Two Irish writers up for Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize

Irish Times

19-06-2025

In The Irish Times on Saturday,
Yael van der Wouden talks to Jessica Doyle about being intersex, her childhood in Israel and winning the Women's Prize for Fiction; Timothy O'Grady tells John Self about his new novel, Monaghan;
and there is a Q&A with Claire Adam about her career and new novel, Love Forms.
Reviews are Conor O'Clery on Perfect Storm: Russia's Failed Economic Opening, the Hurricane of War and Sanctions, and the Uncertain Future by Thane Gustafson; Kevin Power on The Benefactors by Wendy Erskine; Declan Ryan on Gerard Fanning's Selected Poems; Catherine Taylor on the best new translations; John Quin on Slags by Emma Jane Unsworth; Kristen Malone Poli on Once the Deed is Done by Rachel Seiffert; Jessica Traynor on Artists, Siblings, Visionaries: The Lives and Loves of Gwen and Augustus John by Judith Mackrell; Charles Lysaght on Military Maverick: Selected Letters and War Diary of 'Chink' Dorman-Smith edited by Lavinia Greacen; Lucy Sweeney Byrne on A Family Matter by Claire Lynch; Paul Gillespie on Europe without Borders by Isaac Stanley-Becker;
Mei Chin on Isabel Allende's My Name is Emilia Del Valle; John Boyne on Albion by Anna Hope; NJ McGarrigle on No Straight Road Takes You There by Rebecca Solnit; and Brian Hanley on Coming Clean: The Rise of Critical Theory and the Future of the Left by Eric Heinze.
Tomorrow's Irish Times Eason offer is Our London Lives by Christine Dwyer Hickey, just €5.99, a €6 saving.
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Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin's Ordinary Saints and Catherine Airey's Confessions have made the six-strong shortlist for the £5,000 Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize 2025, won last year by Ferdia Lennon for Glorious Exploits.
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Ní Mhaoileoin said: 'I'm so honoured to be on the shortlist, and particularly to have been nominated by Waterstones booksellers from across the country. Publishing Ordinary Saints has given me a new insight into the critical role booksellers play in connecting readers with the stories we love. I'm incredibly grateful for their support.'
Ní Mhaoileoin is from Dublin and now lives in Edinburgh. In 2022, she won the PFD Queer Fiction Prize and was shortlisted for the Women's Prize Discoveries award. Ordinary Saints was inspired by the story of 'the first millennial saint' Carlo Acutis. After moving to London from Ireland, Jay is navigating normal young adulthood, when she faces a less common identity crisis: her deceased elder brother is up for canonisation.
Airey said: 'I'm absolutely delighted to be on the shortlist. Confessions is a novel about not quite knowing how to be a person in the world, which I think is true for a lot of us. While I was writing, I was struck by the relative freedom I had to define my own life, compared to the generations of women who had come before me. Still, it seemed my choices were not really my own, but informed by so many sociological factors beyond my control. The book is an exploration of where we come from and where we end up going, through our choices and the choices that are made for us.'
Airey grew up in England in a family of mixed English-Irish descent and she wrote Confessions whilst living in Co Cork. Skipping across generations and decades from rural 1970s Ireland and New York in the shadow of 9/11, to both places in the politically volatile present: Confessions creates a 3D view of one family and the histories its members inhabit across three generations.
Also shortlisted are Saraswati by Gurnaik Johal; Sunstruck by William Rayfet Hunter; When the Cranes Fly South by Lisa Ridzén, translated by Alice Menzies; and The Artist by Lucy Steeds.
The winner will be announced on July 24th.
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Andrew Miller has won the 2025 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction for his novel The Land In Winter, which is set in a remote English community during the long, hard winter of 1962/63. The prize's definition of 'historical' is a book set at least 60 years ago, meaning Miller's novel fell just within the criterion.
The panel of judges, chaired by writer Katie Grant, said: 'A true master craftsman, Andrew Miller has painted big themes on a subtle canvas of tiny detail. With rare and delicate skill, The Land in Winter opens up the lives of Bill and Rita, Eric and Irene in ways that will sing differently to each reader, and sing differently again on each re-reading. With prose as softly dazzling as the snow of the 1962/63 winter in which the novel is set, Andrew Miller takes his richly deserved place amongst the Walter Scott Prize pantheon of great contemporary writers.'
Miller said of his inspiration: '[The people in my novel] … came walking slowly out of a blizzard. I leaned quite heavily into the early married lives of my parents, and some of the people they knew, all of whom are long dead now. One of the few advantages of getting older is that your own past becomes material for an historical novel."
Ferdia Lennon and Kevin Barry were both shortlisted for the prize.
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Ashani Lewis has won both the Betty Trask Prize and Somerset Maugham award for her novel Winter Animals. Described as 'a rare achievement' by judge Ellen Wiles, and 'told with verve, intelligence, and confidence', Winter Animals is the story of 38-year-old Elen, recently estranged from her husband, who falls in with a group of wealthy squatters and is forced to discover the dark secret that fuels their desire to escape.
Lewis recieved £14,000 for her double win at the 2025 Society of Authors' (SoA) awards ceremony on Wednesday evening in London.
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Clair Wills has been shortlisted for the TLS Ackerley Prize 2025 for memoir and autobiography for Missing Persons, along with Catherine Coldstream for Cloistered and Jeff Young for Wild Twin. The winner of the £4,000 prize will be announced at a special event featuring the shortlisted authors in conversation with the chair of the judges, Peter Parker, at Foyles, 107 Charing Cross Rd, London on July 23rd at 7pm.
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The Irish Writers Centre has launched Dublin, One City, Many Stories – a six-part video series celebrating 15 years of Dublin's Unesco City of Literature designation and honouring the centre's role as an all-island resource for writers. The series captures a city teeming with stories – past, present and still to come.
Mags O'Loughlin, CEO of the centre, said: 'This series is a love letter to Dublin, yes – but it's also a rousing call to every writer, reader, dreamer and scribbler who's ever felt the pull of the pen. We've created something beautiful and brave here, a true chorus of voices – some long established, some just finding their rhythm – all united by this city that seems to demand to be written about. To be involved in an initiative like this, which celebrates the full spectrum of Irish and international writing talent, is an absolute joy.'
The first episode launches in July, featuring Joseph O'Connor revisiting Dún Laoghaire's Lexicon and the James Joyce Tower in Sandymount – places that first stirred his passion for storytelling.
O'Connor said: 'The hometown of a writer becomes part of the DNA, and I'm blessed that Dún Laoghaire is the place where I grew up. A coastal town has stories and glories, tides and ghosts, comings and goings, a bit of grit beneath the fingernails. From the pier and the Martello tower, if the walls could talk they'd tell secrets. I'm honoured to be interviewed for this series.'
Over the coming months, audiences will meet a stellar lineup of 20 writers including Marian Keyes, John Banville, Neil Jordan, Emmet Kirwan as they share their reflections on writing, place and identity – with each writer offering a unique take on the literary lifeblood of Dublin.
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A new literature strand created in partnership with UCC, Western Frequencies, will be part of this year's Cork Midsummer Festival.
This literary strand, on June 21st and 22nd, will explore, through collaboration, performance and conversation, the artistic frequencies and echoes and fever dreams over which we broadcast self and other cultures and communities. The programme includes a special event with New York Times bestselling poet Claudia Rankine, the work of Ivorian artist GauZ' performed as it has never been before with translations from Frank Wynne, acclaimed Irish visual artist Aideen Barry in conversation with writer Sinéad Gleeson, and a new collaboration by writer Patrick McCabe with musicians David Murphy and Michael Lightborne. Tickets are on sale now corkmidsummer.com
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Richard Shore, a Co Waterford children's author, has launched bedtime adventures for children with imaginative tales, and a story of helping ocean pollution.
Hurrahtum Adventures! Four Magical Tales, features Poppy who lives by the sea, and has amazing adventures with a cove and boat.
One story in the collection, The Tangled Tuna, highlights ocean plastic pollution and ghost fishing gear - a major ocean polluter.
For every book sold, the author will donate five per cent of profits to Ocean Generation - a charity empowering an inclusive global movement to tackle ocean threats through science and storytelling.
His other book - Will's Wild Adventures: Four Exciting Tales, is about Will, who lives in an amazing wilderness. The books, priced €9.99 each, are illustrated by Iqbal Sandy.
richardshorebooks.ie