In this Saturday’s Irish Times, reviews are Geoff Roberts on Russia: Revolution and Civil War 1917-1921 by Anthony Beevor; Sinead O’Shea on The Prince Rupert Hotel for the Homeless: A True Story of Love and Compassion Amid a Pandemic by Christina Lamb; Claire Hennessy on the best new YA fiction; Matthew O’Toole on Chums: How a tiny group of Oxford Tories took over Britain by Simon Kuper and Rule, Nostalgia: A Backwards History of Britain by Hannah Rose Woods; NJ McGarrigle on So Young by Damian and Gerard Gorman; Matthew Shipsey on Lindsey Fitzharris’ The Facemaker: One Surgeon’s Battle to Mend the Disfigured Soldiers of World War; Terence Killeen on Multiple Joyce: 100 short essays about James Joyce’s cultural legacy by David Collard and Constantine Curran’s James Joyce Remembered; Oliver Farry on No Escape by Nury Turkel; Liam Cagney on The Last Days of Roger Federer and Other Endings by Geoff Dyer; and Sarah Gilmartin on Keeping In Touch by Anjali Joseph.
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American-Canadian author Ruth Ozeki has won the 2022 Women’s Prize for Fiction with her fourth novel, The Book of Form and Emptiness (Canongate Books), an inventive, bold, humane novel that tells the story of a 13-year-old boy who, after the tragic death of his father, starts to hear the voices of objects speaking to him.
At an awards ceremony in Bedford Square Gardens, central London hosted by novelist, playwright and Women’s Prize Founder Director Kate Mosse, the 2022 Chair of Judges, Mary Ann Sieghart, presented the author with the £30,000 prize. Sieghart said: ‘In an extraordinary year for fiction written by women, and from an incredibly strong shortlist, we were thrilled to choose Ruth Ozeki’s The Book of Form and Emptiness, which stood out for its sparkling writing, warmth, intelligence, humour and poignancy. A celebration of the power of books and reading, it tackles big issues of life and death, and is a complete joy to read. Ruth Ozeki is a truly original and masterful storyteller.’
The judges for the 2022 Women’s Prize for Fiction are: Lorraine Candy, award-winning journalist and editor; Dorothy Koomson, global bestselling novelist, journalist and podcaster; Anita Sethi, award-winning author and literary journalist; and Pandora Sykes, journalist, broadcaster and author. Mary Ann Sieghart is this year’s chair.
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This weekend’s Irish Times Eason book offer is Aisling and the City by Emer McLysaght and Sarah Breen, which you can buy with your paper at any branch for just €4.99, a saving of €5.
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The poets shortlisted for the 2022 Forward Prize for Best Collection are Kaveh Akbar for Pilgrim Bell (Chatto & Windus); Anthony Joseph for Sonnets for Albert (Bloomsbury); Shane McCrae for Cain Named the Animal (Little Brown); Kim Moore for All the Men I Never Married (Seren); and Helen Mort for The Illustrated Woman (Chatto & Windus).
Padraig Regan has been shortlisted for the 2022 Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection for Some Integrity (Carcanet), along with Mohammed El-Kurd for Rifqa (Haymarket); Holly Hopkins for English Summer (Penned in the Margins); Warsan Shire for Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head (Chatto & Windus); and Stephanie Sy-Quia for Amnion (Granta).
Nick Laird has been shortlisted for The 2022 Forward Prize for Best Single Poem for Up Late (Granta) along with Louisa Campbell for Dog on a British Airways Airbus (Perverse); Cecilia Knapp for I’m Shouting I LOVED YOUR DAD at my Brother’s Cat (Perverse); Carl Phillips for Scattered Snows, to the North (PN Review); and Clare Pollard for Pollen (Bad Lilies). The winners will be announced in November.
The winners of the UK’s longest running and best-loved book awards for children and young people, the Yoto Carnegie Greenaway Awards were announced today in a ceremony at The British Library.
The Yoto Carnegie Medal is awarded to Katya Balen for her second novel October, October (Bloomsbury), illustrated by Angela Harding – her debut novel, The Space We’re In was longlisted in 2019. October, October is a “beautiful” and “captivating” story of a girl, October, who must learn to spread her wings after a childhood spent living wild in the woods changes dramatically the year she turns 11. The story was inspired by Balen’s father-in-law who lives off-grid, and her own love of mudlarking and the outdoors.
Danica Novgorodoff’s illustrated edition of Jason Reynold’s 2019 Carnegie-shortlisted book, Long Way Down (Faber) wins the Yoto Kate Greenaway Medal – the first graphic novel to win since Raymond Briggs’ Father Christmas in 1973. It is her debut children’s book published in the UK and is an “innovative” adaptation of the original verse novel of gun violence and grief written by 2021 Yoto Carnegie Medal winner, Jason Reynolds (Look Both Ways). The book features hundreds of “stunning” watercolours depicting the decision that 15-year-old Will must make when his brother is shot.
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To mark the centenary of Ulysses, University College Dublin created the short film ‘Re: Joyce A Life in the Day’, to salute James Joyce, the university’s most famous graduate. The film’s aim is to share with viewers, across the world, how Joyce’s creative spirit lives on in Belfield today. It celebrates the links between UCD’s current dynamic and diverse student population and James Joyce, who, from 1898-1902, studied English, Italian and French at University College (Dublin), then based in Newman House on St. Stephen’s Green, now Moli. The film brings the Joycean connections to life in a visual, creative, unexpected and thoughtful way. As such, the short film focuses on our protagonist Leo, and an imagined day in her life around the UCD.campus in places like DramSoc, a lecture theatre and the Special Collections at UCD and Moli. Watch it here.
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Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland and Chair of The Elders, will present the Irish PEN/PEN na hÉireann Award for Outstanding Contribution to Irish Literature (posthumously) to one of Ireland’s greatest poets, Eavan Boland, on June 26th at a private ceremony in the Museum of Literature Ireland (MoLI). The award was due to be presented in March 2020, but Covid19 intervened, followed by Eavan Boland’s untimely death in April of that same year, and the event had to be postponed.
Boland was the recipient of numerous accolades throughout her long career, among them a Lannan Foundation Award, the PEN Award for creative non-fiction, the Corrington Medal for Literary Excellence and the Bucknell Medal of Distinction and in 2017, she was elected an honorary member of the Royal Irish Academy. In her own poetry, she was revolutionary: she wrote about her domestic and maternal life and asserted that feeding a baby, putting out milk bottles, and living ‘in the suburbs’ could be the stuff of poetry.
Lia Mills, chair of Irish PEN/PEN na hÉireann, observed that Eavan Boland ‘had a way of drilling deeper into the core of words and shifting our angle of perception. These shifts were not always comfortable, but they were effective’. Robinson described Eavan Boland, her friend, as a very ‘practical’ poet, one who knew, even early on, how to use a computer. In contrast, Mary Robinson was, she said, the ‘dreamy lawyer’. Vice-chair of Irish PEN, Maria McManus, expressed that which we have lost in Boland’s passing, and all that we have gained from her life among us: ‘We will receive sustenance from the work of Eavan Boland for a long time yet to come. She shared the deep truths of ‘dailiness’... We see ourselves more clearly, we are better people and we are more daring because of her’.
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A not-for-profit learning platform which hosts personal conversations designed to challenge stigma and stereotypes through dialogue is part of this year’s programme of Earagail Arts Festival in CoDonegal (9th – 24th July).
The Human Library® is, in the true sense of the word, a library of people. The organisation host events all over the world where readers can borrow human beings serving as open books and have conversations they would not normally have access to. Earagail Arts Festival & Donegal County Council Library Service present The Human Library® at The Central Library, Letterkenny on Thursday, July 14th, 1pm - 8pm. Visit eaf.ie
Women & The State: Writing Irish History, Earagail Arts Festival, Co Donegal, Rathmullan House, Rathmullan, Sunday, July 24th, 3pm. As part of Earagail Arts Festival in Co Donegal (9th – 24th July), writer, editor and broadcaster, Sineád Gleeson chairs a panel discussion looking at what it means to bear witness in literature and writing to histories of The Irish State.
Women & The State: Writing Irish History will look backwards and forwards in time, through the lens of shifting societal attitudes and beliefs, to explore questions of identity, place and community. The event at Rathmullan House will feature journalist Aoife Moore, writer Elaine Feeney, and poet Annemarie Ní Churreáin, plus music by renowned fiddle player, Brid Harper. Visit eaf.ie
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The shortlist for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year 2022, the UK and Ireland’s most prestigious crime writing award, has been announced: Elly Griffiths, whose novel The Night Hawks marks her fifth time on the shortlist; Joseph Knox for his blending of non-fiction and gripping storytelling in True Crime Story; historical crime writer Laura Shepherd Robinson for her second novel Daughters of Night, which reveals another side to Georgian high society; Mick Herron, whose Slough House series has been adapted into Apple TV drama Slow Horses; Vaseem Khan for Midnight at Malabar House, the first in a new series following India’s first female police detective; and Will Dean, who has swapped his usual Scandi-Noir setting for a tense tale set in the wilds of the British fenlands.
The winner will be revealed at the first night of the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival on July 21st.
