Congratulations to Anne Enright, shortlisted with What Are You Like? in the best novel section of the Whitbread Book Awards which were announced on Tuesday, but also to the other Irish nominee, Maurice Riordan. His new collection, Floods, figures on the poetry shortlist, along with new work by John Burnside, Michael Donaghy, Anne Stevenson and R.F. Langley. Born in Lisgoold, Co Cork, in 1953, his first collection, A Word from the Loki, published by Faber in 1995, got him off to a good start when it was a choice of the Poetry Book Society. Now this. Floods will be reviewed on these pages next Saturday.
This year, the surprise section turned out to be the Children's Book category, where J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire failed to turn up on the shortlist.Michael Murpurgo, a major children's author and a Whitbread judge, said that this was one of the richest periods for children's literature and that they just wanted to hear a different tune. The authors on the children's shortlist are David Almond, Kevin Crossley-Holland, Adele Geras and Jamila Gavin. Category winners - the other two categories of a total of five are for a first novel and biography - will be announced on January 4th with the winners getting £3,500 sterling. The overall winner of the Whitbread Book of the Year title will be announced on January 23rd and has £22,500 going with it.
What better way could Cork University Press celebrate its 75th anniversary than by issuing a catalogue brim-full of fascinating forthcoming titles. Sadbh found she was marking page after page of books she'd like to see before realising the list was so good the best thing might be just to say: "Send the lot".
Apart from, at last, the Field Day Anthology (Volumes IV and V): Irish Women's Writing and Traditions, which was mentioned here recently, there is the exciting prospect of a full-length critical biography of Kate O'Brien by Eibhear Walshe of UCC's English Department. Because of her role as critic and broadcaster as well as novelist and dramatist, there'll be plenty to draw on from her essays, reviews, letters and memoirs and the book will be out next autumn. Irish Times assistant foreign desk editor Paddy Woodworth, whose job involves developing Spanish and Latin American coverage for the paper, also has a book due from CUP next March. Called Dirty War, Clean Hands: The Dark Side of Spanish Democracy, it looks at how government forces in Spain were linked to fighting the Basque separatist group ETA with its own methods .
The catalogue also has a commemorative essay by historian John A. Murphy about CUP's genesis. The creation of Alfred O'Rahilly, registrar, then president of UCC, the press was born of his conviction that new-found national independence must be reflected in cultural enterprises. An ulterior motive was to cock a snook at the capital and "assert our position as an intellectual centre outside Dublin". The suggestions he had to put up with that he used CUP as an ego-boosting mechanism, his helpful links with English publisher Basil Blackwell, and the involvement of Daniel Corkery as a director, all make interesting reading. Given the press's at times hand-to-mouth existence, it is indeed, as Sara Wilbourne its publisher says, a real survival story, particularly given the hostile academic publishing environment of the late 1980s.
THE 22nd Allingham Arts Weekend takes place today and tomorrow in Ballyshannon, Co Donegal, with a poetry workshop with Tony Curtis and a short story one mediated by Claire Keegan. Keegan, who is writer-in-residence at Dublin City University this year, will also facilitate an advanced short fiction workshop at the Irish Writers' Centre in Dublin in six weekly instalments, starting in February. Those interested should submit the first page of a short story, with a brief biography and covering letter to the Writers' Centre, by December 30th.
IT'S always great to see Irish manuscripts staying in the country and Sadbh was delighted to see a collection of Jennifer Johnston's papers being presented by the writer to Trinity College library in Dublin on Wednesday. Similarly, Thursday saw a celebration at the Central Library and Arts Centre in Letterkenny for the official handing over to Donegal County Council by Cathal O Searcaigh of his archives, books and artworks. In exchange, the poet will live rent-free for his lifetime in the house the council built for his parents 20 years ago. Part of the agreement is the provision of an extension to the house for visitors. The party saw the launch of the poet's new book, Ag tnuth leis an tSolas, of poems stretching from now back to 1975 and published by Clo Iar Chonnachta.
Sadbh