Corbett wins Irish Novel of the Year award at Listowel

Dublin-based writer Gavin Corbett and the poet John Montague were among the prize winners at this year's Listowel Writers' Week, which opened last night.

Corbett, a former Sunday Tribune journalist, won the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award for his second novel, This is the Way.

The €15,000 Kerry Group Award is the largest monetary prize for fiction available solely to Irish authors. Also on the shortlist were Lucy Caldwell, Claire Kilroy, Kathleen MacMahon and Thomas O’Malley.

This is the Way tells the story of a modern Traveller hiding in Dublin from his people and their blood feuds, and coming to terms with his powerful, mythic inheritance.

The John B Keane Lifetime Achievement Award, in association with Mercier Press, was presented to poet John Montague.

The 42nd Listowel Writers' Week continues until Sunday, with appearances from Thomas Keneally, Colum McCann, Rebecca Miller, Audrey Niffenegger, Colm Toibin, Willy Vlautin and others.

Listowel Writers’ Week also features theatre, music, cinema, art exhibitions, literary bus and walking tours plus an expanded children’s programme.

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