Irish Book Week; Dubray at 50; Great Reads Awards; Murder One; Dublin Festival of History

In tomorrow’s Irish Times, Naomi Klein talks to Una Mullally and Richard Osman to Henrietta McKervey about their new books. Adrian Millar, the author of Socio-ideological Fantasy and the Northern Ireland Conflict, reflects on his memories of the Troubles. There is also a Q&A with Slow Horses/ Slough House series author Mick Herron about his latest thriller, The Secret Hours.

Reviews are Niamh Jiménez on The Balanced Brain by Dr Camilla Nord; James Conor Patterson on Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein; Edel Coffey on Weirdo by Sara Pascoe; Jessicsa Traynor on the best new poetry; Mia Levitin on The Maverick by Thomas Harding; Philip Ó Ceallaigh on The Bible as Poetry by Michael Edwards; Rory Kiberd on A Portrait of the Piss Artist as a young man by Tadhg Hickey; Paul Clements on Father and Son by Jonathan Raban; Declan Burke on the best new sci-fi and fantasy fiction; and Sarah Gilmartin on Beasts of England by Adam Biles.

This weekend’s Irish Times Eason offer is The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels by Janice Hallett, just €5.99, a €5 saving.

Bookselling Ireland, the committee of Booksellers Association members representing bookshops big and small from across Ireland, together with Publishing Ireland, has announces plans for Irish Book Week 2023. The celebration will take place from Saturday, October 14th to 21st.

Now in its sixth year, Irish Book Week is a nationwide celebration of Irish bookshops, Irish books, publishers, writers, illustrators, and poets. The campaign aims to encourage people from across Ireland to visit their local bookshops to discover and enjoy a range of exciting and interesting events, readings, parties, displays and much more.

Bookselling Ireland is also delighted to reveal the stunning artwork for this year’s campaign, which was produced by well-known children’s illustrator and author, Ashwin Chacko, who has also come on board as a campaign ambassador. Joining Ashwin as ambassadors this year are author, Courtney Smyth, writer, musician and publisher, Tadhg Mac Dhonnagáin and consultant endocrinologist and author, Dr Mary Ryan.

Dawn Behan, Chair of Bookselling Ireland, said, “We are thrilled to announce the dates for our 2023 campaign and to reveal our campaign artwork by the extremely talented, Ashwin Chacko. We are also delighted to announce details of our fantastic 2023 campaign Ambassadors, and we look forward to the exciting events and activities that are to come to celebrate Irish Book Week this October.”

Speaking about Irish Book Week, Caoimhe Fox, President of Publishing Ireland, commented, “Irish Book Week is an important and welcome opportunity to showcase Irish books and writers. Working with our colleagues in Bookselling Ireland and across the sector, we look forward to engaging with, and supporting, this year’s campaign. The Irish book industry is vibrant, and initiatives such as this help to secure its future growth through recognition and celebration across the country.”

Dubray, Ireland’s leading dedicated bookseller, celebrates its 50th anniversary this month.

It began as a single shop in Bray in 1973, owned by Helen Clear, who wanted to sell the kind of books she liked to read and recommend. The first customer through the door told her firmly that a bookshop in Bray was ‘never going to work’. Helen and her team of booksellers politely proceeded to prove her wrong, and a business built on range and recommendation has gone from strength to strength. In the last five years alone, Dubray has opened five new stores in Cork, Dublin’s Mary St, Dundrum Town Centre, Liffey Valley and most recently in Swords Pavilions.

Maria Dickenson, Dubray general manager, commented: “A bookshop is a community, and many people have helped us along the way. We are so grateful to our Dubray booksellers over the years, to our fantastic authors and publishers, and very importantly to our customers. We’d like to take this opportunity to say a heartfelt thank you: we hope that we can continue to help you to discover new books for many years to come.”

Celebrations will continue throughout the month, with online offers and rewards for loyalty customers. Children can take part in a ‘design a bookmark’ competition to win a voucher for themselves and their school. And the Dubray team have hand-selected 50 Recommended Reads – from William Goldman’s beloved classic The Princess Bride (1973) to Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) via John McGahern, Maeve Binchy, Sebastian Barry to Liz Nugent’s mesmerising thriller Strange Sally Diamond in 2023.

Customers can enjoy a 10 per cent discount on Dubray’s Classic Recommended Reads online with the promo code ‘DUBRAY50′. See dubraybooks.ie for more information.

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The Great Reads Award Shortlist, chosen exclusively by School Librarians, has been announced and six of the 10 novels are by authors with an Irish connection. Winners will be announced in January, after students all over Ireland have voted for their favourite book.

Now in its ninth year, the award is supported by the School Libraries Group at the Library Association of Ireland, Alan Hanna’s Bookshop, Raven Books, The Book Nest, Interleaf Technology and Bookselling Ireland.

The shortlist for the Junior Category is: Nick Brooks for Promise Boys; Méabh Collins for Freya Harte is Not a Puzzle; Amy Clarkin for What Walks These Halls; Xena Knox for Sh!t Bag; M. J. Sullivan for Game Over: Rise of the Raid Mob

The shortlist for the Senior Category is: Sam Blake for Something Terrible Happened Last Night; Candice Brathwaite for Cuts Both Ways; Triona Campbell for A Game of Life or Death; Jenny Ireland for The First Move; Clara Kumagai for Catfish Rolling

Voting is open immediately and until December 15th, at greatreadsaward.com/rate-your-book/

The winners will be unveiled on January 30th, 2024.

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The Irish Writers Centre (IWC) is reimagining its decade-old New Irish Communities programme to better reflect our changed society. Funded by Dublin City Council, the programme was established in 2015 with the mission of giving access to non-native English speakers to write creatively in English.

From Saturday 23rd September 2023, the Irish Writers Centre opens its doors for writers to meet and share ideas with experienced poets and novelists. Taking place over ten weeks, every Saturday morning a different facilitator will lead an exciting writing group with the aim of creating a long-standing and supportive creative community. This year’s facilitators are Mark Granier, Nithy Kasa, Fióna Bolger, Jean O’Brien, Sree Sen, Cauvery Madhaven, Melatu Uche Okorie and Suad Aldarra. The fee to attend the sessions is €5 per session, €3 for IWC members, and free for unwaged. Special guests will be a feature of the online sessions. You can sign up here.

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Crime fans won’t want to miss Murder One, Ireland’s International Crime Writing Festival which returns to dlr LexIcon Library in Dun Laoghaire, 6th-8th October .

Former State Pathologist, Dr Marie Cassidy, kicks off the festival on Friday 6th discussing her debut crime fiction, Body of Truth, in conversation with Liz Nugent. One of Ireland’s greatest crime writers, Edgar and multi award winner, Tana French, makes a rare festival appearance on Saturday evening. TED speaker, activist and Hollywood producer Winnie M Li whose book Complicit looks at the #MeToo in the film industry speaks on Sunday 8th. This event is being run in association with the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre.

Jane Casey, Steve Cavanagh, Andrea Mara, Sam Blake, Catherine Kirwan, Catherine Ryan Howard, and debut sensation Colin Walsh (Kala) are among the cream of Irish talent and from the UK, Sophie Hannah, Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year, Tom Benn, Alice Feeney, author of the phenomenally successful Daisy Darker, plus cosy crime specialist Janice Hallett join us.

True crime fans can look forward to award-winning political journalist, Harry McGee whose book, The Murderer and the Taoiseach, retraces events in the notorious Malcolm Macarthur murder case.

Aspiring writers can hear from all-star panels of literary agents and editors on Friday 6th October.

Booking at murderone.ie

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Dublin Festival of History returns this year with its largest programme yet – 200 free events taking place across Dublin city and county from September 25th to October 15th. The event is organised by Dublin City Libraries in partnership with Dublin City Council Culture Company.

Highlights include: The Archive Within Us, Charleville Mall Library, Charleville Mall, North Strand Road, Dublin 1, Saturday, 7 October at 10:00am. Together, artists have developed their own personal archives, brought to life through precious objects and fragments of cherished moments presented in this exhibition. Each object, paired with a short poem, is an invitation to reflect on what we say about what we remember, and why.

A History of Rural Ireland seen through Heaney’s Poetry, Bank of Ireland Cultural and Heritage Centre, Westmoreland Street, Dublin, Wednesday, 27 September at 1:00 pm. This talk will explore Seamus Heaney’s work and the window it gives us into rural life in Ireland in the 1940s.

Dublin: A Writer’s City, Kevin Street Library, 18 Lower Kevin Street, Dublin 8, Tuesday, 10 October at 6:30 pm. In this talk author Chris Morash sets out to produce a literary map of the city, area by area, looking at the ways in which knowing the literary heritage of our own neighbourhoods enriches our experience of living in the city.

All events are free, but most require pre-booking. The Festival’s annual Big Weekend of talks takes place in The Printworks in Dublin Castle from Friday, September 29 to Sunday, October 1.

The full programme of events is available online at dublinfestivalofhistory.ie/and from libraries.

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The Read Mór book gifting project is back again for its second year. This time patients in selected hospitals will have an opportunity to participate in Culture Night and escape to the furthest reaches of their imagination with a choice of 29 books by Irish-based authors and publishers, thanks to the Arts Council in partnership with HSE Healthy Ireland.

On September 22nd, the Read Mór ‘Book Doctors’ and their teams will be prescribing over 3,600 free books from their trolleys in Connolly Hospital, Dublin; Letterkenny Hospital, Donegal; Portiuncula Hospital, Ballinasloe, Galway; St. Luke’s Hospital, Kilkenny; Naas Hospital, Kildare; Ennis Hospital, Clare; and Croom Hospital, Limerick on Culture Night.

Director of the Arts Council, Maureen Kennelly said: “In a world filled with technological distractions, the joy of reading a physical book remains an invaluable resource. Read Mór is all about the public engaging with stories, ideas, and emotions that transport us to different realms of our imagination. This year, Read Mór will also help bring the magic of Culture Night to those who cannot join in with the night’s events in the usual way. We could not have done this without the enthusiastic support of so many writers and publishers. We are especially grateful to our partners in HSE Healthy Ireland for their support in making Read Mór happen in hospitals across Ireland this Culture Night.”

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A panel discussion entitled ‘Women and War: Representations in the Creative Arts’, will address some of the challenging questions posed by this year’s Wexford Festival Opera programme.

Wexford’s Artistic Director Rosetta Cucchi will join the distinguished former Irish Times foreign correspondent Lara Marlowe and Trinity Long Room Hub Director Eve Patten to reflect on depictions of women in wartime, in literature, film, theatre, music and the visual arts on September 19th, 2023 at 6.30pm in the Thomas Davis Theatre, Arts Building, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2. Register here.

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The shortlist for the British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding has been announced. Now in its 11th year, the international book prize, worth £25,000, rewards and celebrates ground-breaking research-based works of non-fiction that have made an outstanding contribution to the public understanding of world cultures and the ways in which they interconnect.

The six books on the 2023 shortlist are:

Red Memory: Living, Remembering and Forgetting China’s Cultural Revolution by Tania Branigan (Faber & Faber); Courting India: England, Mughal India and the Origins of Empire by Nandini Das (Bloomsbury Publishing); The Violence of Colonial Photography by Daniel Foliard (Manchester University Press); Black Ghost of Empire: The Long Death of Slavery and the Failure of Emancipation by Kris Manjapra (Allen Lane / Penguin Books); Papyrus: The Invention of Books in the Ancient World by Irene Vallejo (Hodder & Stoughton); Ritual: How Seemingly Senseless Acts Make Life Worth Living by Dimitris Xygalatas (Profile Books)

The winner of the £25,000 prize will be announced at an award ceremony on October 31st. Each of the shortlisted writers will receive £1,000. The winner in 2022 was Alia Trabucco Zerán for When Women Kill: Four Crimes Retold.

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Caffè Nero has announced the judging panels for the inaugural Nero Book Awards, open to writers based in the UK and Ireland, in partnership with Right To Dream, The Booksellers Association and Brunel University London.

The full judging panels are listed below. They include authors, journalists and booksellers who are simply asked to choose which reads they would most want to recommend to others.

The children’s fiction judges are: Urmi Merchant: Director, Pickled Pepper Books (Crouch End); Irish author Dave Rudden; and Nick Sheridan, journalist, TV presenter and author. The debut fiction judges are Sara Collins, Hattie Crisell and Tom Robinson. The fiction judges David Coates, Ella Dove and Anthony Quinn. Nonfiction judges are Ben Garrod, Sarfraz Manzoor and Helen Stanton.

Four books will be shortlisted by the judges in each category on November 21st. The winners will be announced on January 16th 2024 and the overall winner in late February.

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The 2023 Allingham Festival will take place in Ballyshannon, Co Donegal from November 8th to 12th. Headline events will include an interview with best-selling domestic noir author Liz Nugent, a keynote speech by Children’s Ombudsman Niall Muldoon and a big-screen showing of the award-winning film The Deepest Breath. Children’s author Shane Hegarty will perform readings in Ballyshannon schools during the 2023 Allingham Festival. A former journalist with The Irish Times, Hegarty is the author of many books, including the popular Darkmouth and award-winning Boot series. allinghamfestival.com.

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Bestselling Irish author Sebastian Barry will be joined by three of his translators at an event in Trinity College Dublin on Tuesday, September 26th to mark European Day of Languages as well as International Translation Day later in the week (Sept 30th).

Hosted by Trinity Centre for Literary and Cultural Translation, the event will be a conversation between Barry and his French, German and Polish translators. In-person or online tickets can be booked at this link.

The event forms part of Trinity Arts and Humanities Research Festival 2023, hosted by Trinity Long Room Hub. Other events include the launch of a new poem by writers Sean Hewitt, Yairen Jerez Columbié to mark the 10th anniversary of Seamus Heaney’s death and a talk by Dr Andrew Murphy on Fascists at the Gate: The Strange Tale of Coriolanus in Irish. A full list of events can be seen here.