Little Island is first Irish publisher to have Kirkus Prize finalist; Moses McKenzie wins Hawthornden Prize

In tomorrow’s Irish Times, Claire Keegan talks to me about her new book, So Late in the Day. Henry Farrell , co-author of Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy, writes about Ireland’s need to improve its economic security. There is an edited extract by Aoife Moore from her new book, The Long Game: Inside Sinn Féin. And there is a Q&A with Karin Smirnoff, who has taken over the late Stieg Larsson’s Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series.

Reviews are Paul Gillespie on What went wrong with Brexit by Peter Foster and The EU’s Response to Brexit: United and Effective by Brigid Laffan and Stefan Telle; Mia Levitin on The Wren, The Wren by Anne Enright; Doug Battersby on So Late in the Day by Claire Keegan; Elizabeth Mannion and Brian Cliff on the best new crime fiction; Edel Coffey on Aisling Ever After by Sarah Breen & Emer McLysaght; Mei Chin on Invitation to a Banquet: The Story of Chinese Food by Fuchsia Dunlop; Aimee Walsh on O Brother by John Niven; Neil Hegarty on Nothing Ever Just Disappears: a Queer History by Diarmuid Hester; John Self on Prophet Song by Paul Lynch; and Sarah Gilmartin on Learned by Heart by Emma Donoghue.

This Saturday’s Irish Times Eason offer is Mad Honey by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan. You can buy it with your newspaper for just €5.99, a €5 saving.

Having earlier this year become the first Irish publisher to make the shortlist of the Carnegie Medal for Writing, Little Island has now become the first to get a book on the finalists’ list for the Kirkus Prize in the US. The Eternal Return of Clara Hart, the debut book by author Louise Finch, which has also been on the YA Book Prize and Branford Boase shortlists, is one of six titles in the children’s category of the $50,000 prize, out of more than 500 books to have earned starred reviews from Kirkus this year.

Little Island publisher Matthew Parkinson-Bennett said: “With two full-time and one part-time employee, it’s a thrill to see our book on such a list, given the huge competition our books face among the thousands published each year in the US. Life for small presses is hard these days, but moments like this keep us going. There’s a great culture in America of really taking children’s books seriously as literature, and Kirkus is a big part of that.”

Finch said: “As it’s my debut novel, this is a book I wasn’t sure anyone else would ever read, so to see it not only reach and resonate with an international audience, but also be recognised by the Kirkus Prize means more than I can say. It’s an incredible honour and well beyond what I dreamed might be possible.”

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The biggest collective celebration of culture in Ireland returns on September 22nd as Culture Night celebrates its 18th year. This One Night For All evening shines a light on the quality and breadth of Ireland’s incredibly diverse cultural offerings, while introducing audiences to new venues and emerging talent.

Literature fans in Dublin can enjoy the ‘Seamus Heaney: Listen Now Again’ exhibition in the National Library of Ireland that celebrates the life and work of the Irish poet and playwright, attend the IWC Novel Fair Winners Showcase and hear readings from some of the Irish Writers Centre Novel Fair winners who have published books, won literary prizes and achieved much acclaim as a result of winning this unique and prestigious competition. Or join Actor Sarah Maria Lafferty in Beggar’s Bush who has chosen a selection of poems to read, all connected to the local Dublin 4 area, that have inspired her. Also on the night, experience the ‘Irish in Italy’ exhibition that illustrates the complex relationship and interactions between the literary landscape and the political exchanges between the two nations during the first half of the 20th century, or explore the exhibitions, café and gardens of MoLI, the Museum of Literature Ireland.

In Leitrim, join internationally acclaimed author Colum McCann for a reading and discussion session about his fiction. Colum McCann is an Irish author and his literary fiction works include Let the Great World Spin, TransAtlantic and Apeirogon. Continuing west, Mayo dwellers can enjoy an evening of art, literature, and thought provoking, lively debate at the ‘Where Art Meets Literature’ discussion. Join poets, storytellers and musicians for an evening in ‘Anita’s Store’, an historical old building in the heart of Mountshannon, Co Clare. Then down south to the Hayloft bar in Co Cork to enjoy Guest Poets and an Open-Mic Session.

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Moses McKenzie has been awarded the £15,000 Hawthornden Prize for Literature for his debut novel An Olive Grove in Ends (Wildfire).

Caroline Moore, one of the five judges, said: “An Olive Grove in Ends is a dazzling debut, richly textured, gritty and profound. Moses McKenzie offers a thrillingly distinctive new voice, both street-wise and literary; lilting Jamaican patois mixed with Bristol slang is shot through with the language of the Bible and of the Koran. Set in the world of the disenfranchised and of drug-dealers, the novel is a moving tale of earthly love and spiritual redemption.”

His second novel, Fast by the Horns, will be published by Wildfire next spring.