2026 marks the twentieth anniversary of the An Post Irish Book Awards. Originally, the Awards grew out of a single prize, the Hughes & Hughes Novel of the Year, which was the brain-child of bookseller Derek Hughes, Sunday Independent editor, Aengus Fanning, and Books Editor, Madeleine Keane. Early winners included distinguished names such as John McGahern, Colum McCann, and Ronan Bennett.
Since the changeover to a multi-category format in the early 2000’s, The Awards have grown exponentially, becoming one of the major events in the Irish literary calendar in the process. Every year, approximately five hundred books are submitted for consideration in twenty categories, eligibility requiring only that the author be Irish by birth, citizenship or permanent residence.
Over 50,000 readers vote to select the winners in each category. Libraries and bookshops showcase the best books of the year in the critical sales period of the fourth quarter. The Awards Dinner has become a huge social event graced by Taoisigh and Presidents as Guests of honour. Authors whose work covers the broad spectrum of Irish publishing gather in a spirit of camaraderie and friendly competition in the Convention Centre Dublin, an event that now attracts 650 industry-related guests.
There have been two headline sponsors of the awards; Bord Gáis Energy from 2010-2017 and An Post, the current sponsors, who took over in 2018. In addition, individual categories are sponsored by a variety of arts bodies, booksellers, and commercial companies without whom the awards could not have achieved the steady rate of growth evident in recent years. Happily, the roster of categories continues to grow, with poetry and Irish Language books among the most recent additions.
As we reach this significant anniversary, it’s tempting to reflect on a job well done. Arts projects have a shelf life and the ones that achieve longevity do so for a reason. The success of these awards has been down to a huge collective effort on the part of many dedicated entities including long-term partners, Agile Marketing, Unique Media, The Awards board, our media partners, the booksellers of Ireland, and the Irish publishing industry. Securing a total buy-in from every corner of the Irish literary sector has been the critical factor in getting us to this point.
The written word is part of the Irish DNA. We are a nation of storytellers, and it should come as no surprise that we produce so many talented writers and so much great literature in the English and Irish languages. But in celebrating the pre-eminent status of Irish literature in the first decades of the new century, it’s easy to forget how, a mere half-century ago, Irish writers suffered under a stifling theocratic culture that suppressed their work and compromised their ability to make a living from their art. In certain cases, authors were forced to leave the country in the interests of survival.
When his second novel, The Dark, was banned by the Irish Board of Censorship in 1965, John McGahern was sacked from his teaching post for writing an allegedly pornographic book. Similarly, in 1965, Edna O’Brien’s landmark debut, The Country Girls, suffered a similar fate. Decades later, both McGahern and O’Brien were awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Irish Book Awards, developments that carried more than a hint of vindication after years of rejection and mistreatment.
It’s perhaps no coincidence that the flourishing of a new 21st-century literary renaissance has proceeded in parallel with the Irish Book Awards. In the beginning, an earlier wave of brilliant Irish writers including John Banville, Roddy Doyle, Sebastian Barry, Joseph O’Connor, Colum McCann, Emma Donoghue and Anne Enright were already firmly established but one of our proudest achievements has been to promote and champion the work of the new wave of young writers by exposing their work to the vast audience of 50k voters who take part in the public vote to choose the winners in each category.
First-time writers often struggle to gain attention but by showcasing their work in The Newcomer of the Year category and the New Irish Writing categories for short stories and poems, we create a launch-pad that may not have been available to them otherwise. A great novelist like Donal Ryan was always going to break through but winning the Sunday Independent Newcomer of the Year in 2012 for his bestselling novel, The Spinning Heart, may have helped him on his way. Such is the democratic nature of the Awards, where shortlisted first-timers take their place alongside established names in all promotional activities surrounding the awards.
At the other end of the scale, The Lifetime Achievement award honours an Irish writer whose distinguished body of work and sheer longevity elevates them to a higher plane of distinction. These are writers who have won renown not just in Ireland but internationally and we are extremely proud of the rollcall of Lifetime Honorees which includes Sebastian Barry, Colm Tóibín, Thomas Kinsella, Eavan Boland, John Montague, JP Donleavy, Paul Durcan, John Banville, Maeve Binchy, John McGahern, Edna O’ Brien, William Trevor, Seamus Heaney, Anne Enright and most recently, Michael D Higgins.
Few small countries can boast of producing such a wealth of major literary figures but the key is to keep reproducing through the gene-pool of the native culture and in conclusion, we can say with some confidence that such a process is well under way in 2026, a year in which Irish writers excel in almost every genre be it fiction, nonfiction or children’s books.
We Didn’t Start the Fire but, in this century, we have surely stoked it and along with many thousands of Irish readers, warmed our hearts and minds in its undying glow.
By Bert Wright
