The richest literary prize in the world, the £100,000 Impac prize, was presented to novelist Andrew Miller with an aura of pomp and glory last Saturday at the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham, in Dublin. Miller won the prize for his first novel, Ingenious Pain.
Hundreds of extremely snazzily-dressed folk arrived for the dinner. "It's a bit like a wedding without a bride," Miller observed. The dinner itself was delayed until after the speeches, as the Taoiseach had to skip off to RTE, it being election count night.
First on the menu was food for thought - a signed copy of the winning book was on everyone's place. Second was speeches, which ran to over an hour. By then, people were nibbling their serviettes.
MC for the night was Jeffrey Archer, who elicited sharp intakes of breath from the crowd when he introduced "Bertie and Mrs Ahern." Perhaps he was just testing to see if people were still listening.
When Miller received the cheque, he said that he had heard the news in Paris while he was wearing his pyjamas. "Besides writing, there are only two other professions you can get away with wearing pyjamas," he said, invoking some lively debate at the tables as to what the third profession could be.
It was with sadness that Sadbh learnt of the death of the American writer and erstwhile Irish resident, J.F. Powers, last weekend. A celebrated short story writer since his first collection, Prince of Darkness (1947), Powers's first novel, Morte D'Urban, won the National Book Award in 1962. His work, which often centred on the priesthood, won him fans such as Flannery O'Connor who wrote "I admire your stories better than any others I know of" and Evelyn Waugh who described Powers as "a pure story-teller". Born in 1917 in Jacksonville, Illinois, James Farl Powers moved to Greystones, Co Wicklow, with his wife, writer Elizabeth Wahl, and their five children (among them the late print-maker Mary Farl Powers) in 1951. Having taught creative writing in St John's University, Minnesota, for many years, he rather endearingly used to encourage his students to go into business, claiming there was no money in writing.
Playwright Mark O'Rowe was this year's recipient of the Rooney Prize for Literature, which was handed over by its founder, Dan Rooney, at the AIB Bank Centre on Saturday night. Rooney, besides being a patron of the arts, is president of the Pittsburgh Steelers. He has been giving out lump sums to encourage young writers since 1976.
Mark, whose most recent play, Howie the Rookie, was commissioned by the Bush Theatre in London, will be joining a long line of writers including Frank McGuinness, Kate Cruise O'Brien, Anne Enright and Robert McLiam Wilson.
`This is the first time a Taoiseach has launched a book of mine and it will doubtless be the last," said a visibly nervous Edna O'Brien at the party to celebrate her book, James Joyce, in Newman House on St Stephen's Green on Tuesday night. Bertie Ahern took up the theme in his own speech, pointing out that it was exceedingly unlikely that a Taoiseach would have been doing the honours for any book by Edna O'Brien 40 years ago.
The Joyce mafia - David Norris, Joyce's grandson, Bob Joyce and nephew, Ken Monaghan - had turned out in force for the event, and chatted with other O'Brien fans including writer and director Neil Jordan, actor Stephen Rea and academic Declan Kiberd, who is coming to the end of both his sabbatical from UCD and a new book of criticism.
`I spend more time reading than practising so this kind of makes sense," grinned the wunderkind violinist, Cora Venus Lunny, referring to her performance at the launch of Niall Williams's new novel, As It Is In Heaven, in Dublin's Waterstone's on Tuesday night. If her playing on Tuesday was anything to go by, this literary endeavour doesn't seem to have affected her one bit, but then she was given a rather good intro by Williams, who finished his reading with the line "when she played the violin, nothing else mattered. . ."
`The competition is established - no longer do we receive stories about `how I caught my first trout', " rejoices Clem Cairns, editor of From the Bering Strait; Winners of Ireland's Fish Short Story Prize. This year's winner of the annual competition run by Fish Publishing, is one Gina Ochsner who will be making the trip from her home in Oregon to receive her £1,000 from novelist Dermot Healy on Sunday, June 27th, in Bantry House in west Cork.
This shindig will also kick off the West Cork Chamber Music Festival Literary Fringe which runs from June 27th-July 2nd and features readings and workshops by the likes of Healy, Micheal Hartnett, Pat Boran and Eamonn Sweeney. Phone (027) 61576 for information.
Sadbh