Cork writer Kevin Doyle is this year's winner of the £2,000 Michael McLaverty Short Story Award. His story Lake Disappointment has been published in a limited-edition anthology entitled Lake Disappointment and Other Stories, which is available to buy exclusively in the library for £5. The two runners-up are Ciarán Folan and Sinéad Slattery, whose stories A Parting Gift and First Snow respectively, are also published in the anthology. The judges were Patsy Horton, managing editor of Blackstaff Press, and award-winning writer David Park. Previous winners include Aiden O'Reilly, Michele Forbes, Mandy Taggart and Annemarie Neary, who have all gone on to publish novels.
Henrietta McKervey
, author of The Heart of Everything and What Becomes of Us, is the third winner of the Irish Writers’ Centre’s
Jack Harte Bursary
, an annual award, now in its third year, in honour of the centre’s founder. McKervey will spend a fortnight next spring at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, in Annaghmakerrig, Co Monaghan, working on her next novel, set in London and spanning more than 100 years.
Writer Declan Hughes, who also reviews crime fiction for The Irish Times, has been appointed the Arts Council Writer in Residence at University College Dublin 2017. As such, he will be teaching on the MA and MFA programmes in creative writing in the School of English, Drama and Film and possibly combating ctime on campus in his free time.
The Good Son by Paul McVeigh, recent winner of the Polari Prize and an Irish Times Book Club choice, has been chosen by the Reading Agency charity as one of the giveaway titles for World Book Night 2017 along with Wonder by R J Palacio and Animal Kingdom by colouring-in bestseller Millie Marotta. The charity will be working more closely with care homes, youth centres, colleges, prisons, public libraries, mental health groups and other charities to match books with new readers on April 23rd , 2017.
Another new talent (and another lawyer) is joining the thriving Irish crime writing scene. Sphere is to publish The Rúin by debut author Dervla McTiernan in March 2018. The Rúin introduces DI Cormac Reilly, who has left a high-flying Dublin career to return to Galway where he is confronted with resentful colleagues and a haunting case from twenty years prior. McTiernan, from Co Cork, studied at NUIG and practiced as a lawyer for 12 years. She now works for the Mental Health Commission in Perth, Australia.
Galway bookshops Kennys and Charlie Byrne's have launched a joint advertising campaign to encourage people to support local, independent shops rather than shopping on Amazon. The accompanying video has had more than 10,000 views since it was released last week.
Conor Kenny said: “Sixty per cent of Irish online shopping goes outside the country. We would love more of that spend to stay in Ireland. All of us in Kennys would much rather see somebody buy a book in Charlie’s than buy a book from Amazon, and vice versa ..…. We are hoping this Christmas more people will switch their buying to local independent bookshops”. Charlie Byrne said: “Books make truly magical gifts and this year we have joined forces with our friends at Kennys Bookshop to promote Galway’s independent bookshops. Together we hope to keep the story going and encourage the people of Galway to shop direct and local during the festive season. Not only will this keep jobs and money in the local economy, but also the experience of visiting a physical bookshop is something that can’t be recreated online.”
The Financial Times, in collaboration with Google, has released a new video documentary, Dublin in the Dark: The Story of Emerald Noir, narrated by awardwinning Irish crime writer Tana French. It highlights the tensions between the city's past and present, reflecting on the new wave of Irish crime writers and their relationship to Ireland's literary traditions.
