The Read Irish Women Challenge began in April last year as a way to highlight the work of brilliant, articulate Irish women writers. I was aware that there was, as Anne Enright phrases it, a “profound deafness” to the female voice in Irish literature.
It’s a simple idea – there’s a list of prompts, one for every day of the month, that ask you to respond with a book title. A book that made you laugh or a book you’d recommend to a friend are some examples from last year.
The response was overwhelmingly positive and created connections across genres and disciplines; academics who wouldn’t usually read young adult books discovered new authors; Irish embassies and libraries got on board; and I was introduced to the works of Sheila Pim, a now out-of-print author who was a popular crime fiction writer in the 1950s and ’60s.
In recent times, the #MeToo movement has gathered pace worldwide and #WakingTheFeminists and #WakeUpIrishPoetry signalled there are serious issues to be addressed in Ireland.
I thought it would be interesting, entertaining and informative to try a new version of the challenge this year; it would have been impossible to guess when putting together the list of prompts in February and early March just how dire the situation would be a few weeks later. As I write, in a bid to slow the spread of the virus, bookshops and libraries have shut their doors and no public gatherings are permitted. While necessary, this has ramifications for any new or due publications.
Pondering the impact this will have on the Irish publishing world, I scribbled a list of all the books I could think of by Irish women that will be immediately affected by the lockdown: books that have been published so far this year, or are due to be published in the next couple of months. It was not a short list and I’m sure there are titles missed. A great deal of publishing relies on the physical book and in-person interactions, but now there are no bookshops, no libraries, no book launches, no eager booksellers, no book clubs...the list goes on.
It might seem frivolous to some, but these are books that writers have spent years on and they will miss the usual support and exposure they might normally receive. There’s a growing list of ways to talk online about publications – and buy and/or borrow them: could the reading challenge be one of them?
I would like to invite people to use the #ReadIrishWomenChallenge2020 to connect books, especially new releases, with readers.
As my physical bookshop is shut for the present, I’m happy to recommend books all day long. Two fellow booksellers who deserve thanks for their work on the challenge are Martin Shannon, who put the design and layout together, and Bríd Roantree, who translated it so we have a list as Gaeilge this year. With my Irish being eh...limited, I hope people enjoy it and are forgiving of others’ attempts at cupla focail.
So let’s have some fun and #ShoutAbout these great new books by Irish women!
