As we begin to look forward to the Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards for 2012, the question we’re being asked is how in the world are you going to top last year? The 2011 Awards, you will recall, featured Lifetime Achievement honoree, Seamus Heaney; Novel of the Year winner Neil Jordan; Guest of Honour President Michael D Higgins; and a videolinked contribution from President Bill Clinton.
Tough to beat? Maybe, but we are constantly amazed by the literary riches Irish writers bestow on us every year and we prefer to consider each year as a new chapter in the endlessly creative cycle of Irish writing. Already, it’s evident that in 2012 there will be no falling-off in standards despite the tough times in which the Irish book industry is increasingly forced to do business.
Submissions for the 2012 Awards are now open.
The 2012 Gala Dinner returns to the RDS in Ballsbridge on Thursday November 22nd.
Class of 2011′s Shining Hour
The Sixth Annual Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards produced an eclectic mix of talented category winners including Neil Jordan, Tim Robinson and Belinda McKeon.
The fabulously wacky Caitlin Moran gleefully accepted her John Murray Listeners’ Choice Award for How to be a Woman and thanked “everyone who voted for me — mainly me!”
Nicolas Roche and Tim Robinson were both popular winners for Inside the Peloton and Connemara: A Little Gaelic Kingdom respectively.
The glamour, as ever, on this evening was high wattage and cookery writer Rachel Allen looked radiant as she picked up a glass sculpture for her Easy Meals, while Sheila O’Flanagan, resplendent in scarlet satin, won the Popular Fiction Award.
The Sunday Independent sponsored the best Irish Newcomer of 2011 and I was delighted to present the laurel to Belinda McKeon for Solace, one of the most beautifully written novels I’ve read this year. Filmmaker Neil Jordan, who won the Irish Novel of the Year with the very fine Mistaken, and writer Alan Glynn who picked up the crime fiction prize for Bloodland, were profuse in their thanks to the women in their lives.
The Specsavers Children’s awards went to Chris Judge for The Lonely Beast and an overwhelmed Anna Carey for The Real Rebecca.
- Madeleine Keane