Magee and Morris on Dylan Thomas Prize longlist; Nolan and Carroll on Gordon Burn Prize shortlist; Bernie McGill wins Edge Hill story prize

In The Irish Times this Saturday, Sigrid Nunez talks to John Self about her new novel, The Vulnerables. Carmel Mc Mahon, author of In Ordinary Time, explores the modern legacy of St Brigid; Roisin Maguire, debut author of the novel Nightswimmers, describes what happened when the pandemic and menopause hit her simultaneously. Iryna Kovalchuk, a researcher at University College Dublin, discusses the vital service offered by Irish librarie, offering solace and shelter for Ukrainian refugees amid wartime upheaval. And there is a Q&A with Cathy Sweeney.

Reviews are Martina Evans on Missing Persons, Or My Grandmother’s Secrets by Clair Wills; Dan McLaughlin on Simon Shuster’s The Showman; Oliver Farry on Trapped in History: Kenya, Mau Mau and Me by Nicholas Rankin; Elizabeth Manion and Brian Cliff on the best new crime fiction; Éilís Ní Dhuibhne on Cathal Póirtéir’s An Tiarna George Hill agus Pobal Ghaoth Dobhair and Roy Greenslade’s The Peer, The Priests and the Press: A Story of the Demise of Irish Landlordism; John Boyne on Wellness by Nathan Hill; Andrew Clarke on Spent Light by Lara Pawson; Kevin Power on Wild Horses by Colin Barrett; Nicola Carr on Crime and Conflict in Northern Ireland, 1920-2022 by Aogán Mulcahy; and Sarah Gilmartin on Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon.

This weekend’s Irish Times Eason offer is the bestselling thriller Don’t Look Back by Jo Spain. You can buy it at any store for €5.99, a €5 saving.

Michael Magee and Thomas Morris are among the authors longlisted for the world’s largest literary prize for young writers – the Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize. This year’s international longlist is dominated by independent publishers – with nine indie titles.

Belfast writer Magee is shortlisted for his debut novel, Close to Home, which has already won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature and been shortlisted for the Nero debut fiction award and Newcomer of the Year at the Irish Book Awards. Morris, a former editor of the Stinging Fly magazine, is Welsh but has lived in Ireland for many years since studying at Trinity College Dublin. He is shortlisted for his second short story collection, Open Up.

Also longlisted are novels A Spell of Good Things by Ayòbámi Adébáyò (Nigeria); Small Worlds by Caleb Azumah Nelson (UK/Ghana); The Glutton by AK Blakemore (UK); Penance by Eliza Clark (UK); Hungry Ghosts by Kevin Jared Hosein (Trinidad and Tobago); Biography of X by Catherine Lacey (US); poetry collections Bright Fear by Mary Jean Chan (Hong Kong) and Divisible by Itself and One by Kae Tempest (UK); and short story collections The Coiled Serpent by Camilla Grudova (Canada) and Local Fires by Joshua Jones (UK).

“I’m grateful to the judges for choosing Close to Home,” Magee said. “It’s such an honour to be longlisted and to share that longlist with writers whose work I greatly admire. I wish them all the very best.’

“I’m deeply honoured that Open Up has made this longlist, and it’s especially meaningful for me to see the book receive recognition within Wales,” Morris said. “I’ve loved Dylan Thomas’s work ever since my early twenties, when I first I read his gorgeous story collection, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog. Very few literary prizes make space for story collections, so I’m grateful to the International Dylan Thomas Prize for continuing to champion the form.”

Worth £20,000, this global accolade recognises exceptional literary talent aged 39 or under, celebrating the international world of fiction in all its forms including poetry, novels, short stories and drama. The prize is named after Swansea-born writer Dylan Thomas, who died aged 39.

Last year’s prize was awarded to Arinze Ifeakandu for his debut short story collection God’s Children Are Little Broken Things. Previous winners also include Patricia Lockwood, Max Porter, Raven Leilani, Bryan Washington, Guy Gunaratne, and Kayo Chingonyi. The shortlist will be announced on March 21st and the winner on May 16th.

Rory Carroll and Megan Nolan are on the seven-strong shortlist for the Gordon Burn Prize, founded in 2012, in honour of the writer, who died of cancer in 2009. The prize celebrates books that push boundaries, cross genres or otherwise challenge readers’ expectations

Carroll. the Guardian’s Ireland correspondent, was shortlisted for Killing Thatcher, an account of the IRA’s 1984 Brighton bombing; Nolan for her second novel, Ordinary Human Failings, about a London Irish family implicated in a crime, which is also shortlisted for the inaugural Nero fiction award.

Also shortlisted are Jonathan Escoffery’s Booker-shortlisted If I Survive You, about a Jamaican family in Miami coping with a recession and racism; Wifedom: Mrs Orwell’s Invisible Life by Anna Funder, a biography of Eileen O’Shaughnessy, George Orwell’s wife; O Brother by John Niven, a memoir about his brother’s suicide; Kick the Latch by Kathryn Scanlan, based on interviews with a US horse trainer; and Split Tooth by Tanya Tagaq, a novel about an Inuk girl growing up in Canada in the 1970s.

Vanessa Fox O’Loughlin, the Wicklow-based founder of writing.ie who writes crime as Sam Blake, has been unanimously elected Chair of the Society of Authors’ Management Committee – the SoA’s member-elected board of directors and charity trustees. The position has been held since 2020 by Joanne Harris, who has now come to the end of her second two-year term.

The committee meet six times a year to govern the direction of the SoA. Twelve elected members, alongside the chairs of professional and nation groups – including the Translators Association, the Children’s Writers & Illustrators Group, and the Society of Authors in Scotland – are responsible for setting the strategy and policies of the organisation.

O’Loughlin is founder of the Inkwell Group publishing consultancy, Europe’s biggest online writing resources magazine writing.ie, and Murder One, Ireland’s International Crime Writing Festival. She has served on the Management Committee since 2019 and was previously the Chair of Irish PEN.

“This will be a year of change for the SoA,” O’Loughlin said, “as we welcome a new Chief Executive in April and a new Honorary President later in 2024. But change is exciting and having worked with the staff team over the past few years I know their strength is adapting to the issues that impact members – their support and advocacy is at the forefront of everything they do. It is a great privilege to take on this role from Joanne, and I look forward to working with board members and the staff team on the challenges ahead. We are seeing many already – from AI to falling incomes, not to mention cyber-attacks on the institutions that pay authors. I can’t wait to get started.”

Bernie McGill has won the Edge Hill Short Story Prize with her short story collection This Train is For, published by No Alibis Press.

Now in its 17th year, The Edge Hill Prize is the only annual UK-based award to recognise excellence in a single-author short story collection, with a first prize of £10,000.

“No Alibis is an independent press that may be small in size but is big in heart,” said McGill. “David Torrans and Emma Warnock and the team there have been fully behind this book from the start, from before the time that it came together as a collection. In This Train is For they took a leap of faith. I’m enormously thrilled and proud for all of us that it paid off.”

McGill is the author of two novels, The Butterfly Cabinet and The Watch House, and a previous collection of short stories, Sleepwalkers.

The judges were the winner of last year’s award Saba Sams, Lucy Luck, agent at C&W Agency, and short story writer and Edge Hill creative writing lecturer Andrea Ashworth.

Ten collections made the longlist, including Love in the Time of Chaos, by Rosemary Jenkinson (Arlen House). Previous winners include Sarah Hall, David Szalay, Tessa Hadley and Kevin Barry.

Conor Nagle, a former senior commissioning editor with Gill Books and publisher at HarperCollins Ireland, has launched The Nagle Agency, a literary agency specialising in Irish-originated fiction, non-fiction and children’s literature.

Over the past decade, Nagle has helped shape the fortunes of dozens of bestselling titles, among them over 25 Irish Book Award nominees, including seven winners across a variety of fiction, non-fiction, and children’s categories.

“The Nagle Agency has its roots in a couple of ambitions,” he said. “Firstly, having spoken to a great number of authors and publishing professionals, I felt there was a real need here, in Ireland, for a new and more dynamic form of author representation - an agency that could take a more hands-on role, yes, in identifying and really developing talent, but also in helping authors settle into longer and more fulfilling creative partnerships.

“Obviously, there’s a commercial dimension to all this, but publishing has to be about more than quick-fire deal-making; that’s an approach that’s so often self-defeating, especially when lasting success and innovation so often hinges on intangibles, like the spark that’s struck when like-minded people find each other. My role, as I see it, is to use the full range of my in-house experience to unite authors with the individuals and teams who will help them realise their full potential, creatively and commercially.”

The new agency will be adopting an open submissions policy. “Our offices are in Dublin and, given the heavy emphasis we’ve placed on close collaboration with clients, our focus for the forseeable future will very much be on Irish-originated and Irish-oriented publishing. That being said, we’ll be casting our net widely within those limits: we’re open to receiving submissions from authors of fiction, non-fiction, and children’s literature. People who are interested in getting in touch can do so via our website or by emailing conor@thenagleagency.com”

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Fans of weird history should head along to Galway City Library, Augustine Street, on February 1st at 6pm, when podcasters Kerry Graham and Rab Fulton will launch Season 2 of The Celtic Tales Chronicles podcast.

In Season One Rab and Kerry took a deep dive into many of the darker and weirder parts of Irish history and culture, including medieval UFOs, Irish involvement in the slave trade, poltergiests in Galway, and Irish fashion from the Iron Age to the GAA.

Season Two kicks off with tales of Ireland’s women pirates, including Granuaile and Ann Bonny. The launch will feature more weird tales, as well as a Q and A session. It will be recorded for a future bonus episode. The event is free but seating is limited, fans of the podcast should book their seats in advance here.