Dara McAnulty makes Wainwright shortlist; new chair and director for Listowel Writers’ Week

In The Irish Times this Saturday, Thomas Morris talks to me about his second short story collection, Open Up, and there is a Q&A with Kerry author Noel O’Regan about his debut novel Though the Bodies Fall.

Reviews are Joseph O’Connor on I Could Read the Sky by Timothy O’Grady and Steve Pyke; Diarmaid Ferriter on Paul Bew’s Ancestral Voices in Irish Politics: Judging Dillon and Parnell; John Boyne on Seventeen by Joe Gibson; Catherine Taylor on the best new translations; Vic Duggan on Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity by Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson; Aimée Walsh on Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo; Ian Duhig on What’s in a Name by Sheela Banerjee; Paul Clements on The Granite Kingdom: A Cornish Journey by Tim Hannigan; Brendan Daly on An Uneasy Inheritance: My Family and Other Radicals by Polly Toynbee; Rachel Andrews on After Work: A History of the Home and the Fight for Free Time; Sara Keating on the best new children’s books; and Alex Clark on Fayne by Ann-Marie MacDonald.

This Saturday’s Irish Times Eason offer is The Close by Jane Casey. You can buy this bestselling thriller for just €5.99 with your paper, a €5 saving.

Shortlisted

Dara McAnulty has made the James Cropper Wainwright Prize shortlist for Children’s Writing on Nature and Conservation, with A Wild Child’s Book of Birds, illustrated by Barry Falls (Macmillan Children’s Books). The Co Down-based author, who is currently a student at Cambridge University, won the overall award in 2020.

Named after nature writer Alfred Wainwright, the prize aims to celebrate connection with nature and the outdoors.

For the first time in the prize’s 10-year history, women dominate, with 13 female authors out of the 19 shortlisted, including Katherine Rundell, up for the Nature Writing award for The Golden Mole and Other Living Treasure, illustrated by Talya Baldwin (Faber) and Kiran Millwood Hargrave on the Children’s Writing list, with Leila and the Blue Fox, illustrated by Tom de Freston (Hachette Children’s Group).

[ Author Jane Casey: ‘I miss Dublin. It’s very easy to idealise a city when you don’t live there’ ]

[ Dara McAnulty: Nature can heal the heart during the bleakest of times ]

Mark Cropper, a judge for the Writing on Conservation Prize, said: “The James Cropper Wainwright Prize and its authors and books are all about trying to open peoples’ eyes to what’s happening in the world. Stories shared range from the wondrous to the deeply concerning and often back again, as solutions to many of our deepest challenges are explored.”

Listowel goes Swiss

Listowel Writers’ Week and the Irish Festival Fribourg/Freiburg are collaborating on a literary event in the Swiss city in October. The two festivals will jointly host an author event as part of the Fribourg festival’s literary programme on October 7th, 2023: Nuala O’Connor in conversation with Padraig Rooney.

Nuala O’Connor (shortlisted for this year’s Kerry Group Award) will be presenting her latest novel, Nora, about the life of Nora Barnacle. The book has been translated into German. Padraig Rooney wrote about James Joyce in his non-fiction book The Gilded Chalet. Both writers are also poets and spent time in Switzerland in their youth.

The Irish Festival Fribourg/Freiburg is a new festival of Irish culture, taking place on October 6th-8th, 2023, featuring a programme of Irish literature, cinema, music, dance, public lectures and photography. The festival director, Clare O’Dea, appeared in Listowel as an author in 2022.

“From the very beginning the core mission of Listowel Writers’ Week has been to support new talent and to give them a platform from which to launch their career,” festival manager Simone Langemann said.

O’Dea has lived in Fribourg for the past 20 years, a region where the French-speaking and Swiss-German cultures intersect. Her participation in Writers’ Week inspired her to set up the festival in the bilingual Swiss city.

“I love the way the whole town takes part in Listowel, and that there is such a wide range of cultural events. It is a real honour for us to have the support of Ireland’s oldest literary festival. Listowel has led the way for a host of Irish festivals and now its influence extends to Switzerland.”

[ Listowel Writers’ Week: Pies, prizes and pleasant surprises ]

[ Aingeala Flannery and Tom French win literary awards at Listowel Writers’ Week ]

This collaboration between two Irish festivals at home and abroad is a unique way of including the Irish diaspora, while making it possible for Irish writers to reach a wider audience. Also appearing in Fribourg in October: John Boyne, Anne Griffin and Sarah Moore Fitzgerald, who will lead a creative writing workshop. irishfestival-fr.ch/

Board elections

The board of directors of Listowel Writers’ Week has announced the unanimous election of board member and company secretary Tom Donovan as its new chair as well as the appointment of Robert Vance as incoming director.

Donovan, a native of Glin, lives in Clarina, Co Limerick. He is the editor of the Old Limerick Journal, the Ballybrown Journal and the Glencorbry Chronicle as well as being treasurer of the Limerick Historical Society. He has edited several publications as The Knights of Glin, Seven Centuries of Change (2009) and Limerick, Snapshots of 1840 to 1960 (with the well-known Listowel historian Vincent Carmody) in 2021.

Vance, a native of Dublin and a long-time resident of Fenit, Co Kerry, has also joined the board. He has extensive media experience through working with RTÉ and the private sector in developing over 50 film productions. He also has extensive experience in the tourism sector. Robert has also written and published several books including Secret Sights and The Magic of Ireland.

Poetry call-out

Westival has launched a call-out for its annual poetry competition, a core part of the festival’s literature strand, where alongside world-renowned poets the community acknowledges the talents of emerging voices. The closing date for entries is September 15th. First prize is €1,000, second prize is €250 and third prize is €100. Entry is online only via this form.