The Lit Review |54|The Bord Gais Energy Irish Book Awards
Bord Gais Energy Irish Book Awards
The Bord Gais Energy Irish Book Awards took place last night with winners in fifteen book categories. The Green Road by Anne Enright, was chosen as the Eason Book Club Novel of the Year and Spill Simmer Falter Wither by Sara Baume was named the Sunday Independent Newcomer of the Year.
Niall Breslin took the Popular Non-Fiction Book of the Year prize for My Mate Jeffrey, his story on coping with anxiety and depression. Sinead Gleeson won the Best Irish Published Book Award for The Long Gaze Back, her anthology of stories written by Irish women. Louise O’Neill took the Specsavers Children’s Book of the Year (Senior) category for her book Asking For It and Oliver Jeffers and Eoin Colfer won the Children’s Book of the Year (Junior) category for their book Imaginary Fred. You can view the full list here.
Immersive Theatre Experience of Goosebumps
Many children of the 90’s will recall the Goosebumps series. The blood curdling tales of R.L Stein such as Say Cheese and Die, Night of the Living Dummy and Monsterblood will be given a new lease of life, when they are presented as an interactive theatrical experience in abandoned railway tunnels beneath Waterloo station in London. With over 400 million published copies of Stein’s books, this series is the second best selling in the world, surpassed only by JK Rowling’s Harry Potter. Tickets for this interactive show are now on sale. A version of the show for adults will run from 6th April and a children’s version will open in May. The performance will run until 4th September 2016.
Twixt Cup and Lip
An early play by William Faulkner has been published a century after it was written. Twixt Cup and Lip, a one act play written by Faulkner as a young man, has been described as ‘a light-hearted jazz age story’. The work shows a comical side to Faulkner’s writing, who was better known for his intense, dark depictions of life in the southern US. Faulkner went on to publish The Sound and the Fury in 1929, and As I Lay Dying in 1930. In 1949, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature, praised. He is well known for his ‘unique contribution to the modern American Novel’.
I am Because You Are
On the 25th of November, 100 years ago, Albert Einstein delivered a lecture to the Prussian Academy of Science. This was his first presentation on the Theory of Relativity. To celebrate this momentous date, an anthology celebrating Einstein has been published. I am Because you Are is a collection of stories by writers and physicists, and is a fitting tribute to the creative genius.
The New Yorker tries out the Novella
The New Yorker has always found itself frustrated with the novella, claiming ‘They can do so much and yet we can’t do much with them. There simply isn’t enough space in a weekly magazine’. This frustration has led the fiction department within the New Yorker to launch their Novella Series, where the magazine will publish a novella a few times a year as an online feature. Callan Wink’s In Hindsight, about a widow’s life on the Montana plains, has kicked things off for the series.
Saudi Arabian Poet Sentenced to Death
A Saudi Arabian poet has been sentenced to death for his involvement in the ‘amplification and curation of the small but growing contemporary art scene in Saudi Arabia’. Asraf Fayadh, a poet and artist born in Palestine, is a member of the British-Saudi artist collective Edge Of Arabia.
He was first arrested by the religious police in August 2013, and later accused of committing apostasy and promoting atheism through his poetry.
A Moveable Feast
Sales of the French translation of Earnest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast have soared after the devastating attacks in Paris last week. The book has been chosen as a symbol of defiance, a celebration of the cultured, bohemian life that the city always nurtured.
Gallimard’s Folio paperback line said the book had been selling 500 copies a day since Monday, up from 10 to 15 copies a day before the attacks. After receiving orders for 8,500 copies, the company has said it has gone back to press to request a further 20,000 printed copies of the book.
#GiveaBook
This month, until 24th December, Penguin will give a new book to a child each time someone tweets with the hashtag #GiveaBook. This initiative is in partnership with First Book, a literacy non-profit campaigning for the right to read for young children, and sourcing new books for disadvantaged children. Penguin have pledged up to 35,000 free book donations up until Christmas eve, so get tweeting!
