Compiled by
CAROLINE WALSH
Irish debutant makes the Peculier crime shortlist
The London-based debut Irish novelist William Ryan (below) has made the shortlist of the £3,000 (€3,300) Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year award for The Holy Thief, set amid the paranoia of the Stalin years in the USSR. Reviewing the book in these pages, Kevin Sweeney hailed it as an absorbing page-turner.
The other five writers on the shortlist are Mark Billingham, SJ Bolton, Lee Child, Stuart MacBride and Andrew Taylor. Previous winners include Val McDermid and RJ Ellory. The winner of the award, which is open to British and Irish writers, will be announced at the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival, in Harrogate, on July 21st. The veteran writer PD James, now in her 91st year, will be honoured at the festival for her outstanding contribution to crime fiction.
Ryan's follow-up novel, Bloody Meadow,again featuring detective Alexei Korolev, comes out in September.
Didion returns to theme of personal loss
Readers gripped by The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion's extraordinary memoir about the sudden death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne (brought to the Dublin stage by Vanessa Redgrave in 2008), will be interested to see the great American journalist, novelist and essayist returning to the theme of personal loss.
In Magical ThinkingDidion's daughter, Quintana, was also gravely ill; subsequently she died. Now, in Blue Nights, Didion addresses her own life as a mother, a woman and a writer. Billed as her attempt to understand our deepest fears and the certainties of ageing, illness and death, it will be published on this side of the Atlantic in November by Fourth Estate.
Key Serbian award goes to Irish recipient
John F Deane has become the first Irish writer to win the Golden Key of Smederevo award, a Serbian prize given annually for a body of poetry. Previous recipients include Yves Bonnefoy of France and Homero Aridjis of Mexico, who read at the DLR Poetry Now festival last year. Part of the prize will be the publication of a collection of Deane’s poems in a dual-language format, translated into Serbian by the poet Dragan Dragojlovic. It will be launched at the Smederevo poetry festival in October and again at the International Belgrade Book Fair in the same month.
Award suspended, and no prizes for guessing why
It’s a sign of the times that the £5,000 UK literary award the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, for writers aged under 35, is to be suspended this year. Booktrust, which runs it, made the decision in light of current funding challenges.
Initiated in 1942 by the wife of the author and RAF pilot John Llewellyn Rhys, who was killed in action in the second World War, the prize encompasses fiction, nonfiction, poetry and drama. Past winners include William Boyd, Jeanette Winterson, VS Naipaul and David Mitchell. (Writers from the Republic aren’t eligible.)
Announcing that there will be no prize this autumn, Booktrust said it strongly intended to reinstate it as soon as possible.
Free lunchtime poetry at the National Gallery
A series of free poetry readings will take place in the National Gallery of Ireland, in Dublin, on Wednesdays at 1.05pm throughout this month, in association with Poetry Ireland. The line-up is Noel Monaghan next week, Mary O’Donnell on July 13th, Jean O’Brien on July 20th and Iggy McGovern on July 27th.
