Warm your soul and your stomach at this year's Out To Lunch Festival (until 31 January) #otl16

It’s January and it’s cold, but fear not … The Eleventh Annual Out to Lunch Arts Festival is here to warm your soul (and your stomach if you attend a weekday lunchtime event)!

Some highlights from the programme that’s bursting with comedy, music, poetry, opera and storytelling.

You can save 50p if you book your tickets for weekday lunchtime shows in advance for £6.50. Prices of evening and weekend performances vary - check the programme. Unless stated, events are in the Black Box in Hill Street.

Tuesday 12 January at 1pm and 8pm // Lance – Kieran Hodgson’s hilarious story of belief, betrayal and redemption as he recounts how his boyhood admiration of Lance Armstrong was sullied.

Wednesday 13 January at 1pm // Novel Operas – NI Opera’s young artists perform pieces from operas based on novels. Join Gabrielle Mulcachy, Rebecca Rodgers, Laura McFall and David Lynn for a novel lunchtime performance.

Wednesday 13 January at 7.30pm // Tenx9 gives nine people ten minutes to tell a true story from their lives. Given that it’s the Out to Lunch festival, this month’s subject is food. Admission free. (And for the first time, I’ll be telling a story …)

Thursday 14 January at 1pm // Cup O’Joe – Bluegrass and Gypsy Jazz music from three local siblings who’ll have your toes tappin’ and your hands clappin’. Reuben (18) plays guitar and mandolin; Tabitha (15) is on banjo and fiddle; and Benjamin plays upright bass.

Saturday 16 January at 2pm // Strolling Through Ulysses with Robert Gogan as he takes the audience on a whistle-stop tour to highlight the funny bits in James Joyce’s enigmatic novel.

Sunday 17 January at 2pm // Join Saint Sister, Prima Quartet and Jealous of the Birds for a lazy Sunday afternoon of soulful harmonies, dreamy synth, harp, alt-folk and more.

Tuesday 19 January at 1pm and 8pm / Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck’s classic story of two drifters striving to find their place in an unforgiving world. The play (Michael Roy Andrew and Nigel Miles-Thomas) is scored by gospel singer Mahalia Jackson.

Wednesday 20 January at 1pm and 8pm // Comedian Sarah Kendall with her one hour narrative about the day in October 1990 when her best friend died for 11 seconds. “It’s a story about life. It’s a story about death. It’s a story about 20 foot tall fibreglass chickens.”

Friday 22 January at 1pm // Join Roisin Ingle as she reads from some of her best Irish Times Public Displays of Emotion columns. SOLD OUT.

Sunday 24 January at 8pm // Attila The Stockbroker – high-energy and hilarious punk poet and songwriter who “grabs listeners by their conscience and accosts apathy at every verse” with his “poems that spit fire at fence-sitters”.

Tuesday 26 January at 1pm // My Name is Saoirse – an ordinary yet extraordinary 15 year old growing up in conservative Catholic Ireland.

Saturday 30 January at 2pm // An all age screening of anime epic Princess Mononoke in which the young warrior Ashitika get caught up in a struggle between forest gods and the humans who consume its resources. £4 (and includes hot chocolate).