Sophie White wins Shirley Jackson Award; Write by the Sea and Murder One festival line-ups revealed

Writers and critics share their books of the year so far in The Irish Times this Saturday. There is also a Q&A with Susannah Dickey, whose novel Common Decency is out now in paperback and whose debut poetry collection due out in September has already made the Forward Prize shortlist. And an extract from retired senior garda Christy Mangan’s book Cracking the Case looks at the Fr Niall Molloy murder.

Reviews are Sinéad Gleeson on Art Monsters: Unruly Bodies in Feminist Art by Lauren Elkin and Thunderclap by Laura Cumming; Paschal Donohoe on End Times by Peter Turchin; Declan Burke on Penance by Eliza Clark; Stephen Sexton on the best new poetry; John Banville on Mark Cocker’s One Midsummer’s Day; Daniel Geary on Birchers by Matthew Dallek; Thomas Lordan on A Life in Medicine: From Asclepius to Beckett by Eoin O’Brien; Martina Evans on The Family Plot by Clair Wills; Helen Cullen on Pet by Catherine Chidgey; Lucy Sweeney Byrne on On Women by Susan Sontag; Rónán Hession on Mater 2-10 by Hwang Sok-yong, translated by Sora Kim-Russell and Youngjae Josephine Bae; and Tim Groenland on Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead.

This weekend’s Irish Times Eason offer is All the Broken Places by John Boyne. You can buy the bestselling sequel to The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas for just €5.99, a €5 saving, with your paper in any branch.

*

Tramp Press author Sophie White has won the Shirley Jackson Award for her novel Where I End in a tie with The Devil Takes You Home by Gabino Iglesias (Mulholland Books). The awards recognise “outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic” and are voted on by writers, critics, editors and academics. Previous winners include Stephen King and Carmen Maria Machado.

The 2022 Shirley Jackson Awards were presented last Saturday at Readercon 32, Conference on Imaginative Literature, in Quincy, Massachusetts.

The Irish Times found Where I End ‘exquisite and disturbing’; John Connolly called it ‘deeply creepy and compelling’.

White is a writer and podcaster from Dublin. Her first four books, Recipes for a Nervous Breakdown (Gill, 2016), Filter This (Hachette, 2019), Unfiltered (Hachette, 2020) and The Snag List (Hachette, 2022), have been bestsellers and award nominees. Her fifth book, the bestselling memoir Corpsing: My Body and Other Horror Shows (Tramp Press, 2021), was shortlisted for an Irish Book Award and the Michel Déon Prize for non-fiction.

She is co-host of the chart-topping comedy podcasts Mother of Pod and The Creep Dive. In addition to writing literary horror, Sophie has written successful commercial fiction titles for Hachette, such as the recent My Hot Friend.

Write By the Sea Literary Festival takes place in Kilmore Quay, Co Wexford from September 22nd to 24th. It begins on Friday evening with readings from Doire Press authors Fergus Cronin and Órfhlaith Foyle.

On Saturday, Claire Keegan will launch her upcoming book. Aingeala Flannery, Maureen Gaffney, Benjamin Wood, poets Mary O’Donnell, Ben Mac Caoilte, Rosamund Taylor, and Ronan P Berry among others will take to the stage. Filmmaker Alan Gilsenan will interview Booker Prize winner John Banville. Later, Stephen James Smith will deliver a spoken-word performance.

Sunday kicks off with memoirists Helen MacDonald, Suad Aldarra and Arnold Thomas Fanning. English novelist Charlotte Mendelson will be interviewed by Irish Times columnist Róisín Ingle. Ukrainian teenager Yeva Skalietska will discuss her book You Don’t Know What War Is: The Diary of a Young Girl From Ukraine. Richard Hayes will interview Seán Hewitt, Helen MacDonald and co-author Sin Blaché will discuss their new novel with Paraic O’Donnell. The festival finale is a musical performance by Bill Whelan, Zoë Conway and John McIntyre.

A weekend pass is €135. Saturday and Sunday passes are €75 each. Lunch and refreshments are included in the ticket price. writebythesea.ie

Murder One, Ireland’s international crime writing festival, is back in its weekend format from October 6th-8th in Dún Laoghaire’s stunning dlr LexIcon Library and Cultural Centre, only 30 minutes from Dublin airport and just south of Dublin city.

Former state pathologist Dr Marie Cassidy kicks off the festival on Friday 6th. Cassidy will be discussing her debut novel, Body of Truth, with bestselling crime writer, Liz Nugent. The festival will showcase the cream of Irish crime writing talent with Tana French, Jane Casey, Catherine Ryan Howard, Steve Cavanagh, Andrea Mara, Sam Blake, and Catherine Kirwan among those appearing. UK visitors include the hugely popular, Sophie Hannah, 2023 Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Tom Benn, Alice Feeney, author of the phenomenally successful Daisy Darker, plus cosy crime specialist, British Book Awards winner Janice Hallett, and highly praised debutante, Alice Bell.

True crime fans can look forward to events with Harry McGee, whose book, The Murderer and the Taoiseach, retraces the extraordinary happenings in Dublin’s notorious Malcolm Macarthur murder case, while academics Elaine Farrell and Leanne McCormick will discuss their bestselling book, Bad Bridget: Crime, Mayhem and the Lives of Irish Emigrant Women. Aspiring writers can also sign up for workshops with all-star panels of literary agents and editors.

Murder One is run by crime author Sam Blake and Bert Wright. Blake explains, “Murder One is supported by Dun Laoghaire Rathdown Libraries and that library connection is true synergy for us – bringing new authors to new readers and new readers to authors is at the heart of both the festival and the library’s mission.”

Wright said, “Murder One has established a huge following among Irish crime fans in a short space of time and in a country that boasts so many successful crime writers, it’s a joy to get fans and writers together on an annual basis in an ideal location like Dun Laoghaire. We’ve put together a stellar programme and we’re looking forward to sharing it with our loyal supports. It promises to be enormous fun.” murderone.ie

The new Portlaoise library has taken 10 years to complete and has cost €7.5 million, transforming the old Shaws department store into a state-of-theaart facility.

Minister for Social Protection and Rural & Community Development Heather Humphreys attended to launch the National Public Library Strategy - The Library is the Place. The strategy sets out 66 actions that will further embed libraries in communities nationwide. This includes an increase in the number of ‘my open library’ facilities which can be accessed 365 days of the year, providing every library user with access to a book club, and increasing the number of activities and engagement programmes.

*

Two Irish entries have been shortlisted in the inaugural TikTok Book Awards - Chapters Bookstore for ‘Best Indie Bookshop Of The Year’, and Normal People by Sally Rooney for ‘Best Book I Wish I Could Read Again For The First Time’. The Voting Hub is now open and the full shortlist can be found here.

The Irish Pages Press/Cló An Mhíl Bhuí has announced the publication and launch of Errigal: Sacred Mountain by Cathal Ó Searcaigh next Thursday, July 20th, at 8pm at Ionad Cois Locha in Dún Lúiche as part of the Earagail Arts Festival.

In Errigal: Sacred Mountain, Cathal O’Searcaigh (one of Ireland’s most celebrated poets) goes on a pilgrim path around Errigal and (in the active meditation of walking) summons up the spirit of this revered mountain. In his “Passages of Light” as he calls them, we get a vivid and an insightful word-journey around a mountain that has shaped the thinking of one of the most eminent poets in the Irish language.

A mix of memoir, observation, humour and wisdom, it includes a preface by Irish American writer, Patrick Breslin; an afterword by historian and archaeologist Brian Lacey; and translations of Ó Searcaigh’s poems by some of Ireland’s most outstanding poets (Seamus Heaney, Paddy Bushe, Thomas McCarthy and Gabriel Rosenstock).

The event will include the premiering of a new work by Neil Martin also inspired by the mountain, the performance of two new songs by Ó Searcaigh for Diane Cannon and readings by Stephen Rea of poetry and prose writings featured in Errigal: Sacred Mountain.

*

Children’s Books Ireland and the School of English (Trinity College Dublin) have announced the recipient of the 2023 Inclusivity Partnership Award.

The partnership enables researchers to work closely with experts in the area of children’s books to investigate key issues in contemporary publishing for young readers. The recipient, Linde Vergeylen, is a student from the M.Phil programme in Children’s Literature at the School of English, Trinity College Dublin. Under the supervision of Dr Pádraic Whyte, she will lead an investigation into the representation of disabilities in Young Adult verse novels.

Vergeylen said, ‘I’m delighted to have received the award to research disability in young adult verse novels. Through representations of disability, Irish writers such as Sarah Crossan and, more recently, CG Moore, have been instrumental in popularising the verse novel genre for young readers. Told through poetry, these stories experiment with how words fall on the page, pushing the boundaries of form just as disabled experiences themselves still push against societal “norms” and expectations. I hope in my research to explore this connection – why so many stories about disability are told in verse – and what the disabled and the able-bodied reader might come to understand through reading them.’

CEO of Children’s Books Ireland, Elaina Ryan, said, ‘We are proud to see this partnership evolving year on year, generating a body of research which serves not only to interrogate and examine published work by Irish authors and illustrators but, in many cases, to highlight the gaps that exist, the stories that remain untold and the voices that are still missing from the canon. We are excited by Linde Vergeylen’s proposal and in particular by her decision to focus on verse novels, an increasingly popular format with great scope to explore issues of inclusion, representation and diversity in innovative ways.’

Faber is to publish Fanatic Heart, the new novel by Thomas Keneally about the highly controversial Irish politician, John Mitchel, in November. Mitchel, a Protestant Irish nationalist and one-time ally of Parnell, emigrated to the US where he became a champion of the Confederate cause and a defender of slavery.

The novel is pitched thus: “For Mitchel – lawyer, journalist, activist, politician – after 1847 the word ‘famine’ will forever conjure the hollowed faces of Ireland’s dead.

“Propelled by disgust at the injustice, Mitchel will do all he can to fight for the destitute, the starved, the forgotten. His odyssey will take him all the way to America – that land of promise – but it will draw him into a terrible paradox, blurring the lines that divide liberation from dispossession and forcing him to ask: can one act of devastating cruelty and oppression prevent another?”

Libby Marshall, commissioning editor, said: “Thomas Keneally is a titan of literature who has never shied away from tales of deep moral and emotional complexity. Fanatic Heart – a moving, elegant and profound work that sheds light on some of the darkest events of history – is no exception. We are incredibly proud to welcome Thomas Keneally to the Faber list with this unforgettable novel.”

Keneally said: “I am delighted to have been chosen for publication by a literary publisher renowned and admired for it, Faber and Faber. When I was writing my first book in Sydney just under sixty years past, I wanted to send it to Faber and Faber, but thought the material not good enough. And now, at the age of eighty-seven, a book of mine has been chosen for publication by them, and whatever I write for the rest of my fortunate life will be for them. Australians are asking me why I’m visibly smiling when England won the Third Test. It is, at last, Faber and Faber.”