In The Irish Times tomorrow, Kit de Waal tells Edel Coffey about her latest novel, The Best of Everything and there is a Q&A with Catherine Ryan Howard about her new thriller, Burn After Reading.
Reviews are Vic Duggan on Burn Them Out! A History of Fascism and the Far Right in Ireland by Pádraig Óg Ó Ruairc; Kevin Rafter on Wild Fictions by Amitav Ghosh; Mei Chin on Wild Grace: The Untamed Women of Modern Dance by Sara Veale; Claire Hennessy on the best new YA fiction; Julia Kelly on Dublin: Written in Our Hearts edited by Declan Meade; Edel Coffey on Show Me Where It Hurts by Claire Gleeson; Brigid O’Dea on Eden’s Shore by Oisín Fagan; Aidan Beatty on Christopher Hill: The Life of a Radical Historian by Michael Braddick; Ray Burke on One Man in His Time by NM Borodin; Adrienne Murphy on Wired Our Own Way edited by Niamh Garvey; Pat Carty on Story of a Murder: The Wives, the Mistress and Dr Crippen by Hallie Rubenhold; and Paschal Donohoe on The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief and the Future of the West by Alexander C Karp and Nicholas W Zamiska.
This weekend’s Irish Times Eason offer is James by Percival Everett, just €5.99, a €6 saving.
American poet Andrew Krivák has been chosen by Seamus Heaney Fellow Fiona Benson as the winner of this year’s Moth Poetry Prize for his poem Raccoon Baculum Good Luck Charm. His prize is €6,000.
Raccoon Baculum Good Luck Charm tells the tale of a loving, childless couple. Benson said it “has the breadth and depth of an Alice Munro short story; yet it also has the pacing, music and grace of an absolutely breath-taking poem. Its shifts between registers – from the quotidian ‘They were young and just married and only thinking / of children’ to the epiphanic ‘soundless and / at peace through all that lack’ move with enviable fluidity; so too its weaving in of a convincing vernacular, which brings with it such a deep sense of character.
“The shape of the thing is beautiful too, coming back in the end to ‘soundless and at peace’ in a beautiful arc that takes in balloon rides, Stagg beer, gold-plating, a strange fertility charm, a rocket to Venus, and the loveliest moments of affection (‘It’s just pretty, like you’).”
Krivák is the author of four novels, two chapbooks of poetry and two works of nonfiction. His 2011 debut novel, The Sojourn, was a National Book Award finalist and winner of both the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for fiction and the inaugural Chautauqua Prize. He followed with The Signal Flame in 2017, The Bear in 2020, and Like the Appearance of Horses in 2023. His chapbooks include Islands and Ghosts of the Monadnock Wolves. Krivák is discussion facilitator for the New Hampshire Department of Corrections’ Family Connection Centre and visiting lecturer on English at Harvard University. He lives in Somerville, Massachusetts and Jaffrey, New Hampshire with his wife and three children.
The other shortlisted poems were Towards Holkham by Naoise Gale (UK), Taipan by Anthony Lawrence (Australia) and The Last Dragons On Earth: A Travelogue by Shelley Stenhouse (US). They each receive €1,000.
Irish poet and writer Jessica Traynor has been shortlisted for the EU Press Prize in the Public Discourse category for an essay on Irish data centres originally commissioned by The Dial, and republished last year as the Guardian long read.
Data centres have become a common sight around many Irish cities and towns. These facilities contain servers that store and manage vast amounts of information, including the photographs and writings we store in “the cloud.” Traynor’s piece poses questions about how nations, and their people, preserve materials and memories. “Memory Machines” explores the fragility of this new form of record-keeping and the industry’s economic and environmental imprint on Ireland.
Each award is worth €10,000, to be spent wherever possible on a personal project that may, in turn, enrich the practice of journalism. This year’s winners and runners-up will be announced at an award ceremony in Bari, Italy, on May 28th.
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The shortlist of six books – five novels and one collection of short stories – for the International Booker Prize has been chosen by the 2025 judging panel, chaired by bestselling Booker Prize-longlisted author Max Porter, including Caleb Femi; Sana Goyal; Anton Hur; and Beth Orton.
The shortisted titles are: On the Calculation of Volume I by Solvej Balle, translated from Danish by Barbara J. Haveland; Small Boat by Vincent Delecroix, translated from French by Helen Stevenson; Under the Eye of the Big Bird by Hiromi Kawakami, translated from Japanese by Asa Yoneda; Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico, translated from Italian by Sophie Hughes; Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq, translated from Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi; and A Leopard-Skin Hat by Anne Serre, translated from French by Mark Hutchinson.
Ire;and’s Bullaun Press had been longlisted for There’s a Monster Behind the Door by Gaëlle Bélem, translated from French by Karen Fleetwood and Laëtitia Saint-Loubert,
The announcement of the winning book will take place on May 20th at a ceremony at Tate Modern in London.
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Getting to read your work in front of literary agents and receive feedback is invaluable, which is why it’s no surprise First Page Pitch has become an integral part of Cork World Book Fest’s Get Published Day. The 10 pitchers selected for this year’s fest are: Aislinn Brennan, Anthony O’Donovan, Colette Lynch, Daragh Fleming, Diarmuid Condon, Ger Morrissey, Isobel Tynan, Maeve Tynan, Margaret Gillies and Teresa Doran.
Agents Simon Trewin and Nicky Lovick will offer insights, moderated by Get Published co-ordinator Vanessa Fox O’Loughlin, in Cork City Library on Saturday, April 26th at 11.30am.
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The West Cork Literary Festival is a week-long celebration of writing and reading, with a varied and extensive programme which takes place in and around the town of Bantry from July 11th-18th. There are master classes, readings, and workshops, as well as interviews with authors, book launches, and myriad other events.
Richard E Grant, Eimear McBride, Graham Norton, Ruth Padel, Neil Jordan, Katherine May, Alan Hollinghurst, Carol Drinkwater, Sarah Moss, Seán Ronayne, Patricia Forde, John Creedon, Claire Kilroy, Ferdia Lennon, Vona Groarke, Rafael Olympio, Salena Godden, Will Sliney and Wendy Erskine are just some of the high-profile writers making the trip to west Cork for the festival.
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Walker Books is to publish award-winning Irish author Kelly McCaughrain’s YA speculative romance, Just Another Dead Boy, in June next year in a deal that will see McCaughrain published in the UK and the US for the first time.
The book is set in a world where everyone knows the date they will die and follows wild-child Regan who works for the Romeo & Juliet Service, hired by parents to provide the illusion of star-crossed romance to rich boys on their way out. Over-achieving Jude Daly sees through the set-up, but they agree to a fake relationship for the sake of Jude’s parents and Regan’s job. As mutual contempt turns into something else, news breaks of the first ever Death Date survivor.
McCaughrain said: “To me, negotiating adolescence always felt like a balancing act between hedonism and profound issues, so this mash-up of love and death, fate and fake dating, made Just Another Dead Boy the most exciting concept I’ve ever worked on.”
Senior editor Lucy Earley said: “Just Another Dead Boy is sure to be Kelly’s YA breakout book; it’s a heady, high-stakes speculative romance which asks big questions about love and death, life and how to live it. It’s for fans of Adam Silvera meets Romeo & Juliet, with a dash of The White Lotus, and we’re excited to be publishing Kelly in both the UK and the US for the first time.”
McCaughrain swept the board at the 2019 Children’s Books Ireland Awards for her debut, Flying Tips for Flightless Birds. Her YA novel, Little Bang, is shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal for Writing 2025 and the Children’s Books Ireland Awards 2025. She was the Queen’s University Belfast Children’s Writing Fellow for Northern Ireland 2019-21.
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Shop Talk with Writers is a new monthly literary podcast, presented by the author, editor and journalist Elena Lappin. It features in-depth interviews with authors of both fiction and non-fiction, presenting a mix of established and emerging voices. The podcast is the creative child of Lappin and publicist Katherine Stroud. It is available on Spotify, Apple and other platforms. Each podcast is accompanied by a feature article about the author on Elena Lappin’s Substack (elenalappin.substack.com).
Listen to the March episode with John Banville here.
