John McGahern Book Prize shortlist keeps £5,000 award amongst women

Niamh Campbell, Cathy Sweeney and Hilary Fannin have been shortlisted for the John McGahern Annual Book Prize for debut Irish fiction.

Campbell, winner of last year's Sunday Times Short Story Award and author of Sacred Weather: Atmospheric Essentialism in the Work of John McGahern, is shortlisted for her novel, This Happy; Sweeney, a former teacher, for her short story collection, Modern Times; and Fannin, an award-winning playwright and Irish Times columnist, for her novel, The Weight of Love.

The £5,000 prize, now in its second year, is run by the University of Liverpool’s Institute of Irish Studies to reward the best debut novel or short story collection by an Irish writer or writer resident in Ireland.

Sixteen entries for 2020 were read and adjudicated upon by the shortlisting committee of Prof Janet Beer, vice-chancellor, University of Liverpool; Prof Frank Shovlin, professor of Irish literature, University of Liverpool; and Sarah Gilmartin, fiction reviewer at The Irish Times.

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An overall winner will be chosen this summer by the writer Colm Tóibín, chancellor of the University of Liverpool. Last year's winner was Adrian Duncan for his novel, Love Notes from a German Building Site.

Judges’ comments

Niamh Campbell, This Happy (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
Irish Times review
Niamh Campbell writes with the flair and confidence of an established author. The reader is drawn quickly into the world of her protagonist, Alannah, a woman in her early 30s whose toxic relationship with a university professor makes for a compelling read. This Happy is a layered and vibrant debut, packed with astute observations on human behaviour told in a sardonic voice that always has one eye on the absurd.

Hilary Fannin, The Weight of Love (Doubleday)
Irish Times review
Hilary Fannin, already well established as a journalist, memoirist and playwright makes her fictional debut with The Weight of Love, a beautiful novelistic exploration of ordinary lives unravelling in the face of desire. This novel is an intimate and moving account of the intricacies of marriage and the myriad ways in which we can love and be loved.

Cathy Sweeney, Modern Times (Stinging Fly/ Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
Irish Times review
Cathy Sweeney's Modern Times is a compact and compelling short story collection with a series of often eccentric and dissonant vignettes bound together by an overriding preoccupation with sex and its discontents. The result is a compulsively readable debut, equally assertive in both male and female registers, revealing a wonderful, fresh imagination at work.