Irish writers host four nights in aid of Palestine

In The Irish Times this Saturday, new Nobel laureate Jon Fosse talks to Rónán Hession about his career; Blindboy Boatclub talks to Keith Duggan about his new book. Gabriel Cooney writes about his new book, Death in Irish Prehistory. And there is a Q&A with Matt Cooper about his latest work.

Reviews are Christopher Kissane on Making Empire: Ireland, Imperialism, and the Early Modern World by Jane Ohlmeyer; Donald Clarke on My Name is Barbra by Barbra Streisand; Anna Carey on Jill Burke’s How To Be A Renaissance Woman; Martina Evans on the best new poetry; Dan McLaughlin on Ukraine: The Forging of a Nation by Yaroslav Hrytsak, translated by Dominique Hoffman; Malachy Clerkin on No Foreign Game by James Quinn; Kate Demolder on The Book You Want Everyone You Love To Read by Philippa Perry; Mihir Bose on One Fine Day: Britain’s Empire on the Brink by Matthew Parker; Oliver Farry on Britain is Better Than This by Gavin Esler; Niamh Jiménez on The Psychosis of Whiteness by Kehinde Andrews; and Sarah Gilmartin on Absolution by Alice McDermott.

This week’s Irish Times Eason offer is The Mystery of Four by Sam Blake, just €5.99 with your paper, a €5 saving.

Some of the biggest names in Irish literature are coming together as part of Irish Artists for Palestine for a series of events this month and next. Irish Writers for Palestine will be a programme of four nights in Belfast, Cork, Dublin and Galway, each with a unique line-up of Irish writers and guests including Sally Rooney, Anna Burns, Kevin Barry, Donal Ryan, Elaine Feeney and Glenn Patterson. Irish Writers For Palestine is part of the all-island Irish Artists for Palestine programme of solidarity events.

More than 10,000 civilians, including more than 4,000 children, have been killed in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip since October 7th. The supply of clean water, medicine, food, and fuel has been greatly restricted in what UN Secretary-General António Guterres has described as “more than a humanitarian crisis. It is a crisis of humanity.”

Michael Magee, one of the organisers, said: “As well as raising money, our hope is that this series will have a cultural impact, both in Ireland and abroad, and will galvanise people in some way. Writers, especially in Ireland, occupy a certain cultural position, and we hope to use that position to do what we can to show our solidarity. And if we can platform Palestinian literature in the process, and include Palestinian writers in the events, alongside Irish writers, we have the potential to make a very powerful statement, especially in this current political climate, when voices sympathetic to the Palestinian struggle, both within Israel, and across Europe and the US, are facing more marginalisation and violent suppression than ever.”

The series will commence on Tuesday, November 28th in The Black Box, Belfast. Booker Prize-winning author Anna Burns will be joined by Leontia Flynn, Michael Magee, Glenn Patterson, Stephen Sexton and Palestinian guests. Music comes from Múlú and Arborist. Proceeds will go to Medical Aid for Palestinians. Tickets will go on sale on Monday, November 13th at 10am, via blackboxbelfast.com

In Cork, Irish Writers for Palestine is teaming up with local musicians for the Concert for Gaza taking place at Live at St Luke’s on Saturday, December 2nd. Writers Donal Ryan, Julie Goo, Danny Denton, Doireann Ní Ghríofa and Eimear Ryan will be joined by musicians including Declan O’Rourke, with proceeds going to Palestine Children’s Relief Fund. Tickets are on sale through eventbrite.ie.

Actor and writer Tara Flynn will host the Dublin event in The Complex on Tuesday, December 5th, with Sally Rooney, Kevin Barry, Sinéad Gleeson, Mark O’Connell, Siobhán McSweeney, Blindboy Boatclub, Colin Barrett and Palestinian guests. There will also be music from Colm Mac Con Iomaire and Poor Creature. Proceeds will go to Medical Aid for Palestinians. Tickets go on sale via The Complex website on November 13th at 10am.

The final event will take place in Nuns Island Theatre, Galway on Sunday, December 10th and will feature Elaine Feeney, Lisa McInerney, Rita Ann Higgins, Mary Costello, Nicole Flattery, Una Mannion, Sarah Clancy, Alan McMonagle, Mary Watson, Eva Bourke and Mike McCormack. Music comes from Maija Sofia. Proceeds will go to Medical Aid for Palestinians. Tickets go on sale via Eventbrite on November 13th at 10am.

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Benjamin Myers has won the 2023 Goldsmiths Prize for Cuddy, a bold and experimental retelling of the story of the hermit St. Cuthbert, unofficial patron saint of the North of England.

Incorporating poetry, prose, play, diary and real historical accounts, Cuddy straddles historical eras - from the first Christian-slaying Viking invaders of the holy island of Lindisfarne in the eighth century to a contemporary England defined by class and austerity.

Myers, born in Durham in 1976, is the author of ten books, including The Gallows Pole, which won the Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction and has been adapted as a BBC series by Shane Meadows; Beastings, which was awarded the Portico Prize for Literature; and Pig Iron, which won the inaugural Gordon Burn Prize.

Judge Helen Oyeyemi said: “Cuddy crafts its own epic spans, crossing centuries, placing the life of a cathedral on a human scale (and vice versa), translating the conversations between people and the places that hold and summon our ideas.

“Part poetry, part electricity, this story carries relics between the ephemeral and the eternal with all the disarming vitality of a truly illuminated text.”

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Tania Branigan has won the $75,000 Cundill History Prize for Red Memory: Living, Remembering and Forgetting China’s Cultural Revolution (Faber & Faber).

The 2023 jurors awarded Branigan, foreign leader writer at The Guardian, for her “haunting” excavation of the Cultural Revolution. Uncovering 40 years of silence, following countless hours of interviews, Branigan’s Red Memory gives voices to those who lived through Mao’s decade of madness. Written while Branigan was reporting in China, this masterful book examines the scar running through Chinese society and the souls of its citizens, revealing a “major trauma” which looms over the nation.

The announcement was made in Montreal’s Windsor Ballroom by Jury Chair Philippa Levine, in the company of the 2023 finalists and jury members. Fellow finalists Kate Cooper (Queens of a Fallen World) and James Morton Turner (Charged) were each awarded $10,000. McGill University administers the Cundill History Prize and hosts the Cundill Festival in Montreal each year.

Levine said: “Haunting and memorable, Tania Branigan’s sensitive study of the impact of the Cultural Revolution on the lives and psyches of an entire generation in China affected every juror, as it will every reader. All of us found ourselves unable to stop thinking about this extraordinary book. All of us were deeply moved by the trauma she so vividly describes and by the skills on which she drew in doing so. This is a must-read.”

The Cundill History Prize is the largest purse for a book of non-fiction in English. The prize is awarded to a work of outstanding history writing and is open to books from anywhere in the world, regardless of the author’s nationality, as well as works translated into English.

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For the second year running Little Island has scored a hat-trick of Carnegie Medal nominations. The Dulbin-based publisher has now secured nine nominations in the four years since Irish-published books have been admitted to the most prestigious children’s books prize in the world.

Meg Grehan’s The Lonely Book and Alan Titley’s The Táin, illustrated by Eoin Coveney have been shortlisted for the 2024 Yoto Carnegie Medal for Writing and The Slug and the Snail by Oein DeBhairduin, illustrated by Olya Anima for the Carnegie Medal for Illustration.

April’s Garden, written by Isla McGuckin from Fanad, Co Donegal, and illustrated by Catalina Echeverri, has also been nominated for the Carnegie Medal for Illustration.

A touching story about a young girl coming to terms with a dramatic change, April’s Garden discusses several challenging subjects including displacement, temporary housing and poverty through the experiences of April and her mother, who have been housed in temporary accommodation.

Awarded by children’s librarians, the Yoto Carnegies are the UK’s longest-running and best-loved children’s book awards, recognising outstanding reading experiences created through writing and illustration in books written in English for children and young people.

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Ennis Book Club Festival has announced a new short story competition with the winner to be revealed at next year’s 18th annual festival, which invites international and Irish authors to Ennis. It will be held from March 1st to 3rd, 2024.

Each year the festival runs a popular debut authors event and Martina Durac, the artistic director, notes that this new initiative aims to encourage new writing. She looks forward to receiving entries from authors who have not yet published a full collection of work. The competition adds a new dimension to the festival and the winner will have an opportunity to read their story at an event during the festival weekend.

The competition will be judged by writers Aingeala Flannery and Neil Hegarty and the winner will receive €750. There will be two runners-up with prizes of €500 and €250. Interested writers should visit ennisbookclubfestival.com for further information and the entry deadline is December 5th.

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John Burnside has won the David Cohen Prize for Literature. The prize-winning poet, essayist and novelist teaches at the University of St. Andrews. The David Cohen Prize for Literature recognises a body of work by a living author from Britain or Ireland. Past winners have included Hilary Mantel, Edna O’Brien, Tom Stoppard, Seamus Heaney, Julian Barnes, V. S. Naipaul and Doris Lessing.

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Historian Prof Joanna Bourke is to deliver the annual Edmund Burke Lecture on Thursday, November 16th at 6.30pm in in the Edmund Burke Lecture Theatre, Arts Building, Trinity College Dublin 2. Register here.

In her talk, Contemplating Evil: “Monstrous” Women in History, Politics, and Law, 1890s to the Present, Prof Bourke will draw on her current research towards a book entitled Evil Women. Some of her earlier books include Housewifery: Women, Economic Change and Housework in Ireland, 1890-1914 (1993), and An Intimate History of Killing (1999). In 2014, she was the author of The Story of Pain: From Prayer to Painkillers and Wounding the World: How Military Violence and War-Play are Invading our Lives.

The Annual Edmund Burke Lecture celebrates Trinity’s strong connection with the 18th-century philosopher, historian and politician Edmund Burke. This event is organised by the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute and previous speakers have included Michael Ignatieff, Mary McAleese, Roy Foster, and Robert Fisk.

Joanna Bourke is Professor Emerita of History at Birkbeck, University of London, and a Fellow of the British Academy. She is also the Professor of Rhetoric at Gresham College.

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The National Concert Hall presents You Raise Me Up: The Songs and Stories of Brendan Graham with the National Symphony Orchestra on January 20th and 21st at 8pm.

Taking part are Cathy Jordan, Eimear Quinn, Camille O Sullivan, Anthony Kearns, Seán Keane, Róisín O’ Reilly, Paul Harrington & Charlie McGettigan, Feargal Murray, Members of Dublin Gospel Choir, National Symphony Orchestra with David Brophy and more. nch.ie