Castlebar author Sally Rooney’s Beautiful World, Where Are You has been announced as novel of the year at the 2022 Dalkey Literary Awards, while Kerry-based poet Victoria Kennefick has won this year’s emerging writer award for her collection, Eat Or We Both Starve.
Along with the prestige of winning their respective awards, Sally Rooney will receive €20,000, while Victoria Kennefick will be awarded €10,000.
Each category had three judges, who each reviewed the five shortlisted authors and selected one overall winner. The judging panels for this year’s awards were Frederick Studemann, Elaine Feeney and Willie White for novel of the year, and Madeleine Keane, Martina Devlin and Hugh Linehan for emerging writer.
The judges commended Beautiful World, Where Are You, calling it “the most ambitious of Sally Rooney’s books so far; it is exciting to experience her accomplishment in this determinedly contemporary Irish novel”.
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They added: “Her characters are minutely and sympathetically observed and her handling of tone, language and abundant ideas assured as she weaves a story of love and sex and friendship through an Anthropocene of vicious ideologies, failing systems and failed communication.”
The judges described Victoria Kennefick’s Eat Or We Both Starve as “hard hitting”, meanwhile. “It delivers everything one looks for in a piece of writing: emotional heft, story, nuance, hope, memorability; and because it’s also quirky, it has the element of surprise. Victoria Kennefick is a poet who can hold her own on the international stage.”
Sian Smyth, director of award organisers the Dalkey Book Festival, said that with a virtual event having been run last year, it was very important to bring the much-loved weekend festival back to life this year. “The awards are a key part of that. It’s such a joy to see all 10 authors recognised and shortlisted for these important awards.”
