Cúirt New Writing; Children’s Books Ireland Awards; Women’s Prize longlist; book deals

Reviews are Seán Duffy on Plantagenet Ireland by Prof Robin Frame; Jonathan McAloon on Homesickness by Colin Barrett; Michael Cronin on the best new translations; Darran Anderson on The Last Good Funeral of the Year by Ed O’Loughlin; Eoin Ó Broin on The Great Recoil: Politics after Populism and Pandemic by Paolo Gerbaudo and Geopolitics for the End of Time: from the Pandemic to the Climate Crisis by Bruno Maçães; Helen Cullen on Careering by Daisy Buchanan; Niamh Donnelly on Here Again Now by Okechukwu Nzelu; Matthew Shipsey on The Red of My Blood by Clover Stroud; Niamh Donnelly on Our Wives Under The Sea Julia Armfield; and Sarah Gilmartin on The Voids by Ryan O’Connor.

This Saturday’s Irish Times Eason offer is 56 Days, the first-rate and bestselling lockdown thriller by Catherine Ryan Howard. You can buy it with your paper for just €4.99, a saving of €6.

This year’s KPMG Children’s Books Ireland Awards shortlists have been revealed. The diverse topics explored incude monkeys and mangoes; a heist; a haunted house; a tale of the Titanic rescue; folk legend retellings from Ireland and from Russia; a coming of age verse novel dealing with chronic illness; a story of first love, and a witty yet hard-hitting tale of a mother’s alcoholism. The selection comprises a spread of books for young readers of all ages – from picturebooks to young adult novels.

Founded in 1990, the awards are the most prestigious awards for children’s books in Ireland. The ten shortlisted titles will compete for six awards: : The Book of the Year Award, The Honour Awards for Fiction and Illustration, the Judges’ Special Award, the Junior Juries’ Award, and the Eilís Dillon Award for a first children’s book. The winners will be announced by broadcaster Rick O’Shea at an online ceremony in May as part of International Literature Festival Dublin.

2022 International Booker Prize longlist revealed

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Winner of The Irish Times national poetry competition revealed

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Daring to dream of an island of equals

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The shortlisted titles are:

Cluasa Capaill ar an Rí written by Bridget Bhreathnach and illustrated by Shona Shirley Macdonald

Not My Problem by Ciara Smyth

The Summer I Robbed a Bank written by David O’Doherty and illustrated by Chris Judge

There’s a Ghost in this House by Oliver Jeffers

Rescuing Titanic: A True Story of Quiet Bravery in the North Atlantic by Flora Delargy

The Henna Wars by Adiba Jaigirdar

Frindleswylde written by Natalia O’Hara and illustrated by Lauren O’Hara

Gut Feelings written by CG Moore and illustrated by Becky Chilcott

The Shadows of Rookhaven written by Pádraig Kenny and illustrated by Edward Bettison

Maybe … by Chris Haughton

Judges’ chair Pádraic Whyte said: “These awards are a fantastic opportunity to celebrate the excellence of recent Irish children’s literature. In a market that can often seem over-crowded, particularly given the dominance of texts from the UK and the US, this is a chance to showcase the brilliant talents of Irish writers and illustrators and to highlight the world-class nature of these shortlisted books.”

Elaina Ryan, CEO of Children’s Books Ireland, said: “Each year we take huge pride in announcing the KPMG Children’s Books Ireland Awards shortlist and surveying the landscape of children’s publishing in Ireland. This year is no exception, with such talent, humour, innovation and empathy shown across the age ranges and in both languages. Children’s writers and illustrators in Ireland are second to none and we have no doubt that our Junior Juries will thoroughly enjoy reading this year’s shortlisted titles.”

The Cúirt Festival of International Literature has announce the winners of The Cúirt New Writing Prize sponsored by Tigh Neachtain in memory of Lena McGuire. Shane Murphy won the fiction category for Welcome to the World. Judge Lisa McInerney wrote: “A character study that’s compassionate and raw, and a reflection on yearning and identity that was moving and surprising. This isn’t the most polished work on the longlist, but to me it was the most promising. I felt the writer was at once curious and distanced enough from their protagonist to convey a memorable story. A sign, I think, of a gift for words and for people.”

Siobhán Flynn won the poetry category for I’m Trying to Write a Poem About an Angel. Judge Gail McConnell wrote: “Often the test of a true poem is the reader’s desire to return to it again and again. I liked this poem when I read it first, but I noticed that I kept re-reading it, and each time I did, I noticed something new. It’s a poem that knows what it’s about – and it’s about a state of unknowing. The poem is asking what it is to be a self and what it is to be a body, and to try to answer its questions it looks beyond the binaries of gender (male and female), and presence (natural and supernatural), hoping ‘to find the right form’. It’s a poem after Analicia Sotelo’s I’m Trying to Write a Poem about a Virgin and It’s Awful, so it’s playing with imitation in its form as well as in its subject. It sets up a pair of relationships: of the poem with its influence, and of ‘I’ with ‘they’. There’s a lot about it to enjoy – humour, clear diction, good line endings and a self-consciousness about the whole strange endeavour of living and writing – but it’s the ending I marvel at. Wonderful.”

Notable mentions/shortlisted submissions include Electric Ink by Paula Dias Garcia, Fallow by Serena Lawless, Tine Leatromach by Annemarie Nugent, Samhain by Molly Twomey and Fásra by Liam Mac Peaircín

Each winner receives a €500 prize. Both will read at the New Writing Showcase on April 5th at 11am in the Mick Lally Theatre. The Cúirt Festival of International Literature runs from April 4th to 10th.

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Five debut novels have been longlisted for the 2022 Women’s Prize for Fiction, along with Booker shortlisted Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead and The Exhibitionist by Charlotte Mendelson, who was shortlisted for the 2008 prize. Four more authors have been previously nominated: Elif Shafak, Leone Ross, Catherine Chidgey and Rachel Elliott.

The full longlist is The Bread the Devil Knead by Lisa Allen-Agostini; Salt Lick by Lulu Allison; Careless by Kirsty Capes; Remote Sympathy by Catherine Chidgey; The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller; Flamingo by Rachel Elliott; The Sentence by Louise Erdrich; Build Your House Around My Body by Violet Kupersmith; Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason; The Exhibitionist by Charlotte Mendelson; The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki; This One Sky Day by Leone Ross; The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak; Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead; The Final Revival of Opal & Nev by Dawnie Walton; and Creatures of Passage by Morowa Yejidé. The shortlist will be revealed on April 27th and the winner on June 15th.

Granta Books is to publish a “haunting” debut novel from Tralee-born writer Noel O’Regan next year. Though the Bodies Fall is the story of man who finds himself drawn back to his family home on the Kerry coast. “It is a picturesque location, but the cliffs are also a suicide black spot, and from a young age Micheál was involved in his mother’s mission to save these troubled souls,” the synopsis reads. “Now, as an adult, his life in ruins, he feels compelled in the same way, to keep a constant look out for the ‘visitors’, to try to talk them down. When his two sisters tell him that they want to sell the land, he must choose between his siblings and the visitors, a future or a past.”

His editor Laura Barber said: “This is a novel that exerts an uncanny pull: the bleak beauty of its setting, the tugging sense of sadness and peril, the weight of a life burdened by duty and regret, and the slow kindling of something like redemption. It is rare to read a debut of such poise and steady grace at the level of the line, but Noel’s writing has that magical quality of being powerfully resonant without being loud, and we are excited to be welcoming him to the Granta list with such a haunting debut.”

O’Regan has worked as a literary editor for Mercier Press and Irish Academic Press. He has received the Sean Dunne Young Writer Award, was a winner in the Bridport Short Story Prize, and was named Kerry County Council writer in residence. His fiction has been published in the Stinging Fly, Ambit and Southword.

“It’s almost beyond belief, to me, that my novel has found a home at Granta, a publisher I’ve long since admired, and who house many of my favourite writers,” he said. “I also feel like I’ve found a writer’s dream of a champion in Laura Barber, someone who, in true Granta spirit, has shown herself to care passionately about Micheál, the visitors and the entire world of Though the Bodies Fall. I’m incredibly excited to be going on this journey with her and the wider Granta team.”

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When Little Island commissioned Jane Mitchell to write a novel about young asylum seekers in Ireland, they did not know just how relevant Run for Your Life would become. More than a million people have fled Ukraine since the start of the month. The refugees are mostly women and children, just like Jane’s protagonists, a mother and daughter who flee violence. Ireland is expecting to receive as many as 100,000 refugees from Ukraine.

As an organisation dedicated to young people, the publisher has decided to donate all its profits from the book to the Save the Children Ukraine Crisis Relief Fund. Run for Your Life is endorsed by Amnesty International. In connection with the publication, the author will leading writing workshops for young people in Direct Provision in collaboration with Fighting Words later this year.

Little Island Books ia to publish a picturebook by Eoin Colfer on the topic of a young girl growing up with dwarfism. It has commissioned Celia Ivey, a British illustrator with dwarfism, to illustrate the title.

Little Big Sister, which will be published in spring 2023, tells the story of Starr, a girl with dwarfism who lives with her mum and younger sister, Babs. As the girls get older and Babs overtakes Starr’s height, Starr understands there is something different about her. When she starts primary school she is at first upset by being shorter than the other children. But with help from her mum and teacher, the precocious Starr finds the courage to shine.

Little Island’s Matthew Parkinson-Bennet said: “Eoin’s sweet and moving story will allow children with dwarfism to see a child like them represented a book published by a mainstream press, and help young people to empathise with those who are a bit different. It was important to Eoin and ourselves to find an illustrator who had personal experience of the sort of challenges faced by Starr, and we were delighted when Celia, a terrifically talented artist, embraced this project with enthusiasm.”

Ivey said: “I am thrilled to contribute to this wonderful story; there are echoes of my own experiences growing up with dwarfism, living in an average height family. I really enjoyed the family dynamic along with the honest and sensitive approach between the mother and daughter, which felt particularly resonant.”

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A fundraising event expressing solidarity with Ukrainian writers and a celebration of their work, has raised £16,000 for the Red Cross Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal. The sell-out event at Belfast’s Lyric Theatre saw some of Northern Ireland’s most celebrated writers read from the works of their Ukrainian peers. In a first for the Lyric, the event was also live-streamed to an international audience.

Award-winning author Jan Carson, who organised and hosted the evening, introduced writers Anna Burns, Dara McAnulty, Glenn Paterson, Leontia Flynn and Stephen Sexton, who read a selection of poetry and prose by Oksana Zabuzhko (novelist and short story writer), Myroslav Laiuk (poet), Olena Stiazhkina (novelist), Oksana Lutsushna (poet), Haska Shyyan (novelist) and Ilya Kaminsky (poet). Excerpts from plays by Natalya Vorozhbit (playwright and filmmaker) were performed by the Kabosh Theatre Company.

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To Love This Body, an evening curated by acclaimed Dublin poet Trudie Gorman, will showcase three women writers who explore themes of class, gender, and the body, with new work from Gorman, together with poetry from Sophie Meehan and Rosaleen McDonagh and music from special guest Lisa Gorry. Hosted by Poetry Ireland, this free event will take place in the beautiful surrounds of Belvedere House, Dublin City University, St. Patrick's Campus, Drumcondra, Dublin 9 on the evening of March 24th. Details here.

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The Oscar Wilde Society has announced the winners of its third Wilde Wit competition, chosen from more than 300 entries, each designed to sound like something Oscar Wilde might have said.

The top entry came from Darcy Alexander Corstorphine, who also took top place in the first two Wilde Wit competitions. This year he achieved another feat, tying with himself for first prize with these two aphorisms:

“A moment of reflection should be taken before the mirror or not at all.”

“There are only two sources of sorrow in this world: one is a lack of understanding, the other is an excess of it.”

Second place goes to Robert Eddison for: “The quickest way to make your name is to lose your reputation.”

Silvia Gasparini won third place with: “Truth is the name we give to the lies we like.”

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