The Kerry Group Novel of the Year at Listowel Writers’ Week prize went to David Park, for the exceptional Travelling in a Strange Land (Bloomsbury). Park beat off stiff competition from John Boyne (for Ladder to the Sky rather than his more recent work, My Brother’s Name is Jessica) and the otherwise unstoppable force that is Sally Rooney, alongside Jess Kidd and Emer Martin.
Mapping Laois (Wordwell), by Arnold Horner, has been awarded the Nilsson Local Heritage Award. This award is for the best work of heritage or history published in Ireland within the last year, and the award was accepted on the night by Nick Maxwell, Chairman of the Wordwell Group.
The winner of the Piggot Poetry Prize was Ailbhe Darcy for Insistence (Bloodaxe Books). This work, described by Sinéad Morrissey as a ‘monument to the precariousness of our times’ was previously shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize, 2018 and the Irish Times Poetry Now Award 2019.
The Bryan MacMahon Short Story Award was won by Sarah Harte for ‘Submerged’.
