Latest news with #IrishLiterature
Irish Times
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Éilís Ní Dhuibhne is new Laureate for Irish Fiction
Éilís Ní Dhuibhne is to be the new Laureate for Irish Fiction 2025-2028, the Arts Council has announced. The Laureate for Irish Fiction is an Arts Council initiative to honour an established Irish writer of fiction, nurture a new generation of writers, promote Irish literature nationally and internationally and encourage the public to engage with high-quality Irish fiction. The laureateship was most recently held by Colm Tóibín , following Sebastian Barry and the inaugural laureate, Anne Enright . 'The Arts Council is very proud to award Éilís Ní Dhuibhne the honour of Laureate for Irish Fiction from 2025 to 2028,' its chair, Maura McGrath, said. 'Her novels and short stories, published in both English and Irish, have rightly earned her critical acclaim and a devoted readership. We know she will bring remarkable vitality and deep understanding to the role, building on the great work of her predecessors.' READ MORE Mariella Frostrup, a member of the international selection panel, said: 'I'm so excited by the appointment of Éilís Ní Dhuibhne. It's a welcome opportunity to acknowledge and highlight a remarkable writing career, encompassing short stories, novels and non-fiction, and also to celebrate her valuable contribution to Gaelic via her bilingual prose. 'Her short stories, novels and non-fiction profoundly speak to the female experience while dealing with universal themes of aspiration, disappointment, love, jealousy, hope and human inadequacy – often with a hefty ladle of humour thrown in! 'As a teacher of creative writing, she's shown a deft ability to inspire writers and readers alike, adding to her credentials for this new public-facing role. I'm delighted that her wonderful books will now be introduced to an even wider audience and very much looking forward to the programme of activity that she will lead during her term as laureate.' Ní Dhuibhne said: 'I am absolutely delighted, very pleasantly surprised, and highly honoured to be offered the Laureateship in Irish Fiction. I feel lucky. Why me? Many writers deserve the accolade. 'So, after the first stunned few days, I am considering how to be an active and creative Laureate. Writing is something you do in privacy and solitude of course, but it always has an obvious public face. It moves from the inside of the writer's head, from their room or laptop or whatever, to the book or the screen. It's published. [ The best books for summer 2025: our critics' top picks Opens in new window ] 'And while the actual writing is a 'solitary' task, it generally has a social aspect in the more regular sense. Writers belong to their own community, and to the community of writers. All my life I have been meeting writers at book launches, classes, festivals, and in the writers' group I've belonged to for almost 40 years.' The overarching theme of her laureateship will be 'The Island of Imagination', exploring the question, 'What makes a good story?', as well as celebrating fiction in the Irish language and other European languages. She will be in conversation with Niall MacMonagle at a free public event in the National Library, Dublin, on September 16th at 7pm. Details will be published shortly on the Arts Council's website . Ní Dhuibhne was born in Dublin. Author of more than 30 books, her work includes the novels The Dancers Dancing; The Shelter of Neighbours; Fox, Swallow, Scarecrow; Hurlamaboc; Dordán; and Cailíní Beaga Ghleann na Blath, among others. She has published seven collections of short stories. Her most recent books are Twelve Thousand Days: A Memoir (shortlisted for the Michel Déon Award, 2020); Selected Stories (Blackstaff, 2023); Fáínne Geal an Lae (Clo Iar Chonnacht, 2023); Look! It's a Woman Writer! (Arlen House, 2021); and Well! You Don't Look It! Essays by Irish Women Writers on Ageing (Salmon, 2024). [ Éilís Ní Dhuibhne on the best Irish language books of 2025 so far Opens in new window ] She has received the Pen Award for an Outstanding Contribution to Irish Literature, a Hennessy Hall of Fame Award, many Oireachtas Awards for her writing in Irish, and the Stuart Parker Award for Drama. The Dancers Dancing was shortlisted for the Orange Prize (now the Women's Prize for Fiction) in 2000. She has written many scholarly articles on folklore and literary topics, and is a regular book reviewer for The Irish Times. In autumn 2020 she held the prestigious Burns Scholarship at Boston College. She is a member of Aosdána, and president of the Folklore of Ireland Society.
Irish Times
04-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Amelia Loulli wins Seamus Heaney First Collection Poetry Prize
In The Irish Times tomorrow, a host of our leading authors and well-read critics recommend the best books of the year so far for your reading pleasure. Gill Perdue tells Fiona Gartland about her latest thriller, The Night I Killed Him. Stephen Collins reflects on Telling the Truth is Dangerous: How Robert Dudley Edwards changed Irish history forever, Neasa MacErlean's biography of her grandfather, who taught Collins at UCD. And Carol Drinkwater discusses her latest novel, her career and Irish roots. Reviews are Séamas O'Reilly on the best graphic novels of the year so far; Andrew Lynch on Fatherhood: A History of Love and Power by Augustine Sedgewick; Ruby Eastwood on It's Terrible the Things I Have to Do to Be Me: On Femininity and Fame by Philippa Snow; Claire Hennessy on the best YA fiction; John Boyne on Deep House: The Gayest Love Story Ever Told by Jeremy Atherton Lin; Jessica Traynor on Ocean by Polly Clark; Huda Awan on The Boys by Leo Robson; Tim Fanning on Dark Laboratory: On Columbus, the Caribbean, and the Origins of the Climate Crisis by Tao Leigh Goffe; Philippa Conlon on All the Other Mothers Hate Me by Sarah Harman; Lucy Sweeney Byrne on Ordinary Love by Marie Rutkoski; Adrienne Murphy on After the Train, edited by Evelyn Conlon and Rebecca Pelan; Stan Erraught on Rebecca S Miller's Are You Dancing? Showbands, Popular Music and Memory in Ireland ; John Walshe on Human Resources: Slavery and the Making of Modern Britain – in 39 Institutions, People, Places and Things by Renay Richardson and Arisa Loomba; and Kevin Power on Oddbody by Rose Keating. This weekend's Irish Times Eason offer is The Drowned by John Banville, just €5.99, a €6 saving. Eason offer Amelia Loulli has won the Seamus Heaney First Collection Poetry Prize 2025, supported by the Atlantic Philanthropies and run by The Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen's University Belfast. READ MORE Loulli was announced as the winner for Slip, published by Jonathan Cape, during the award night readings in the Crescent Arts Centre, Belfast. She is a PhD candidate at Newcastle University where she researches the poetics of breath and writing trauma. In 2021 she won a Northern Writers' Award and in 2023 she was writer in residence at the British School in Rome. She lives in Cumbria with her three teenagers. 'Thank you to the judges for choosing Slip as their winner,' Loulli said. 'It's hard to articulate how much it means, all these years after beginning to write Slip's first poems, to have this work recognised with such an honour. 'I wrote Slip in the hope that it might challenge inherited shame by opening conversations about the stories and experiences we find it hardest to share. I also wrote these poems as I write all of my poems- in a state of wonder at the immense power of language and in conversation with the poets I most appreciate and admire- many of whom are past winners of this very prize. I'm extremely grateful to the judges and to the Seamus Heaney Centre for confirming Slip in such excellent company.' This year's judges were Prof Fran Brearton, Seamus Heaney Centre Fellow Fiona Benson, and Dr Dawn Watson. The shortlist also included The Butterfly House, by Kathryn Bevis; High Jump as Icarus Story, by Gustav Parker Hibbett; rock flight, by Hasib Hourani; The Iron Bridge, by Rebecca Hurst; and Food for the Dead, by Charlotte Shevchenko Knight. The prize is awarded annually to a writer whose first full collection has been published in the preceding year, by a UK or Ireland-based publisher. The winning writer receives £5,000 and is invited to participate in the Seamus Heaney Centre's busy calendar of literary events. * ONE, an imprint of Pushkin Press, is to publish Little Vanities, the third novel by prizewinning author and critic Sarah Gilmartin next May. Set in Dublin, Little Vanities follows the decades-long friendship between two couples from their Trinity college days to early middle life. Exploring their marriages and intertwined relationships, the novel circles around a performance of Pinter's Betrayal, with the play's depiction of deception, hidden emotions and veiled motivations all too present in the real world. Displaying Gilmartin's flair for magnetic storytelling readers will expect from her novels Dinner Party and Service, Little Vanities weaves multiple timeframes and points of view into her most compelling and ambitious work yet. Gilmartin said: 'I'm very happy to be published once again by the brilliant Pushkin Press and can't wait for them to share Little Vanities with readers. It's a story about the messy, interconnected relationships of two couples approaching 40 who can't quite let go of their youthful desires and ambitions. An exploration of longing, as driver and destroyer, it looks at the lengths people are willing to go to in the pursuit of pleasure over pain.' Publisher Laura Macaulay said: 'I'm in awe of what Sarah Gilmartin has achieved with Little Vanities: it's a sexy, funny, irresistibly clever novel about betrayal and desire written with incisive bite – the characters are living with me still. Readers are going to love it.' Gilmartin won the Máirtín Crawford Short Story Award in 2020. Her debut novel Dinner Party (ONE, 2021) was shortlisted for an Irish Book Award and the Kate O'Brien Award. Her second novel Service (ONE, 2023) was a Washington Post top books of summer and included in the Irish Times list of the best Irish fiction of the 21st century (2025). She is the current Arts Council Writer-in-Residence at Dublin City University. * Bestselling thriller author Jo Spain has moved to Zaffre, the flagship adult commercial fiction imprint of Bonnier Books UK, in a six-figure deal. World English rights for three books were acquired by Zaffre publisher Ben Willis from Nicola Barr at Rye Literary. Never To Be Found, the first book in the deal, is a standalone thriller to be published June 2026. It's based on a chilling phenomenon in Japan known as Jōhatsu - people who vanish voluntarily from their lives. Spain is the author of 13 bestselling thrillers, including three No.1s. She is also a successful screenwriter, and, along with her writing partner David Logan, she showruns Harry Wild, now in its fifth season. On her own, she has written the new mini-series Mix Tape, which won the audience choice award at the prestigious U.S. festival SXSW and has just been released in Australia to rave reviews. The series has been picked up by BBC2 for a late summer release. She is currently adapting her own novels The Trial, with Metropolitan Pictures (Wednesday), The Last to Disappear with Finland MTV and Don't Look Back with Archery Pictures. * To mark the publication of Two Kinds of Stranger by Steve Cavanagh, the thriller writer will be doing an event at Eason's, O'Connell St, Dublin on Thursday, July 24th, at 7pm. Tickets at €5 will be available to buy from and are redeemable against the book. * The National Concert Hall, in collaboration with the ARINS project (Analysing and Researching Ireland North and South), the Royal Irish Academy and Notre Dame University, will present a landmark public event, For and Against a United Ireland, on November 30th, at 7.30pm. As part of the NCH Talks series, two of the island's most respected journalists and commentators, Fintan O'Toole and Sam McBride, will each present their arguments for and against a united Ireland, a timely and thought-provoking discussion based on their forthcoming book from the RIA. Tickets: €20 (Book & Ticket Bundle €35) * Nicola Sturgeon, former First Minister of Scotland, will discuss her memoir Frankly with writer and journalist Susan McKay at the Seamus Heaney HomePlace on Tuesday, August 19th, at 7.30pm. Tickets are £22.50. Frankly recounts her journey from working-class roots in Ayrshire to the forefront of Scottish politics as the country's first female - and longest-serving - First Minister. Dr Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire receiving his second PhD in March 2025 Irish Food History: A Companion, co-edited by Dr Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire of TU Dublin and graduate Dr Dorothy Cashman, has been named Best Culinary History Book in the World at the 2025 Gourmand Awards, held during the Cascais World Food Summit in Portugal. This global recognition highlights TU Dublin's international leadership in culinary arts scholarship and affirms the university's reputation as a centre of excellence in food culture, history, and academic publishing. Published by the Royal Irish Academy, Irish Food History: A Companion takes readers on a compelling journey through Ireland's culinary heritage from the Ice Age to the contemporary food scene. The richly illustrated volume features contributions from TU Dublin staff and graduates, including Dr Elaine Mahon, Dr Brian J. Murphy, Margaret Connolly, current PhD candidate Fionnán O'Connor, and PhD graduates Dr Tara McConnell and Dr John D. Mulcahy. The book's distinctive visual design is the work of Brenda Dermody from TU Dublin's School of Art and Design. Speaking at the award ceremony at the Estoril Congress Centre, Gourmand Awards founder Edouard Cointreau praised the publication, stating: 'Congratulations to the Royal Irish Academy, Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire and Dorothy Cashman on the publication of Irish Food History: A Companion! This expertly curated and richly illustrated volume offers an extraordinary journey through Ireland's culinary past. With contributions from leading historians and a masterful blend of storytelling, research, and evocative descriptions, the book is a treasure for anyone passionate about food, history, and cultural heritage.' Established in 1995, the Gourmand Awards are the only international competition dedicated to books on food and drink culture. Open to entries in all languages and involving over 200 countries annually, the awards are a global benchmark of excellence in food writing and scholarship. Mac Con Iomaire welcomed the award as a milestone moment for the university: 'We are overjoyed to have our book appreciated on the global stage. This accolade reflects not only the calibre of research and collaboration taking place at TU Dublin, but also the university's growing global influence in the culinary arts.'
Irish Times
10-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Ageism in this day and age
Sir, – In the second sentence of the article on debut novelist Orlaine McDonald, (' Writer Orlaine McDonald: 'I felt a strong need to transcend that little working-class girl who had got herself up the duff,' June 7th) we are told that McDonald 'is 55 but looks not a day above 40'. How, in this day and age, is this focus on age and appearance, presumably meant to make us positively predisposed to McDonald from the outset, an appropriate introduction to a new novelist? I couldn't bring myself to read the third sentence and, anyway, I was too busy wondering when I've ever read such comments in an introduction to a new male novelist…. – Yours, etc, DR CLARA NEARY, READ MORE Co Donegal.
Irish Times
07-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Walking Ghosts by Mary O'Donnell: An ambitious, dystopian and horny collection
Walking Ghosts Author : Mary O'Donnell ISBN-13 : 9781917453226 Publisher : Mercier Press Guideline Price : €16.99 The opening story of Mary O'Donnell's new collection sets a pattern for what is to come by depicting the Covid-19 lockdowns as an instance of paralysis in the Joycean fashion. Its protagonist struggles to live meaningfully in a world turned upside-down by 'that microscopic ball with the little cartoon feet', and many of the characters who follow experience a similar longing to shatter the nagging stasis of their lives. On one level these are the walking ghosts of the title but, on another, they are ciphers for the old-guard tropes of Irish literary writing – the contested field, the London abortion, and so on – which O'Donnell here seeks to reanimate and, in one or two cases, cast aside entirely. No surprise, so, that many of her protagonists are survivors of Ireland's literary-industrial complex (one rather brilliant tale, The Stolen Man, concerns a writing student succumbing to the seductive creative freedoms of Galway). Yet, after several stories content to probe the margins of suburban realism, O'Donnell suddenly delivers a jolt of genre energy halfway through The Space Between Louis and Me. It is the kind of story that makes you go back and re-read it from the start (to say any more would be to ruin the surprise). READ MORE Soon after comes The Creators, the most striking story here, which offers a reflective extrapolation of our contemporary climate crisis. Set in a future of 'fear and extreme heat' where Scotland's Hebrides have been transformed into 'Garden Isles', this is a deftly sketched portrait of desperation and desire, one worthy of inclusion on the eclectic shelf of insular dystopian fiction by Irish women (think The Bray House by Éilís Ní Dhuibhne or Last Ones Left Alive by Sarah Davis-Goff). Walking Ghosts is a work of quiet ambition rich in standout descriptions ('He looks like a horse in a cubist painting'). Moreover, this is a horny collection, one happy to linger on female desire through chances taken – or not – on lost loves or intoxicating holiday acquaintances. Yet the most intriguing flirtation here is that of O'Donnell with speculative fiction. This paradoxically both elevates and anchors the proceedings. Because, yes, the future may be dire, but its calamitous potential may yet be dampened by the choices we make now.
New York Times
06-06-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Paul Durcan, Irish Poet of Tortured and Tender Souls, Is Dead at 80
Paul Durcan, an Irish poet whose droll, sardonic and frequently tender poems about lads in dimly lit pubs, quotidian life in the countryside and the trauma of political violence made him one of Ireland's most popular writers of the 20th century, died on May 17 in Dublin. He was 80. His death, in a nursing home, was caused by age-related myocardial degeneration, his daughter Sarah Durcan said. In the annals of long-suffering poets, Mr. Durcan's hardships probably merit special distinction. After he set about becoming a writer in the 1960s, his father — a hidebound judge who called him a 'sissy' — apparently sent family members to remove him from a Dublin pub and then had him committed to a psychiatric hospital. Mr. Durcan suffered through several years of electroshock treatments. He feared he would be lobotomized. 'I was seen as going the way of a poet,' he once said, 'and that had to be stopped.' After running away the hospital, Mr. Durcan sought out fellow poets for assistance and mentorship, including Patrick Kavanagh, who helped him publish his work. Mr. Durcan channeled the trauma of his father's emotional abandonment and the horrors of psychiatric wards into an unmistakable voice on the page. 'Durcan's abundant imagination has indeed left us a universe of iconoclastic poems that combine art and everyday life, insight and originality,' the poet Gerard Smyth wrote in The Irish Times after Mr. Durcan's death. 'He was one of the great mavericks, a literary phenomenon with a commitment to poetry as a calling.' Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
