are unleashed upon an unsuspecting public, giving them the rare opportunity to meet real live human beings . . . sometimes even numbering in double figures. Joe O'Connor describes it best when he speaks of that urge to escape from the drudgery of writing which in his eyes is "a strange way for a grown-up to spend his or her time. Often, near the end of writing a novel, you'll be so totally consumed by the project that you start forgetting to put on your shoes in the morning. So these festivals are a way of re-learning all your small talk and remembering the importance of washing yourself."

Dermot Bolger also appreciates the social aspect, and emphasises the pleasure of meeting up with old friends, and marvels at people's misapprehension that writers hang out together "when in fact they are generally too busy sitting at home writing".

Of course, the essential core of these events is that sense of connection readers and writers both strive for while on opposite sides of the creative fence.

Incidents of connection, for example, like the one at a previous Listowel Writers' Week when people queued to have John B Keane's grandson sign a collection of his late grandfather's work. Dermot Bolger describes another powerful moment at a reading in a small Irish town: "An English woman came up to me afterwards who was on holidays there. She saw my name on a poster and came along to tell me that when her husband was dying some months before, one of the last things they did together was read a novel of mine called A Second Life, and that in some way it had helped them both to face the experience of separation that lay ahead. For me as a human being that was a very special moment and that is the sort of chance encounter that can occur at writers' festivals." Bolger stresses the need not just for readers to meet writers, but also for writers to meet readers. In a sense the festival circuit is the necessary stage in creating that sense of connection between words on a page and the reader.

And no literary festival would be complete without something of the strange, the curious, and the hapless, or in Theo Dorgan's case the near suicidal, as he remembers how he and Tony Curtis once stole a taxi from a queue of Royal Marines in Ledbury. Dermot Bolger wryly recalls one event in an English town "where only one man turned up and after five minutes I realised that he had only come to buy a pedigree puppy off the man organising the event". But this hasn't deterred him from attending future events. For a lot of writers, the festival circuit is now an essential and welcome part of their lives. As Joe O'Connor gleefully points out:

"What's not to like? A few days of getting together around books and writers, usually in a nice place, usually with interesting people. It sure as hell beats a paintball weekend."

Booked out: Ireland's top writers' festivals

DUBLIN WRITERS' FESTIVAL Running since 2001, the Dublin Writers' Festival could well be the uncrowned king of all festivals. With a huge programme trading on the rich literary past of Dublin, and with its often eclectic and global mix of writers it has a suitably cosmopolitan whiff about it, without making the easy mistake of being standoffish and elitist. If anything, for all its size, this strangely unassuming festival might even suffer from not being trumpeted enough.

LISTOWEL WRITERS' WEEK Kerry is the Kingdom, and Listowel is the festival with a glint of madness in its eye; not unlike Pat McCabe who brings his Radio Butty show to town this year.

McCabe is probably a human microcosm of all that's good about this festival; being as he is, puckish, populist, cerebral, and just plain entertaining. This year will involve McCabe's own unique take on a reading, and it promises to be a one-man mini multi-media event like you've never seen before.

C.IRT INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF LITERATURE An event that does exactly what it says on the tin. A great sprawling literary festival set in Ireland's cultural capital in all but name, C. irt manages to energise and give Galway that sense of the international that even larger cities would find hard to match.

Emphasising new writing, non-fiction, and the less well known among some of the bigger names, it manages to touch all the bases without losing any of its potency. It's also a festival where it's not uncommon to see scenes of bacchanalian frenzy that bring new meaning to the phrase, "Maybe there's something in the water?"

THE SYNGE SUMMER SCHOOL Stick some academics, writers and students together, mix them all up and let them loose in the wilds of Wicklow. It's the summer school equivalent of an episode of Survivor with drink as the only sustenance, and a programme that mixes the highbrow with the popular, including poetry readings, and the occasional drama workshop. A summer school that's always well thought out and generously packaged for a wide cross-section of attendees.

Listowel Writers' Week starts on Wednesday 30 May and runs until Sunday 3 June.