In The Irish Times this Saturday, Claire Connolly explores the world and legacy of Somerville & Ross and there is a Q&A with Giles Foden about his career and latest novel, Thirst. As Notre Dame reopens in Paris after the 2019 fire, Rory O’Sullivan reflects on its starring role in Victor Hugo’s tragic 19th-century Paris novel, The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Reviews are Áine Ní Ghlinn on Irish-language books of the year; Clíona Ní Ríordáin on John Montague: A Poet’s Life by Adrian Frazier; Elizabeth MacBride on Your Own Dark Shadow, edited and introduced by Jack Fennell; Declan O’Driscoll on the best new fiction in translation; Laurence Marley on The Hidden Victims: Civilian Casualties of the Two World Wars by Cormac Ó Gráda; Michael Cronin on winter Papers; and Brian Hanley on Off-White: Why anti-Semitism Persists by Rachel Shabi.
This weekend’s Irish Times Eason offer is Think Twice by Harlan Coben, just €5.99, a €6 saving.
English PEN, together with Irish PEN/PEN na hÉireann and the Estate of Seamus Heaney, has announced Susannah Dickey’s ISDAL (Picador Poetry) as the winner of the inaugural PEN Heaney Prize at a ceremony in the Great Hall, Queen’s University Belfast, in partnership with the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s.
The PEN Heaney Prize, founded in 2024, recognises a single volume of poetry by one author, published in the UK or Ireland, of outstanding literary merit that engages with the impact of cultural or political events on human conditions or relationships.
The inaugural prize was judged by poets Nick Laird, Paula Meehan and Shazea Quraishi, with Catherine Heaney joining them as non-voting chair and representing the Estate of Seamus Heaney.
“Susannah Dickey’s ISDAL is an astonishingly inventive look at a cold case, that of an unidentified woman found in 1970 near Bergen in Norway,” the judges said. “Armed with a wide variety of forms and a formidable vocabulary, Dickey explores and satirises the true crime genre, and specifically our culture’s obsession with woman victims.
Dickey said: “I’m delighted to have won the inaugural PEN Heaney Prize. The Heaney family continues to do such brilliant work in Seamus’ name, and the mission statement of this prize is such a necessary one. I believe poetry to be uniquely capable of querying and critiquing the linguistic structures that underpin the systems which dictate our lives, and in my mind there’s no doubt that Heaney was one of the very best to do it. I’m very grateful that Nick, Paula, and Shazea may have thought my work somewhat successful in this regard, and I’m so happy to be a fragrant blight on the poetry landscape.”
Catherine Dunne, chair of Irish PEN/PEN na hÉireann, said: “From an extraordinarily rich and diverse shortlist, Susannah Dickey’s first collection, ISDAL, has emerged as the winner. Dickey’s ISDAL is poetry that explores the impact of individual cultural events on the human condition without ever losing ‘its fundamentally self-delighting inventiveness’. With an underlying theme of violence against women, and society’s obsession with ‘true crime’, this collection directs our focus to the wider world in a way that chimes perfectly with PEN’s emphasis on human rights and the promotion of literature that serves to illuminate and engage. In Seamus Heaney’s own words, ‘I can’t think of a case where poems changed the world, but what they do is they change people’s understanding of what’s going on in the world’.
Catherine Heaney said: “On behalf of the Estate of Seamus Heaney, I am delighted that the judges of the PEN Heaney Prize have selected ISDAL by Susannah Dickey as the winner, in this inaugural year. In an incredibly strong field of contenders that reflected the richness and multiplicity of voices and subjects contained within collections published in 2023, ISDAL stood out for its formal inventiveness, engagement with themes in popular culture, and sheer brio.”
Also shortlisted were: The Coming Thing by Martina Evans; Hyena! by Fran Lock; Blood Feather by Patrick McGuinness; We Play Here by Dawn Watson; and A Tower Built Downwards by Yang Lian, translated by Brian Holton.
Dead Bait by Mattie Brennan has won this year’s RTÉ Short Story Competition 2024 in honour of Francis MacManus. The winning stories were selected by writers Claire Kilroy, Neil Hegarty and Kathleen MacMahon, from a shortlist of 10 stories announced earlier this month
Dead Bait was chosen as the overall winner, in the words of the judges, for “its mastery of storytelling, triumph of detail and sense of jeopardy that grows as the story nears its gripping conclusion”. As winner, Brennan received a cheque for €5,000.
Second Prize went to Divination, by Stephen O’Reilly who was presented with a cheque for €4,000, while Third Prize went to The Other Órla, by Emer O’Toole who was presented with a cheque for €3,000. The seven runners-up received €250 each. The announcement was made at an RTÉ Radio 1 Arena RTÉ Short Story Special hosted by Sean Rocks in the Pavillion Theatre, Dún Laoghaire, broadcast on Arena on RTÉ Radio 1 on Monday.
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The Irish Writers Centre holds its annual celebration of Nollaig na mBan on Monday, January 6th, 2025, from 7pm to 9pm, in Pearse Street Library, Dublin. Originally a day off for Ireland’s hard-working women immediately after Christmas, the centre reimagines this tradition by showcasing extraordinary women writers in Ireland. Tickets are now on sale via its website.
This year’s theme is Women of Magic and Science. Poet Jessica Traynor will host the celebration which features newly commissioned work from novelist Nuala O’Connor, who will be writing on the legendary Irish herbalist and ‘wisewoman’ Biddy Early. Fresh from her artist residency at the Institute of Physics, Chandrika Narayanan-Mohan will be reading a new piece on quantum physics and poetry. There will also be readings from Sophie White, Anne Tannam, Marianne Lee and Shauna Gilligan. Musical entertainment will be provided by musician and composer Zoé Basha.
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The Pavilion Theatre in Dún Laoghaire has two attractive shows in December based on books. A staged reading of Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan, performed by Andrew Bennett with live original music by Eleanor McEvoy, takes place on December 17th and 18th. The Very Hungry Caterpillar Christmas Show, based on Eric Carle’s books, runs from December 20th until January 5th. Booking at paviliontheatre.ie
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Jon Ransom has won the Polari Book Prize for the second year running, this time for The Gallopers (Muswell Press), his story of a tense and mesmerising love triangle. Nicola Dinan won the Polari First Book Prize, judged by Ransom, for her tale of young love and transformation, Bellies (Penguin).
Sarah Hagger-Holt was awarded the biannual Polari Children’s and YA Prize for The Fights That Make Us (Usborne), a heart-warming tale of acceptance, which draws on LGBTQ+ history. The prizes were presented at a ceremony at the British Library.
Paul Burston, founder and chair of judges for both adult categories, said: “At first glance, this year’s prize-winning novels couldn’t be more different – one contemporary, the other historical; one urban, the other rural; one exploring the trans experience from a modern British, cross-cultural perspective, the other looking at working class gay lives in 1950s Norfolk. But both push the boundaries of LGBTQ fiction; both feature the formal device of a play within the main narrative; and both explore the loves and lives of queer characters in surprising new ways. Beautifully written, deeply moving and dazzlingly original, these are novels destined to become modern classics.”
Ransom said: “Wonderfully modern, timely and complex, Bellies is a call to move beyond judgment towards perception – a book that deserves to be read.” Ransom won the prize last year for The Whale Tattoo.
Garry Wilson, judge of the Polari Book Prize and CEO of EasyJet holidays, said: “Jon Ransom’s writing continues to both dazzle and unsettle. His unique signature style is his uncanny ability to convey so much through such an economy of words that effortlessly captures the lives and dialogue of his complex characters, as well as the oppressive environment they live in. A writer of original, breathtaking talent, The Gallopers, should already be considered as a novel worthy to take its place among the canon of queer literature.”
Jodie Lancet-Grant, judge of the Polari Children’s and YA Prize, said: “The entire panel adored The Fights That Make Us. We found the way that Sarah weaves two timelines – one around growing up in the 1980s under Section 28 – and one set in the present day – together, effective and moving. We also loved the form; half of the book is presented in diary format, which provided an extra layer of emotion to book.”
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On its 204th birthday the Royal Society of Literature (RSL) announced the winners of the first RSL Jerwood Poetry Awards, a new prize, developed from the Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowships that ran from 2017 to 2022. It will create career-making opportunities for three cohorts of four winners from England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland (12 in total) between 2024 and 2027. Each year, poetry experts are invited to nominate outstanding, innovative poets on the verge of a career breakthrough who will win £10,000 – enough to create the time and space to focus on developing their practice and create new work.
The winners are Karen McCarthy Woolf, clare e. potter, Roseanne Watt and Scott McKendry, representing England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland respectively. Each poet receives a £10,000 stipend to give them time to write, as well as mentoring from an RSL Fellow poet, Sinead Morrissey in McKendry’s case.
“I’m very honoured to receive the award,” said McKendry, whose debut collection Gub was published this year by Corsair. “It comes at a pivotal time for the work. Chuffed!”
Morrissey said: “Scott’s project constitutes a significant development from his earlier – already highly – accomplished work and I look forward to our conversations about history, language, class, and translation in the context of a changing Belfast. I’m sure I’ll learn as much from Scott as he may learn from me and that the mentoring will be a shared opportunity for development.”
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Submissions are now open for the 2025 Dingle Lit Short Story Competition, for writers who are residents on the island of Ireland at the time of submission.
This year, John Patrick McHugh will judge the English-language entries. McHugh, the author of Pure Gold and the upcoming novel Fun and Games, is the fiction editor for Banshee Press. Éilís Ní Dhuibhne, the novelist and short story writer, will judge the Irish-language entries. Ní Dhuibhne, who has written over 25 books, is renowned for works such as The Dancers Dancing and Twelve Thousand Days, and is a member of Aosdána.
Winners will receive €500 for 1st Prize; €250 for Runner-up; and €100 for Highly Commended. Winners, runners-up, and highly commended authors will be published on the Dingle Lit Festival website and will also invited to the 2025 Dingle Lit Festival to read from their work, providing them with an invaluable opportunity to showcase their talent to a wider audience.
Festival director Hannah Bulger said, “We are delighted to open submissions for the 2025 Dingle Lit Short Story Competition. Following last year’s success, we are excited to provide a platform for both emerging and established writers to share their work. We’re thrilled to announce John Patrick McHugh and Éilís Ní Dhuibhne as this year’s guest judges, and we are looking forward to this year’s entries.” The deadline for entries is midnight on February 28th. dinglelit.ie
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Brazen is to publish Fern Brady’s debut novel High Energy Unpleasant on June 2026. It explores bodily autonomy, medical misogyny and the repercussions of what happens when your internal world is suffocated. It questions who owns our bodies – if we don’t? The Scottish writer and comedian with Irish roots won a Nero Award last year for Strong Female Character, her memoir on sexism and neurodiversity.
HarperCollins Children’s Books has announced the publication next June of The Day the Crayons Made Friends, a follow-up to Drew Daywalt and Oliver Jeffers’s No1 New York Times bestselling picture books, The Day the Crayons Quit and The Day the Crayons Came Home.
