Sheila Armstrong on RSL Ondaatje Prize shortlist

In The Irish Times this Saturday, Caoilinn Hughes talks to Niamh Donnelly about her excellent new novel, The Alternatives. Fiona Gartland talks to Jo Spain about her latest thriller, The Trial. Hugh Linehan reflects on the film adaptation of John McGahern’s That They May Face the Rising Sun. Debbie Hines, author of Get Off My Neck, lays bare for Keith Duggan the startling inequalities faced by black Americans in the US justice system. Ali Dunworth, author of A Compendium of Irish Pints: The Culture, Customs and Craic, celebrates the Irish pub. And there is a Q&A with Jonny Sweet, author of The Kellerby Code and screenwriter of Wicked Little Letters.

Reviews are Molara Wood on An African History of Africa by Zeinab Bedawi; Paul Clements on local history; Mihir Bose on Fighting Retreat: Winston Churchill and India by Walter Reid; Declan O’Driscoll on the best new translations; Helen Cullen on Two Hours by Alba Arikha; Edel Coffey on The Husbands by Holly Gramazio; Adrienne Murphy on Sparks of Bright Matter by Leeanne O’Donnell; John Boyne on The Spoiled Heart by Sunjeev Sahota; Brian Maye on Spirit of Revolution: Ireland from below, 1917–1923; Aimée Walsh on Juliet Daniel’s Mr and Mrs American Pie; Dean Jobb on The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age, by Michael Wolraich; Philippa Conlon on What Will Survive of Us by Howard Jacobson; Nadine O’Regan on He Used to Me by Anne Walsh Donnelly; and Anna Carey on Seaborne by Nuala O’Connor.

Tomorrow’s Irish Times Eason offer is Someone Else’s Shoes by Jojo Moyes.

Sheila Armstrong has been shortlisted for the 2024 RSL Ondaatje Prize, which celebrates outstanding works that best evoke the spirit of a place. for her debut novel, Falling Animals.

Judge Xiaolu Guo called it: “A truly impressive debut from a storyteller who knows how to control the rhythm and poetry of her narrative. I was immersed in that unique Irish landscape, the mystery of ‘the man,’ and the collective experience of the place”.

Fellow judge Jan Carson said: “This is a quietly devastating novel which celebrates the beauty and pays tribute to the pain of everyday life. Armstrong writes the most poignant and lyrical sentences. I’m truly jealous of her craft. She moves effortlessly between perspectives and each character’s more intriguing than the last.”

Francis Spufford, the third judge, said: “The first novel from a marvellous short-story writer, and a marvel in itself, looping and circling in a multitude of voices round a mute corpse on a beach to assemble a composite image of a town on Ireland’s west coast, and the lives (and deaths) that intersect there.”

Also shortlisted were Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad; A Flat Place by Noreen Masud; No Man’s Land by David Nash; Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors by Ian Penman; and Cuddy by Benjamin Myers.

Armstrong is from Sligo and lives in Dublin. She spent 10 years in publishing and now works as a freelance editor. Her first collection of short stories, How To Gut A Fish, which was longlisted for the Edge Hill Prize, was published in 2022.

The winner will be announced on May 14th.

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The second event in the National Library of Ireland’s Celebrating Ireland’s Booker Winners series, curated by Alan Hayes, continues on May 7th at 6.30pm with a very special guest added to the programme: John Banville in conversation with Claire Kilroy, with a reading by Stephen Rea from The Sea.

The Sea, which won the Booker Prize in 2005, is one of the highlights of John Banville’s stellar literary career, now spanning over 50 years. Kilroy has published five award-winning novels; her latest, Soldier Sailor, is shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction.

Seats are extremely limited so early booking is recommended.

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Irish writers Jane Casey and Liz Nugent have longlisted for the UK and Ireland’s most prestigious crime fiction award, the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year 2024, for their titles The Close and Strange Sally Diamond respectively.

Casey grew up in Dublin and has won the Mary Higgins Clark Award and Irish Crime Novel of the Year. The Close is the latest book in her award winning Maeve Kerrigan series. Nugent lives in Dublin and has won four Irish Book Awards, as well as the James Joyce Medal for Literature and is shortlisted for Strange Sally Diamond.

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This year, for the first time, Bloomsday, the annual celebration of James Joyce’s masterpiece Ulysses, will become Molly Bloomsday, as it spreads north of the Border from Dublin for an inaugural all-women event in Derry and Donegal.

Scores of artists from across Europe will gather for YES, a festival of female creativity, inspired by Joyce’s most famous female character, Molly Bloom.

From June 13th-16th, YES will be alive with dance, music, food, public art, literature, conversation and spectacle. Among the highlights of the almost entirely free event is the world premiere of The Molly Films, starring Dame Harriet Walter, Fiona Shaw, Adjoa Andoh, Siobhán McSweeney and Eve Hewson.

YES will contain a mini literary festival all of its own - ‘No Ordinary Women’ – which brings together notable women to discuss all sorts of subjects; among the line-up so far are former Irish President Mary Robinson, Baroness Shami Chakrabarti, Orla Guerin, Marion McKeone, Denise Chaila, Miriam O’Callaghan, Martina Devlin and two groundbreaking female political leaders yet to be announced.

YES will culminate in Molly Bloomsday, an epic 18-hour finale of events taking festivalgoers from the coast to the city and transposing the famed Dublin locations of Ulysses to new places north of the Border. A highlight of the day will be a special performance by Imelda May. YES is the culmination of the two-year ULYSSES European Odyssey project, which has seen celebrations of Joyce’s masterpiece across 16 European countries.

For the full line-up, programme and to book tickets, please visit: yesderry.com

Belfast Book Festival 2024 takes place over eight days in June with a vibrant line-up of events and activities for adults and children in the festival’s hub, The Crescent Arts Centre in south Belfast.

Festival highlights include an evening with Margaret Drabble, reflecting on seven decades of writing in conversation with Wendy Erskine; and Colm Tóibín discussing with Festival Patron Lucy Caldwell the writing of Long Island, the much anticipated sequel to Brooklyn.

Other writers include Sinéad Gleeson, Kevin Barry, Elaine Feeney, Martin Doyle, Louise Kennedy, Fergal Keane, Suzi Ronson, Nicola Tallant, AC Grayling, and Eimear Ryan.

There’s a strong line-up of writers for children on Saturday, June 8th: an audience with Jacqueline Wilson; readings with Martin Waddell alongside an exhibition celebrating his picture books; and launches of new work from Northern Ireland talent Ashling Lindsay and Colleen Larmour.

The festival’s poetry programme features celebrated US poet Marie Howe; and Belfast’s Dawn Watson and Scott McKendry; and there’s a special live edition of RTÉ Sunday Miscellany with new writing from a line-up that includes Jan Carson and Glenn Patterson.

Alongside bookable events there’s a range of free/drop-in activities including film poem screenings and a Poetry Jukebox. For the 3rd consecutive year the Festival is operating a Pay What you Decide Model.

Belfast Book Festival has pioneered panel-led curation in Ireland, with this year’s programming associates including Neil Hegarty and Mícheál McCann: Festival director Sophie Hayles notes that ‘Panel-led curation is now the norm in many countries: and at Belfast Book Festival we have witnessed how very well it works, providing access to a range of ideas, connections, and creative input’.

Belfast Book Festival runs at the Crescent Arts Centre from June 6th-13th, and booking is now open at belfastbookfestival.com

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Open Mic for Gaza announces two more special guests for its second online Zoom fundraiser on Global Pay It Forward Day, this Sunday, April 28 2024, 7-9 pm Irish time. Irish poets Paula Meehan and Theo Dorgan will join the line-up of guest speakers and performers. The open mic list includes Juvens Nsabimana, a genocide child survivor, and co-author of Kill The Devil, A Love Story from Rwanda. All funds raised will go to the Ghassan Abu Sittah Children’s Fund. Register, donate, and express interest in an open mic slot here.

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This year’s Strokestown International Poetry Festival runs over the May Bank Holiday weekend Friday 3rd to Sunday 5th in Strokestown Park House, Co Roscommon.

This is festival director, Joe Woods’ third year programming Ireland’s oldest poetry festival and it promises to be a characteristic blend of diverse, local, national and international poets reading; bilingual readings, workshops, multiple poetry book launches, poetry-film screenings and collaborations with musicians.

‘I’m delighted that we have two of this year’s shortlisted TS Eliot prize poets reading for us, Jane Clarke and Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin and that we are joining in the celebration of Rita Ann Higgins’ work on our opening night, when she reads alongside one of our international guests, the American-Irish undertaker poet, Thomas Lynch. Other highlights will be Los Lorcas poetry concert, the presentation of the revived Strokestown International Poetry Competition, judged by Enda Wyley, Belinda McKeon’s keynote address and James Harpur’s collaboration with pianist Duke Special to name just a few.’

Over the weekend as well as launching a new poetry anthology (Washing Windows IV) and the literary journal Cyphers, it will showcase seven new poetry collections from five Irish and two British poetry publishers. strokestownpoetryfest.ie

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This yeare’s International Literature Festival Dublin (ILFD) will run from May 17th to 26th. Now in its 27th year, ILFD returns to its Literary Village home in Merrion Square Park with its biggest-ever programme, featuring over 230 events, including more than 35 for families and children alone. The festival showcases authors, speakers, creatives and performers representing over 25 nationalities, including Richard E Grant, Marian Keyes, Amor Towles, Marilynne Robinson, Seanchoíche, Liz Pichon and many more.

Attendees can expect discussions, debates, cross-cultural conversations, insights into the creative process, and much more for all ages and interests, all as part of this 10-day live literary celebration, brought to you by Dublin City Council and supported by the Arts Council. Themes include International Perspectives, with guests from the USA, Argentina, Japan, South Korea, and Nigeria to name a few; Visual Art; Classics & Retellings, where timeless narratives are blended with contemporary perspectives; discussions on the ‘Natural vs. Artificial world’; performances immersing audiences in creativity and expression which will showcase a number of art forms from improvised storytelling and puppetry to music; and Gaeilge.

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The 2024 Tiziano Terzani International Literary Prize has gone to Irish author and journalist Sally Hayden for My Fourth Time We Drowned, published in Italy by Bollati Boringhieri in a translation by Bianca Bertola.

President of the judges Angela Terzani Staude, wife of the late journalist and writer Tiziano Terzani, said Hayden had written a rigorous reportage, and at the same time a very powerful human truth, which presents us with the detailed picture of what is happening beyond the Mediterranean in the concentration camps of the Third Millennium, forcing us to question ourselves about a humanitarian scandal which sees us responsible as European citizens and Italians and which from now on none of us will be able to pretend to ignore without feeling guilty of indifference.

“I am extremely honoured,” said Hayden, “to be the winner of this year’s Terzani Prize. My reporting, over the years I worked on the book, focused on highlighting the abuses that are carried out in our name and on raising the voices of the vulnerable people who suffer in those places. It has shown that we are involved in crimes against humanity, and I hope that this Award will bring more people in Italy to be aware of this tragic reality. I dedicate this award to all those who risked their lives to send information from Libya and North Africa.”

Hayden will receive the Terzani Prize on May 11th in Udine. My Fourth Time We Drowned has already won Irish Book of the Year, the Orwell Prize and been shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize 2022