The inexaustable Ulster writing duo, Ignatious & Bart McSkeane (pictured below) are thought to be the first writers to submit a typed novel to a publisher. 

Widely acknowledged as two of the great early eroticists, the McSkeane's refrshingly lucid 'Calfshed Revisited' was rejected by Dublin publishers Greenaway & Snott way back in 1883.

Undeterred though, they beavered away on the keyboard of their Malling-Hansen writing ball,the first commercially produced typewriter(pictured above) and this fertile writing partnership from Newbliss, Co Monaghan, went on to tap out a significant body of much ravered loved pastorellas such as 'The Unbelievable Gentleness of Jennets', 'Strange Lambing' and the great border classic 'Don't Tell Mammy'.

128 tippetty tappetty years on, The Flat Lake has just been informed, by way of James Sheerin of the Lennard Arms Hotel ( Clones's most loved hostelry ) that the last typewriter factory, in India, (pictured below) has closed for ever, as will the Lennard if you don't start frequenting it a little more often.

Bye-bye typwriter typewriter

So, to comemorate pay tribute to this momentous literary thingy yoke, The Flat Lake Literary & Arts Festival would like to ask you interepid Flatlakers to bring your old typewriters to the festival, and we will think of something arty and imaginitve to do with them.

Any ideas, please contact us through the website and we'll see what we can do. 

Any visual artists out there wanna dream something up...please get in touch...