In this Saturday’s Irish Times, authors Neil Hegarty, Louise Kennedy, Séamas O’Reilly, Rosie Schaap, Kathleen MacMahon, Chiamaka Enyi-Amadi, Martina Evans, Helen Cullen and Adrian Duncan discuss their favourite cookbooks. And there is a Q&A with Trespasses author Louise Kennedy.
Reviews are Declan Kiberd on The Philosophy of Modern Song by Bob Dylan and Folk Music: A Bob Dylan Biography in Seven Songs by Greil Marcus; Nicholas Allen on The Ghost Limb by Claire Mitchell. Rónán Hession on the best new translations; Ian Hughes How to Stand up to a Dictator by Maria Ressa; Neil Hegarty on Deirdre Madden: New Critical Perspectives, edited by Anne Fogarty and Marisol Morales-Ladró; Anthony Roche on 30 Years of Later... with Jools Holland by Mark Cooper; Lucie Shelly on Someday Maybe by Onyi Nwabineli; Niamh Donnelly on Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver; Paul Clements on local history books; and Sarah Gilmartin on It Starts with Us by Colleen Hoover.
Watermelon by Marian Keyes is this Saturday’s Irish Times Eason offer. You can buy the bestselling title with your paper for €4.99, a saving of €5.
President Michael D Higgins has honoured Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin as Saoi of Aosdána, which is a recognition for outstanding achievement in the arts, at a ceremony in the Arts Council offices yesterdau. The ceremony included the presentation of a gold Torc, which is the symbol of the honour of Saoi.
Katherine Rundell has won the £50,000 Baillie Gifford Prize for Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne (Faber), her “exquisitely rendered” celebration of the life and work of the Elizabethan poet.
The winner was announced last night at The Science Museum in London. Rundell is a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, where she works on Renaissance literature. A bestselling children’s author, she has recently published The Golden Mole (Faber). Super-Infinite explores the many lives the love poet John Donne lived. He was a scholar of law, a sea adventurer, an MP and the Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral.
“Super-Infinite, Katherine Rundell’s glorious celebration of the life and work of the poet John Donne is our unanimous winner of the 2022 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction,” chair of judges Caroline Sanderson said. “Exquisitely rendered, its passion, playfulness and sparkling prose seduced all of us. Rundell makes an irresistible case for Donne’s work to be widely read 400 years later, for all the electric joy and love it expresses. And in so doing, she gives us a myriad reasons why poetry – why the arts – matter.”
Sally Hayden’s My Fourth Time, We Drowned: Seeking Refuge on the World’s Deadliest Migration Route (4th Estate) was shortlisted for the award.
Listen to the Land Speak: A Journey into the wisdom of what lies beneath us by Manchán Magan has been announced as Waterstones Irish Book of the Year 2022.
Inspired by language, landscape and mythology, Magan explores the insight and hidden wisdom native Irish culture offers to the people of Ireland and the world. This fascinating book sets out to trace our ancestors, uncovering myths that have defined the Irish identity.
Belle Edelman, Waterstones Belfast, said: “An awe-inspiring exploration of our land and its unique and inextricable link to myth. Magan expertly weaves linguistics, archaeological fact and allegory to create a brilliant portrait of Ireland that will make you appreciate it all the more, and potentially even be compelled go for a wander in the wilderness... Magan is a terrific storyteller”
Magan is a presenter, documentary-maker and writer, deeply interested in how cultures are rooted in landscapes. After travelling the world he turned his attention closer to home, exploring the mythology tied to the Irish landscape.
He said: “Waterstones was a wonderland of new ideas and stories for me growing up. So, it’s such a thrill for Listen to the Land Speak to be chosen by them as their Irish Book of the Year. Their support is going to help spread this message about the potency and magic of the land far further than I could ever imagine.”
Irish artist Sheila Rennick has been awarded The Moth Art Prize 2022. Born in Galway in 1983 and now living in London, Sheila Rennick’s work appears in many collections, including The Office of Public Works, The Arts Council Ireland, Trinity College Dublin and Country Bank, New York. She will have a solo exhibition with the Kevin Kavanagh Gallery at The London Art Fair in 2023.
‘The Moth Art Prize is something special,’ says Rennick. ‘It means the world to me to have the stories I tell in my paintings recognised in this way. I am so delighted to be in the company of such amazing previous winners, writers and artists. Thank you The Moth for getting the nuances and keeping it real.’
Rennick was co-recipient of the CAP Foundation Award upon graduation from The National College of Art and Design in 2004. She went on to do an MA in painting at St Martins College, London, and was one of 30 artists selected from across the UK for the notable Jerwood Contemporary painting exhibition in 2007.
The characters Rennick describes in her work are, according to Irish Times art critic Aidan Dunne, ‘exaggerated and deluded, but she doesn’t simply ridicule them, no matter how much they seem to do so themselves. She doesn’t assume or project a facile sense of moral or aesthetic superiority. There is some savagery to her humour, but a quality of objective analysis – and self-analysis – comes through.’
‘We were delighted with the quality and quirkiness of the entries this year,’ says The Moth publisher Rebecca O’Connor, who judges the prize alongside painter, partner and co-publisher, Will Govan, ‘but for us Sheila was a clear winner, with her instantly recognizable sugar-coated palette and her grotesquely familiar characters, like Mrs Woof, who seem to be just dripping in humour and bathos.
Rennick’s work features on the cover and throughout the winter issue of The Moth, available to purchase at themothmagazine.com and in select bookstores in Ireland and the UK.
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To celebrate its 25th anniversary, the National Print Museum invited internationally acclaimed author Claire Keegan to contribute a new short story to its recent project Short Stories in Print.
As part of these celebrations, the museum has announced an evening with Keegan, where she will read her contribution ‘Epitaph’ for the first time and a chapter from Small Things Like These. Keegan will then join teacher and critic, Niall MacMonagle, in conversation. The discussion will be followed by a festive mulled wine and mince pie reception. It takes place on Friday, December 16th at 7pm. Tickets €30 per person.
