LooseLeaves/Sadbh: One of the exciting aspects of this week's inclusion of Irish author Christine Dwyer Hickey (right) on the longlist for the £30,000 (€43,090) Orange Prize for women's fiction is that she's in such good company.
Included for her novel Tatty, Dwyer Hickey features among such greats as Anita Desai, Joyce Carol Oates and Jane Gardam. Chosen from 135 entries, there are 20 novels on the longlist which will be whittled down to a shortlist on April 18th, with the winner announced on June 7th.
The inclusion of Tatty is also an accolade for its Irish publisher, New Island. Reviewing it on these pages on publication, Derek Hand picked out as Dwyer Hickey's achievement the creation of the character Tatty's voice, which guided the reader through the world from a child's perspective. He also marvelled at how the intricacies of class were observed.
Earlier this year, Tatty was shortlisted for the Hughes & Hughes/Sunday Independent Irish Novel of the Year Award. Dwyer Hickey is a past winner at Listowel Writers' Week, and a prizewinner in the Observer/Penguin short story competition.
Also in the running for the Orange prize are Kate Atkinson, Clare Clark, Kira Cochrane, Jooiz Denby, Patricia Ferguson, Melanie Finn, Sue Gee, Miranda Hearn, Ingrid Hill, Sheri Holman, Marina Lewycka, Nell Leyshon, Michelle Lovric, Maile Meloy, Lionel Shriver and Tricia Wastvedt. The judges for the Orange Prize are: Jenni Murray, broadcaster and author; Jo Brand, comedian and author; Joanne Harris, author; Jude Kelly, theatre director and Moira Stewart, broadcaster.
Peter Pan - the sequel
Calling her the new JM Barrie as some commentators have done is undoubtedly going too far, but it's still quite an accolade for children's author Geraldine McCaughrean to have been picked from a field of 100 entrants to write the official sequel to Peter Pan. The book will be published by Oxford University Press next year, but Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in London, which launched the plan for a sequel, stands to benefit as Barrie left his royalties to the hospital in perpetuity when he died.
So just what is Peter Pan going to do next? McCaughrean, who has just finished a book on Antarctica, is on record as saying she wants the story to have an exploration theme and that she's interested in the idea of Peter as a mixture of good and bad. She hopes to have the book finished by the end of this year and says it's an astonishing privilege to be let loose in Neverland armed with nothing but a pen and the knowledge that she was walking in Barrie's footprints. "Call me naïve, but when I put in for the competition I had not realised it would be such a big deal," said McCaughrean amid all the fanfare at the London Book Fair where there was huge interest in the publication.
A passion for poetry
Poet John F Deane (below right) has made a passionate plea for the buying and selling of poetry books. "A personal cry at this point. It has become increasingly more difficult to place poetry in bookshops, almost impossible to persuade them to take poetry in translation. I would urge all those interested in poetry in this country to see how it might be feasible to found a dedicated poetry bookshop, anywhere in the country, with online buying facilities, and with a wide and generous openness to poetry of every kind," Deane writes in the current Poetry Ireland newsletter (March-April).
Deane's essay looks back on his foundation of the Dedalus Press poetry publishing house and the close-on 20 years it has been in his hands. His piece is partnered by an essay by the new man at the helm, poet Pat Boran (above right). "It took me a long time to realise that I was the one he was preparing to pass the mantle to, like some over-generous uncle at a family gathering," says Boran, who promises to look at how Dedalus might reinvent itself. "Recent developments in digital media . . . suggest to me all sorts of new possibilities for poetry, all sorts of opportunities that might run parallel to the activities of a traditional publishing house."
It's a space that's going to be interesting to watch over the coming year.