Six shortlisted for Kate O’Brien Award for a debut novel
Reporter:
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Six entires have been shortlisted for the 6th annual Kate O’Brien Award for a debut novel from an Irish female author.
The Award will be presented as part of the 37th annual Limerick Literary Festival in Honour of Kate O’Brien in February 2021. It is one of Ireland s most vibrant and successful festivals which has been running since 1984 and it showcases in a diverse and eclectic programme the best in Irish and international contemporary literature.
The Festival takes place online from February 26 to 28 and will be broadcast from Limerick City. The event continues to honour the life and works of the Limerick author, while attracting prominent participants from all over the world.
Not the least of our losses in this plague year was one of our greatest poets, Derek Mahon. Washing Up (Gallery Press) is a glorious late harvest - vigorous, funny, angry, blithe - beautifully produced, like all Gallery editions, and including, appropriately, a lovely tribute to another luminary of the dead poets society, Ciaran Carson. Mahon s last is vividly alive. Vincent van Gogh: A Life in Letters, edited by Nienke Bakker, Leo Jansen and Hans Luijten (Thames & Hudson) is a judicious selection from the magnificent six-volume Complete Letters of 2009. Had he not been a painter, Van Gogh could have made his name as a writer, as his correspondence shows. Impassioned, often heartbreaking, furious, funny and tender, these letters form a unique testament from a pivotal figure in 19th-century art. For my third choice, I am going to flout the rules by picking a book to be published in January 2021: Billy O Callaghan s Life Sentences (Cape) is a superb and moving novel of