Books Ireland Trade News—a monthly catch up on what’s happening in the industry
This month’s Trade News is supported by Westchester Education UK & International
Sarah O’Hanlon joins The Bookseller
Sarah O’Hanlon has recently joined the commercial team at The Bookseller, taking over from Gerard O’Hare.
Sarah will be looking after print and digital advertising in the magazine and on the website, including the upcoming Ireland Focus and The Buyer’s Guides.
The Ireland Focus edition of The Bookseller is published annually in September and includes the Irish previews which are compiled by Books Ireland.
Sarah will be attending The Irish Book Trade Conference organised by Bookselling Ireland and Publishing Ireland, where The Bookseller will have a stand.
Further details of the conference can be found here.
HarperCollins Ireland acquires Niamh Orbinski’s intuitive eating guide, No Apologies
HarperCollins Ireland has acquired Niamh Orbinski’s No Apologies, a guilt-free guide to ditching diet culture and rebuilding your relationship with food, which will be published on April 27th, 2023.
Niamh Orbinski is a nutritionist, certified intuitive eating counsellor and yoga teacher. No Apologies is inspired by the thousands of people Niamh has counselled towards healthier relationships with food and their bodies.
“Diet culture is ubiquitous,” Niamh says, “and as a result, many people have a fractured relationship with food – but don’t realise it. For years, I have been helping people to rebuild their relationship with food, movement, and body image. My hope is that this book will help many more to do the same. We all deserve to live our lives unapologetically, no matter our body size or shape, but diet culture has robbed us of that. I’m thrilled to be working with HarperCollins Ireland to get No Apologies out there so that we can all live our one precious life happy, healthy, and unapologetically.”
Publisher Conor Nagle says that No Apologies is a deeply relevant and practical book.
“It’s a genuinely ground-breaking exploration of what it really means to eat intuitively – to deconstruct the prison of poor self-image and break free, once and for all. Part manifesto, part handbook, it’s the most phenomenal debut but no less than Niamh’s gifts deserve.”
New middle-grade series
There is a new middle-grade series on the block, coming out with Gill Books next month. Milly McCarthy is a Complete Catastrophe by Leona Forde is illustrated by Karen Harte and will be published in March.
Inspired by her daughter who was keen to find an Irish story she could relate to, debut author Leona Forde introduces us to Milly McCarthy, a fun-loving ten-year-old girl from Cork with totally brilliant ideas.
To celebrate the debut, bookshops around the country will be offered bookmarks, badges, pencils, and posters featuring Milly’s doodles and one-liners, with libraries also receiving resource packs to accompany the book.
Awards
Lilliput Press, Little Island Books, Banshee Press, and New Island Books have been announced as country finalists for Small Press of the Year in the British Book Awards 2023.
“Even in a toughened climate, grass-roots book-making is alive and well.”—Philip Jones, editor of The Bookseller. See the full list of categories here.
KPMG Children’s Books Ireland Awards
This year’s shortlist for the KPMG Children’s Books Ireland Awards has been announced, with ten books in the running for the annual prize which honours excellence in books for young people by Irish authors and illustrators.
The Awards have been running for over thirty years and offer a total prize fund of €16,000 across six categories. The full shortlist can be found here.
The Walter Scott Prize
The Geometer Lobachevsky by Adrian Duncan (Lilliput Press/Tuskar Rock Press) and These Days, by Lucy Caldwell (Faber) are both on the longlist for the 2023 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction.
The historical fiction prize is worth £25,000, with each shortlisted author receiving €1,500. Previous Irish winners include Sebastian Barry for Days Without End in 2016. Last year’s prize was won by James Roberston, for News of the Dead.
You can find the full longlist here.
Opportunities
The Irish Writers Centre has several opportunities with deadlines fast approaching, including the National Mentoring Programme, the Cúirt Young Writer Delegates Programme, and Writing the Earth.
February 24 is the deadline to apply for the position of Poet in Residence with Poetry Ireland. This is a part-time role, with time for the poet to work on their craft along with engaging with the public. Detailed information about the position and all requirements can be found here.
International Literature Festival Dublin seeks proposals
ILFD welcomes all kinds of proposals for this year’s programme which bring tension, distortion and counter-current into the flow of things, and is especially interested in concepts that break away from the traditional literary event format.
This year the festival is looking for ideas which are rooted in performance, experience, or activity as a vehicle for generating new ways of presenting the art form of literature.
Submit your proposal by 12:00 noon March 10th 2023.
