Dean Browne, Jessica Traynor and Bernard O’Donoghue have made the shortlist for the 2026 Pigott Poetry Prize, awarded annually as part of Listowel Writers’ Week.
“Browne’s After Party is a debut of quiet assurance," the judges said. “His work has already been recognised through significant prizes and international publication, and this first full collection confirms a voice marked by restraint and precision. These are poems that resist excess, attentive to tone and to the spaces between what is said and what is withheld.
“Jessica Traynor’s New Arcana continues a body of work that has steadily expanded in ambition and reach. Her writing moves with control between the personal and the symbolic, drawing on image and pattern as a way of thinking through experience. The collection reflects a poet working with confidence, deepening an already distinctive voice.
“With The Anchorage, Bernard O’Donoghue returns with the authority of a poet whose work has been shaped over decades. His writing remains grounded in clarity and attention, particularly to place and memory, while continuing to find new inflections within familiar themes. It is a collection that speaks with quiet confidence rather than declaration."
Now in its 13th year, the Pigott Poetry Prize has announced an increase in its award to €20,000, with €2,000 awarded to each of the other shortlisted poets, the largest monetary prize in Ireland for a new poetry collection by an Irish poet.
Chairman of Listowel Writers’ Week, Ned O’Sullivan, said: “We are deeply grateful to the Pigott family for their continued support of this award. This year’s shortlist reflects the strength and diversity of contemporary poetry in Ireland, and we are proud to celebrate these three outstanding poets.”
The winner will be announced during Listowel Writers’ Week, which takes place from May 27th to 31st.
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In The Irish Times this Saturday, Jan Carson tells me about her new novel, Few and Far Between; Ronan McGreevy interview Anthony Beevor about his new book, Rasputin and the Downfall of the Romanovs, and there is a Q&A with fellow Northern writer Susannah Dickey about her latest novel, Into the Wreck.
Reviews are Mia Levitin on London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe; Andrew Lynch on Seán Lemass: The Lost Memoir, edited by Ronan McGreevy; Des McMahon on Bodily Fluids by Liam Hughes; Mícheál McCann on the best new poetry; Mei Chin on Everything That Is Beautiful by Louise Nealon; Lucy Sweeney Byrne on Communion by Jon Doyle; Declan Burke on EL by Thaddeus Ó Buachalla; Edel Coffey on The Keeper by Tana French; Éilís Ní Dhuibhne on Mr Hoo and Other Stories by John O’Donnell; Margot Guilhot Delsoldato on Minor Black Figures by Brandon Taylor; Sally Hayden on Defiance by Loubna Mrie; Helen Cullen on The Palm House by Gwendoline Riley; and Adam Wyeth on Contentious Spaces by Rosaleen McDonagh.
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New Island Books is to publish Carlo Gébler’s powerful memoir No One Tells You: The Last Years of Edna O’Brien, this September. The deal was brokered by Djinn von Noorden at New Island Books, who acquired world rights from Anthony Harwood of the Anthony Harwood Agency.
Gébler offers an unflinching, intimate account of the final chapter in the life of his mother, one of Ireland’s most significant literary figures. As O’Brien confronts the brutal realities of old age – pain, confusion, hospitals, carers and the relentless struggle to continue writing – the world she once commanded through language begins to contract.
Gébler documents this passage with extraordinary honesty and precision, capturing every flicker of resilience and every devastating loss. The narrative unfolds with the true rhythm of decline – hope, setback, defiance, collapse, and repetition – moving seamlessly between moments of dark comedy and profound sorrow.
At once a love story, a document of artistic obsession and a stark confrontation with mortality, No One Tells You asks what remains when work falters, independence vanishes and the child becomes the witness. It is an unguarded, deeply humane exploration of the cost of genius, the labour of caretaking, and the grief for which none of us are prepared.
Gébler said: “This is a book about someone dying, in this case my mother. Its focus is on the effect that the long process, culminating in her death, had on me. No One Tells You is based on diaries, notes, text messages, WhatsApp threads, telephone calls and other materials which were produced during the last five years of my mother’s life. From these materials the account was made. The finished text, hopefully, is short, tight and exact."
Von Noorden commented: “Carlo Gebler has written a memoir of rare courage and clarity. No One Tells You is as unsparing as it is compassionate – a book that honours Edna O’Brien’s legacy while also telling a universal story about love, loss and the end of life. We are proud to bring this extraordinary work to readers."
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A poem by the 2021 winner of the Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing, Jim McElroy, has been awarded a top 10 prize in one of the world’s biggest and most prestigious competitions, the 2025 National Poetry Competition.
Run by the Poetry Society, the 10 were selected from more than 21,250 poems entered by nearly 9,600 poets from 113 countries. All were read anonymously by the judging panel – Denise Saul, Ian Duhig and Susannah Dickey – then whittled down to a longlist of 133 poems and 108 poets, from which the 10 prize winners were announced at the National Poetry awards in London.
Commenting on the inspiration for his poem, Coming of Age, Jim said – “I was six years old when I witnessed what happens in the first stanza as our Simmental Bull enters the yard of my childhood in the Mourne Mountains. Last year I thought I’d have a go at turning the memory into a poem. Coming of Age is the result. I’m thrilled it’s been recognised amongst such a competitive field.”
In her awarding citation, Dickey said: “this poem achieves a boisterous, gorgeous synthesis of the transcendental and the downright gross, its turns of phrase pulsing with the guts of the non-human, reminding us of our simultaneous distance from and proximity to other forms of mammalian life. How do we understand our own obsolescence if not in the context of the bodies we rear and destroy? This poem challenges the reader with the unlikely farce of our survival, the random nature of nature’s persistence – the writing is witty, precise, vile and sublime."
Overall winner was Partridge Boswell from Vermont in the US for his poem The Gathering; second prize went to Axe by Damen O’Brien from Brisbane; and third to Badminton by Zoe Dorado from California.
“Whilst I didn’t make the top three,” Jim said, “as my poems have been longlisted three times in the past few years, it feels like progress to have made it to the top ten this year.”
Since it began in 1978, the National Poetry Competition has been an important milestone in the careers of many leading poets, with previous winners including Sinéad Morrissey, Ruth Padel, James Berry, Medbh McGuckian, Jo Shapcott, Stephen Sexton, Tony Harrison, and former Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy.
All 10 prize-winning poems can be read on the Poetry Society link.
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The West Cork Literary Festival has unveiled its 2026 programme, set to take place in Bantry from July 10th to 17th.
This year’s Festival will feature three‑day writing workshops, masterclasses, readings, in‑conversation events, and an even stronger focus on translated literature, showcasing work translated from Dutch, Flemish, French, German, Irish, Korean, and Swedish. Attendees can also enjoy unique experiences such as a Pop Up Gaeltacht, the annual trip to Whiddy Island, yoga on the lawn of Bantry House, and a refreshing sea swim for anyone seeking a moment of calm during the week.
The 2026 line‑up includes an extraordinary roster of writers across genres - including Sara Baume, Jung Chang, Jonathan Coe, Paddy Donnelly, Elaine Feeney, Karl Henry, Ashley Hickson‑Lovence, Anton Hur, Charlie Mackesy, Charlotte McConaghy, Dearbhla Mescal, Annemarie Ní Churreáin, Laureate for Irish Fiction Éilís Ní Dhuibhne, Miriam O’Callaghan, Louise O’Neill, Katriona O’Sullivan, Ian Rankin, Jessica Traynor, Sarah Webb, Djamel White, Nussaibah Younis, and many others.
The festival also remains deeply committed to nurturing a love of literature among young audiences. All events for children and young people are free of charge, offering families an opportunity to explore books, storytelling, and creativity together with writers such as Sarah Bowie, Paddy Donnelly and Sarah Webb.
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The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has announced the shortlist for its 2026 Literature Prize, featuring 10 books in English translation from nine of the countries where it invests. The shortlist highlights a range of fiction which speaks to today’s urgent themes including the legacies of conflict and postwar society, displacement and exile, memory and intergenerational trauma, and speculative interrogations of power and identity. Several novels foreground intimate family dynamics and personal reckoning, while others expand into political odysseys or near-future dystopias that question how bureaucratic, technological and social systems shape human lives.
The shortlist, selected by judges Dr Maya Jaggi (chair); Prof Lea Ypi; Prof Chigozie Obioma; and Marek Kohn, is:
People and Trees: A Trilogy by Akram Aylisli (Azerbaijan), originally written in Azerbaijani and translated from the Russian by Katherine E. Young.
Death and the Gardener by Georgi Gospodinov (Bulgaria), translated from the Bulgarian by Angela Rodel. Gospodinov won the 2023 International Booker Prize with his novel Time Shelter, also translated by Angela Rodel.
In Late Summer by Magdalena Blažević (Croatia), translated from the Croatian by Anđelka Raguž.
Bedbugs by Martina Vidaić (Croatia), translated from the Croatian by Ellen Elias-Bursać. Ellen Elias-Bursać’s translation of Sons, Daughters by Ivana Bodrožić, won last year’s EBRD Literature Prize.
On the Greenwich Line by Shady Lewis (Egypt), translated from the Arabic by Katharine Halls.
Eye of the Monkey by Krisztina Tóth (Hungary), translated from the Hungarian by Ottilie Mulzet.
Sololand by Hassan Blasim (Iraq), translated from the Arabic by Jonathan Wright.
Ice by Jacek Dukaj (Poland), translated from the Polish by Ursula Phillips.
Rock, Paper, Grenade by Artem Chekh (Ukraine), translated from the Ukrainian by Olena Jennings and Oksana Rosenblum.
We Computers by Hamid Ismailov (Uzbekistan), translated from the Uzbek by Shelley Fairweather-Vega.
The winning author and translator will be revealed on July 2nd. Prize money of €20,000 will be divided equally between the winning author and translator. The authors and translators of the other two finalist works will each receive €2,000.
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The cast has today been announced for a new adaptation of novelist Barbara Pym’s Booker Prize nominated Quartet in Autumn by 2024 Booker Prize winner Samantha Harvey. The world premiere will be directed by the former artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe and the Bush Theatre Dominic Dromgoole. The production runs at the Arcola Theatre in London from May 7th to June 13th.
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New Island has signed Alix O’Neill for her debut novel, Dirty Water. Aoife K. Walsh, Editorial Director, and Djinn Von Noordan, Publisher, acquired rights from Kate Rizzo at the Greene & Heaton Agency. Publication is scheduled for spring 2027.
Dirty Water is a funny, warm, coming-of-age story set in two very different Northern Irelands and explores a generation that is othered wherever it goes.
O’Neill’s first book, The Troubles with Us (Fourth Estate, 2021), was a memoir of growing up in Northern Ireland. O’Neill said: “I wanted to read a Troubles-era love story that had humour, resilience and ultimately, hope at its heart because that’s the North I know and love. I couldn’t find the novel I was after, so I wrote it myself. I’m thrilled New Island will be publishing Dirty Water. They have an excellent reputation for championing new writers and the moment I spoke to Aoife and Djinn for the first time, I knew Mac was in good hands. I can’t wait for readers to meet her.’
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The 29th edition of the International Literature Festival Dublin was unveiled this week.
Transforming Merrion Square into a vibrant literary village and a dynamic hub of ideas, imagination and conversation, this 10-day celebration of words and stories (May 15th-24th) features more than 215 events, including more than 50 dedicated to families and young readers.
The participants include Tayari Jones, Robin Stevens, Sally Hayden, Steve McCarthy, Helen Oyeyemi, Jay McInerney, Maria Stepanova, Oyinkan Braithwaite, Elif Shafak, Aoife Dooley.
From talks to walks; poetry to yoga; queer literary tours, sound baths, songwriting, art and film screenings, ILFD 2026 promises a rich cultural experience that fosters meaningful dialogue, creativity and connection. ilfdublin.com
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Bookselling Ireland has announced the ambassadors for Independent Bookshop Week 2026, which this year marks its 20th anniversary. The annual celebration, taking place from June 13th to 20th, highlights the invaluable role independent bookshops across Ireland and the UK and play in local communities and national culture.
The ambassadors are Kit de Waal, whose debut My Name Is Leon won the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year and was adapted for BBC television, and whose latest novel is The Best of Everything (Tinder Press); Katriona O’Sullivan, author of the bestselling memoir Poor, winner of Biography of the Year and Newcomer of the Year at the Irish Book Awards, whose new book is Hungry (Hachette Ireland); and Katie Clapham, award-winning bookseller and co-founder of Storytellers Inc.
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Colmcille Press is to publish Carrying Light, a Donegal/Derry poet’s retrospective of life in the North West. Deirdre Devine, whose family owned McGrory’s in Culdaff, is a well-known former senior teacher at Thornhill College. Her new poetry collection pays tribute to various heroes in her life including Pat Hume, Brian Friel, Dinny McLaughlin and Canon McDyer.
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67 independent bookshops and libraries in Ireland participate in the second Global Book Crawl launching simultaneously in 20 countries from April 20th to 26th.
For one week, hundreds of independent bookshops in more than 50 places around the world ranging from Westport to Brooklyn, Stockholm, Malaga to Sydney to Mexico City will distribute The Global Book Crawl Passport to book lovers. Participants are invited to take their passport and embark on an adventure through the heart of a city’s/region’s indie bookshops, gathering stamps, discovering hidden cultural gems, availing of discount vouchers and connecting with other readers.
Each participating city is organising a unique book crawl, inviting the community to explore, discover, and support local bookshops. The initiative is the brainchild of three bookshops; Tertulia bookshop, Westport; Federico Lang, Libreria Luces, Malaga, Spain; and Jessica Stockport, Greenlight Books, Brooklyn, New York, who realised the power of independent bookshops when they collaborate.
Bríd Conroy of Tertulia Bookshop believes this is just the beginning: “we know the importance of bookshops as community and cultural spaces. This is our second Global Book Crawl. Last year we had 22 bookshops, this year we are up to 67 participants.
For participating Irish books, visit globalbookcrawl.org
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An acclaimed poem composed entirely from archives, media and historical sources relating to the mass infant burial scandal at St Mary’s Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, Co Galway, will be made available to all online on University of Leeds’ Cultural Collections on Good Friday, April 3rd.
The digital publication will mark the anniversary of the first performance of the 796-page work, MOTHERBABYHOME, in Dublin on Good Friday 2019, by its writer Kimberly Campanello, Professor of Poetry and Director of Poetry@Leeds at the University of Leeds.
The poem is drawn from archival text – much of it supplied by Catherine Corless, the historian whose research brought the story of Tuam to light – as well as contemporary responses to the discoveries. Campanello’s intention was “to make my voice as a poet subordinate to the voices of Tuam”.
In its form as a poetry object, held by University of Leeds Cultural Collections, MOTHERBABYHOME consists of 796 loose leaves of printed vellum contained in a handmade oak box.
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Literature Ireland is seeking applications for a four-week writer’s residency at the Château de Lavigny, Switzerland.
The international writers’ residence was established by the late Jane Ledig-Rowohlt in commemoration of her husband, the German publisher Heinrich Maria Ledig-Rowohlt (Rowohlt Verlag). Since its foundation in 1996, the Château has welcomed some 700 writers and literary translators through its doors.
The residency will take place from June 2nd to 29th, with a public reading on June 21st. The successful candidate will be asked to work on their current writing project and immerse themselves in the rich cultural life of the Château.
The residency will be awarded to a writer from Ireland working in the area of literary fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction or drama. Writers who are Irish or normally resident in Ireland are invited to apply.
Applications should be sent to translate@literatureireland.com no later than 5pm on April 16th. See literatureireland.com for full details.
