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.”
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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.
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“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).
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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.
