LooseLeaves: The shortlists for the inaugural Glen Dimplex New Writers' Awards, run in association with the Irish Writers' Centre, are announced this weekend and are chiefly characterised (apart from within the Irish language category) by how very few Irish writers and Irish publishers who have made the cut.
These are prizes for the best first book published in the past year in Ireland and the UK by a first-time author - and the inclusion of the UK has drawn in a majority of titles from across the Irish Sea. Cathal McCabe, director of the Irish Writers' Centre, said the choices were made by an independent panel of judges - all writers, most of them Irish, including Colm Tóibín, Ciaran Carson and Celia de Freine. "Their brief was to choose what they saw as the best books, irrespective of origins or imprint. These are the books they were most taken with."
Close on 250 books were entered by Irish and British publishers. The category winners, who get €5,000 each, and the overall winner of the €20,000 Glen Dimplex New Writer of the Year award will be announced on November 2nd. "And then we'll be looking forward to next year's awards. Who knows? - they may well end up being dominated by new Irish writers," said McCabe.
All are welcome to attend award night at Dublin's Four Seasons Hotel, say the organisers - although at €2,500 for a table of 10, one wonders who'll go - publishers in droves, possibly.
The shortlists are as follows.
Biography/Non-fiction: Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution by Ruth Scurr (Chatto and Windus); God's Secret Agents: Queen Elizabeth's Forbidden Priests and the Hatching of the Gunpowder Plot, Alice Hogge (HarperCollins); Running for the Hills, a memoir, Horatio Clare (John Murray); Just As Well I'm Leaving: To the Orient with Hans Christian Andersen, Michael Booth (Jonathan Cape); The Real Life of Anthony Burgess, Andrew Biswell (Picador); Relish: The Extraordinary Life of Alexis Soyer, Victorian Celebrity Chef, Ruth Cowen (Weidenfeld & Nicolson/Orion).
Fiction: The Observations by Jane Harris (Faber); No Fireworks, Rodge Glass (Faber); The Amnesia Clinic, James Scudamore (Harvill Secker); Giraffe, JM Ledgard (Cape); Notes from a Turkish Whorehouse, Philip O'Ceallaigh (Penguin Ireland); Disobedience, Naomi Alderman (Viking).
Children's books: Sophie and the Albino Camel by Stephen Davies (Anderson Press); The Diamond of Drury Lane, Julia Golding (Egmont UK); Rewind, Paul Manship (Pont Books); Katie Milk Solves Crimes and So On, Annie Caulfield (Random House Children's Books); The Awful Tale of Agatha Bilke, Siân Pattenden (Short Books); Style Sisters - Friends First, Liz Elwes (David Fickling Books).
Irish language: Ruball an Éin by Antain MacLochlainn; Ó Lúibíní Lú!, Catríona Ní Mhurchú (both Cló Iar-Chonnachta); Lusanna na Gréine - Bernadette Nic an tSaoir; Néalta, Philip Cummings; Roimh Mhisc an Ainspioraid, Séamus Ó Díolúin; Iarsmaí na Teanga,Torlach Mac Con Midhe (all Coiscéim).
Poetry: The Lost Notebook by Jennie Feldman (Anvil Press); The Shoreline of Falling, Roderick Ford (Bradshaw Books); The King of Suburbia, Iggy McGovern (Dedalus Press); Scattering Eva, James Sheard (Cape); Seconds, Sid Evans (Pillar Press); The Way I Dressed During the Revolution, Jane Weir (Templar Poetry).
Publisher's swansong
Book launches come and go but a special one will take place in Dublin at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland on October 10th. The fourth and last book in the hugely successful Lifelines series of poetry anthologies - in which well-known people pick a special poem and explain their choice - will be launched, but the occasion will also be a swansong from its publisher TownHouse, which will not bring out any new titles after this season. Treasa Coady, its owner and the powerhouse behind it, is retiring early next year. "With so many wonderful independent and English-owned publishing houses now in Ireland, the publishing scene is more vibrant than ever. It is a good time to step aside."
Other titles being published shortly include Stillness; Through my Prayers by Sister Stan and Straight Talking Wild, an expanded edition of previous books by Éanna Ní Lamhna. But TownHouse, which was initially Country House, isn't vanishing and will be reprinting books from its backlist, which will sell through Easons.
The list, which gives a flavour of much that happened in Ireland in the past 25 years, includes titles by Deirdre Purcell, David Bellamy, Marie Heaney, Maureen Gaffney, Douglas Gageby, Frank Mitchell, Gemma Hussey, John Hume and Terence Brown. Also there is the landmark The Blaskets: A Kerry Island Library by Muiris Mac Conghail and books by Eamon De Buitléar, long associated with TownHouse. Another long relationship was with Wesley College teacher Niall MacMonagle, the force behind the Lifelines anthologies, put together by his students.