In The Irish Times this Saturday, Armistead Maupin talks to Mia Levitin about his career and the last of his Tales of the City series ahead of his visit to Dublin’s National Concert Hall next Wednesday. Jane Casey tells Fiona Gartland about her new detective novel, A Stranger in the Family. Christine Madden selects some ideal places around Ireland to curl up with a book. Sally Rooney criticises the Government’s policy on the conflict in Gaza. I ask 16 writers to recommend a favourite Irish book that deserves to be better known. John Self examines the phenomenon of Gabriel Gárcia Márquez and other writers “betrayed” by posthumous publications. And there is a Q&A with Christie Watson about her career and latest book, Moral Injuries.
Reviews are Jessica Traynor on Learning to Think by Tracy King, Newborn by Kerry Hudson, Slumboy by Juano Diaz and Strong Female Character by Fern Brady; Mei Chin on The Great Indian Food Trip: Around a Subcontinent à la Carte by Zac O’Yeah; Claire Hennessy on the best new YA fiction; Paschal Donohoe on In the Long Run by Jonathan White; John Boyne on Family Politics by John O’Farrell; Aimée Walsh on Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr!; Liam Bishop on Habitat by Catriona Shine; Seamus Martin on The Lost Peace: How the West Failed to Prevent a Second Cold War by Richard Sakwa; Helen Cullen on Prima Facie by Suzie Miller; Ray Burke on The Disappeared: Forced Disappearances in Ireland 1798–1998; and Niamh Donnelly on Free Therapy by Rebecca Ivory.
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Anne Enright has won the fiction category in this year’s Writers’ Prize, formerly the Rathbones Folio Prize, at a ceremony at the London Book Fair for The Wren, The Wren (Jonathan Cape), a meditation on love and the love between mother and daughter – sometimes fierce, often painful, but always transcendent.
Liz Berry was awarded the £30,000 prize for The Writers’ Prize Overall Book of the Year for The Home Child (Chatto & Windus). Also the winner of the Poetry category (£2,000), The Home Child is a beautiful novel-in-verse about a child far from home, which Benjamin Zephaniah described as ‘ground-breaking’, inspired by the poet’s great-aunt’s forced migration as a child away from her family in the Black Country to Nova Scotia.
Laura Cumming won the Non-Fiction category (£2,000) for Thunderclap (Chatto & Windus), a kaleidoscopic memoir connecting her life as an art critic with the vivid world of her father’s paintings and those of the Dutch Golden Age.
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Homeschooled Irish illustrator Steve McCarthy has been shortlisted in the Yoto Carnegie Medal for Illustration category for his picture book The Wilderness (Walker Books), an adventure book celebrating learning opportunities in the great outdoors. The winners will be announced and celebrated on Thursday 20 June at a live and streamed ceremony at the Cambridge Theatre, home of the RSC’s award-winning Matilda The Musical.
The winners will each receive a specially commissioned golden medal and a £5,000 Colin Mears Award cash prize.
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The National Library of Ireland has acquired a visual archive from illustrator Annie West, created for her graphic novel The Late Night Writers Club.
The Sligo-based illustrator is one of only a small number of book illustrators in Ireland still working only on paper. The visual archive contains more than 105 full-colour original pen and ink illustrations, 272 pages of drafts and notes, along with work in progress photos and videos.
The Late Night Writers Club tells the story of a talented debut author, who takes refuge in the NLI on Dublin’s Kildare Street in search of last-minute inspiration when suffering from writer’s block and mysterious headaches. While there, the author meets a host of Irish literary greats, including James Joyce, WB Yeats, Sean O’Casey, Oscar Wilde, Samuel Beckett, Seamus Heaney, Elizabeth Bowen, Maeve Binchy, Maria Edgeworth, Patricia Lynch and Katherine Tynan, among others.
The collection will be made available to the public when it has been catalogued.
Director of the NLI, Dr Audrey Whitty, said: “One of our key objectives at the National Library of Ireland is to proactively collect contemporary materials that tell the story of Ireland. This collection allows us to celebrate another aspect of Ireland’s creative, literary and historical heritage. This is a fabulous collection of artwork and associated notes that really tell the story of how this book was developed – it is an absolute bonus that the book is set in the wonderful surrounds of the NLI building itself.”
West said: “It is wonderful and a great honour to have my work, but more importantly, to have this illustration-based work become part of our national collections. Illustrators are often forgotten alongside our literary peers – but in this novel, it is the illustrations that guide you through the world of our National Library, not just the words. In a world of social and digital media and video, it’s so essential that we truly value the very craft of illustration and design done by hand in Ireland, not just for the creatives themselves like me, but for us as a society to treasure the joy of visual literacy and an appreciation for visual media and what that gives to us in our storytelling. The National Library of Ireland has once again shown its commitment to cataloguing, preserving and making available contemporary creative materials, not just those from our history.”
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The Secret Bookshelf in Carrickfergus has won the Ireland category in the British Book Awards 2024′s Independent Bookshop of the Year category.
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Bonnier Books UK imprint has pre-empted for Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin’s “captivating” debut exploring “family, grief, queer identity, and the legacy of the Catholic Church in Ireland”.
Publisher Sophie Orme acquired world all-language rights to Ordinary Saints from Cara Lee Simpson at PFD. Publication is slated for spring 2025.
Trinity College, Dublin-educated Ní Mhaoileoin has worked as a journlist, content creator and communications consultant prior to her writing career. Ordinary Saints won the PFD Queer Fiction prize and was shortlisted for the inaugural Women’s Prize Discoveries award in 2022.
The book focuses on Jay, who was brought up in a devout household in Ireland and is now living in London with her girlfriend. She is determined not think too much about either the future or the past. But when she learns that her beloved older brother, who died in a terrible accident, may be made into a Catholic saint, “she realises she must at last confront her family, her childhood and herself…”
Orme said: “I love this fresh and captivating debut which shines a light on some of the lesser-known aspects of Catholicism while telling a familiar tale of growing apart from the family that raised you. A brilliant exploration of grief, love and loyalty, moving effortlessly between two timelines, Ordinary Saints gripped and moved me. It marks the arrival of a distinctive and exciting new voice.”
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HarperCollins UK’s One More Chapter has signed a four-book deal with Evie Woods, author of the Sunday Times and Amazon No. 1 bestseller, The Lost Bookshop, which has now sold over 700,000 copies in the US and UK. Rights have also been sold in 21 languages. Publisher Charlotte Ledger acquired World All Language rights directly from the author for three previously self-published titles and a forthcoming new novel. The first book in the contract, The Story Collector, is set to publish in July 2024.
