Ten pages of Ticket this weekend are given over to our Books of the Year coverage, with 10 authors and critics selecting their personal books of the year, as well as Niamh Donnelly on fiction; Rory Kiberd on nonfiction; Jane Casey on crime fiction; Sara Keating on children’s books; Claire Hennessy on YA; Malachy Clerkin on sport; Seán Hewitt and Martina Evans on poetry; Adrian Duncan on art; and Tony Clayton-Lea on music. There is also a special Q&A for Food Month with Kristin Jensen, publisher of Blasta Books; Nine Bean Row Books and Scoop Food Magazine.
Reviews are Ed O’Loughlin on Invasion by Luke Harding & Diary of an Invasion by Andrey Kurkov; Ted Smyth on Rana Foroohar’s Homecoming: The Path to Prosperity in a Post-Global World; Enda Delaney on Catholicism: A Global History from the French Revolution to Pope Francis by John T McGreevy; Keith Duggan on Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing by Matthew Perry; Sheila de Courcy on Unaccompanied Traveler: The Writings of Kathleen M Murphy; Martina Evans on Speechless by Fiacre Ryan; Eilis Ní Dhuibhne on All the Things Left Unsaid. Confessions of Love and Regret by Michael Harding; Doug Battersby on Cormac McCarthy’s Stella Maris; Neil Hegarty on Abandoned Ireland by Rebecca Brownlie; and Sarah Gilmartin on Flight by Lynn Steger Strong.
This Saturday’s Irish Times Eason offer is Watermelon by Marian Keyes, just €4.99 with your newspaper, a €5 saving.
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Dublin Art Book Fair has opened at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios in Dublin city centre. 136 art books produced by artist-makers take centre stage, alongside nominated titles from specialist publishers, on art, design, visual culture, philosophy, architecture and more. Guest curator Rosie Lynch from Workhouse Union in Callan, Co Kilkenny, has applied a theme of ‘A Caring Matter’ to the books and a programme of connected events. They include walking tours of Temple Bar taking in signage lettering and bookshops, conversations and a specially commissioned textile work by visual artist Marielle MacLeman. It runs until 4th December. See templebargallery.com.
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Granta is to publish A Thread of Violence, Mark O’Connell’s account of one of Ireland’s most notorious murderers, Malcolm Macarthur, next July.
In 1982 Malcolm Macarthur, a wealthy heir, found himself suddenly without money. The solution, he decided, was to rob a bank. To do this, he would need a gun and a car. In the process of procuring them, he killed two people, and the circumstances of his eventual arrest in the apartment of the attorney general nearly brought down the government. The case remains one of the most shocking in Ireland’s history.
Mark O’Connell has long been haunted by the story of this brutal double murder. When he sets out to unravel the mysteries still surrounding these horrific and inexplicable crimes, he tracks down Macarthur, now an elderly man living out his days in Dublin and reluctant to talk. As the two men circle one another, O’Connell is pushed into a confrontation with his own narrative: what does it mean to write about a murderer? He eventually persuaded Macarthur to talk; their conversations informed his book
O’Connell’s first book, To Be a Machine, won the 2018 Wellcome Book Prize and was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize. In 2019, he became the first ever non-fiction writer to win the prestigious Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. His second book, Notes From an Apocalypse was longlisted for the Wainwright Prize.
“The story of Malcolm Macarthur has fascinated me since childhood, when I learned that he had been arrested for murder while hiding out in the home of the attorney general, who happened to live in the same apartment complex as my own grandparents. He had always existed for me as a kind of semi-mythological figure, neither wholly fact nor fiction. I did my PhD on the novels of John Banville, several of which feature a character loosely based on Macarthur.
“He is among the most infamous criminals in Irish history, and since his release in 2012 his notoriety has only grown. I always knew that I wanted to write about this man, and his terrible and bewildering crimes, and to try to find some truth beneath the layers of silence and obfuscation surrounding his story. Although he could often be seen walking the streets of Dublin, and although he had been approached by countless reporters and filmmakers over the years, he had always refused to speak publicly about the murders. I felt that, because I am not a crime writer or a journalist in the conventional sense, he might be willing to speak with me. I am still a little stunned that I turned out to be right. The result is very different to anything I’ve written before. It’s about the story of Malcolm Macarthur’s crimes, but it’s also about the endlessly complex relationship between a writer and a subject; in a deeper sense, it’s about the nature of narrative, and the philosophical problem of truth itself.”
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Poetry Ireland is running a new Residency Programme in 2023 entitled I bhFad i gCéin- Far Afield. The programme hopes to provide five Irish poets with a residency in one of five international locations.
The Residencies will be hosted by Cave Canem in New York, poesiefestival in Berlin, Scottish Poetry Library in Edinburgh, Quarantine in Manchester and Tippet Rise Art Center in Montana. Each residency is specifically chosen to allow poets to immerse themselves in their locations which were chosen to reflect the growing and diverse community of poets living and working in Ireland.
The Residencies are funded by the Arts Council’s International Residency Scheme. Each successful applicant’s travel, accommodation costs will be covered by the programme in addition to a bursary of €2,000. Applications close on 6th December and can be accessed through poetryireland.ie
O’Mahony’s Booksellers is celebrating 120 years trading at 120 O’Connell Street, Limerick. Founded in 1902 by JP O’Mahony, grandfather of the current owner Frank, O’Mahony’s Booksellers is one of the largest and oldest indigenous bookstores in the country.
The family business has seen the original store expand its reach with branches in University of Limerick, University of Galway, Tralee and Ennis as well as an online store. Once the recipient of an RIAI award, O’Mahony’s has a very broad customer base across Ireland thanks to the diversity of books stocked.
O’Mahony’s is inviting primary school children to design a birthday card for the store. Packs are being sent to local primary schools and are also available in-store; children have until December 31st to submit their creations. The pupil who designs the winning card and their teacher will each receive a €120 gift card. Runner-up prizes of €10 gift cards will be awarded to 50 students.
“Despite digitisation, Irish people still love books – browsing, choosing, buying, gifting and reading them,” said Frank O’Mahony. “The retail experience is very important and is a constant focus for us. We are more than just a bookstore and it has been one of our main distinguishing factors. In saying that, our online store is performing really well and allows us to cater for our customer base right across Ireland. We look forward to being around for the next few hundred years.”
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The Society of Authors’ Awards will return to Southwark Cathedral next June 29th, in-venue for the second time since the health crisis. The awards celebrate writers of fiction, non-fiction, poetry and children’s literature, at all stages of their careers, awarding winners and runners-up from a prize fund of more than £100,000 in total.
Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, Eric Ngalle Charles, Kathy O’Shaughnessy, Alvin Pang and Sarah McIntyre will be among next year’s judges for the largest literary prizegiving event in the UK.
Hawthornden Literary Retreat is generously funding the ADCI Literary Prize, ALCS Tom-Gallon Trust Award, Paul Torday Memorial Prize and McKitterick Prize this year, meaning winners will receive substantially more than in previous years.
The early works of some of today’s leading literary figures have been recognised by the SoA Awards, including Carol Ann Duffy, Seamus Heaney and Zadie Smith. Last year’s winners included New Yorker cartoonist Will McPhail, for the first ever graphic novel to win the Betty Trask Prize and Sheila Llewellyn, inaugural winner of the Gordon Bowker Volcano Prize.
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The John Hewitt Society has announced the publication by Blackstaff Press of a new edition of John Hewitt’s Selected Poems, edited by Michael Longley and Frank Ormsby.
Hewitt was perhaps the most significant Belfast poet to emerge before the 1960s generation of Northern Irish poets that included Seamus Heaney, Derek Mahon and Michael Longley. In the words of Edna Longley: “His cross-sectarian ideal of regionalism energised writers, painters and general cultural activity during the postwar period. It recovered ancestral voices and provided some of the basis for a second take-off in the 1960s”.
This evening, the editors of this new edition will read at a special event to mark the publication and the naming of a room named after John Hewitt in the Harrison Boutique Hotel Belfast, a building once associated with the renowned Belfast poet.
Tony Kennedy, chair of The John Hewitt Society, said: “Many of those who attend the annual John Hewitt International Summer School in Armagh or Look North - The North Belfast Festival have asked where they can read and appreciate Hewitt’s poetry. Blackstaff Press are to be commended for responding to these requests by producing the new edition of John Hewitt’s Selected Poems.
“In Frank Ormsby’s words, John Hewitt’s “best poems embody the constants and variables of the human condition”. Michael Longley describes him as a poet who “held out the creative hand rather than the clenched fist [and] made himself heard in a land of bellowers without raising his voice”. These attributes are as necessary today as they have ever been and a new generation will now have the chance to read the poetry for themselves.”
Damian Smyth, Head of Literature and Drama at the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, said: “This book of Selected Poems of John Hewitt introduced a whole new generation to the work of this important poet when it was first published back in 2007, the centenary of the poet’s birth.
“It is excellent to welcome this reissue of the book in 2022, again guided by two distinguished poets in Michael Longley and Frank Ormsby, as the enduring power of Hewitt’s distinctive idiom is proved again, 35 years after the author’s death.
“How fitting it is that the John Hewitt Society is promoting this event and how wonderful that The Harrison Chambers is dedicating a room to the poet and to Roberta Black (1904-1975), his social activist spouse, in their boutique hotel on 45 Malone Road, on the site where they spent the first months of their married life.”
