Cork-City Frank O'Connor Short Story Award Shortlist 2009

This news just in from the Munster Literature Centre! Irish writer Philip Ó Ceallaigh has been shortlisted for the second time for the Cork-City Frank O'Connor Short Story Award, as has Kiwi author Charlotte Grimshaw. And the wonderful Zimbabwean writer Petina Gappah is also on the list. I talked about Petina's Elegy for Easterly earlier here.

HUGE congrats to the shortlistees. Here is the announcement from the administrators' of the award:

The shortlist for the 2009 Cork-City Frank O'Connor Short Story Award has been decided by an international jury. The award at 35,000 euro is the richest prize in the world for the short story form and is given annually to an original collection of stories judged to be the best. Previous winners have included Haruki Murakami, Miranda July, Jhumpa Lahiri and Yiyun Li. The award is organised by the Munster Literature Centre with generous funding from Cork City Council.

Notable names edged out for a position on this year's shortlist include Booker winner Kazuo Ishiguro, Orange Prize winner Chimanda Ngozi Adiche, veteran short story authors Ali Smith, Mary Gaitskill and James Lasdun and reviewers' darling Sana Krasikov.

The winner will be announced in Cork on September 20th at the closing ceremony of the tenth Frank O'Connor International Short Story Festival which is the oldest annual short story festival in the world.

Further information can be obtained from Patrick Cotter, Director, The Munster Literature Centre, www.munsterlit.ie ++353 214312955

The shortlisted books are as follows:

An Elegy for Easterly by Petina Gappah published by Faber, London

Petina Gappah is a Zimbabwean writer with law degrees from Cambridge, Graz University, and the University of Zimbabwe. Her short fiction and essays have been published in eight countries. She lives with her son Kush in Geneva, where she works as counsel in an international organisation that provides legal aid on international trade law to developing countries. Her story collection, An Elegy for Easterly is published by Faber in April 2009. She is currently completing The Book of Memory, her first novel. Both books will also be published in Finland, France, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway and Sweden.

Singularity by Charlotte Grimshaw published by Vintage, New Zealand

Charlotte Grimshaw is a fiction writer. Her first novel was described as ‘New Zealand noir,’ and her later books continue to draw from a range of genres and dramatic situations. Grimshaw has contributed short fiction to anthologies, was awarded the 2006 Bank of New Zealand Katherine Mansfield Award, and published her first short story collection in 2007. Titled Opportunity, this collection was short-listed for the world’s richest short fiction prize, the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award.

Ripples and other Stories by Shih-Li Kow published by Silverfish Books, Malaysia

Shih-Li Kow was born in Kuala Lumpur and was educated for the most part in schools in Malaysia. Her stories have been published in the anthologies, News from Home and Silverfish New Writing 7. Sh-li Kow holds a degree in chemical engineering and worked as an industrial engineer in a multinational consumer products company for more than ten years. She is currently in retail. She resides in Kuala Lumpur with her extended family and son, Jack.


The Pleasant Light of Day by Philip O Ceallaigh Published by Penguin Ireland.

Philip O Ceallaigh has lived and worked at a variety of jobs in Ireland,
Spain, Russia, the United States, Kosovo and Georgia.
He has lived mostly in Bucharest since 2000 where among other things he translates English subtitles for Romanian films. He has won the Glen Dimplex Award and the Rooney Prize for his first short story collection Notes from A Turkish Whorehouse which was also shortlisted for the Frank O’Connor Award in 2006.

Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower Published by FSG New York and Granta UK

Wells Tower’s short stories and journalism have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, McSweeney’s, The Paris Review, The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories, The Washington Post Magazine, and elsewhere. He received two Pushcart Prizes and the Plimpton Prize from The Paris Review. He divides his time between Chapel Hill, North Carolina and Brooklyn, New York.

Love Begins in Winter by Simon Van Booy published by Harper Perennial New York.

Simon Van Booy was born in London and grew up in rural Wales and Oxford. After playing football in Kentucky, he lived in Paris and Athens. In 2002 he was awarded an MFA and won the H.R. Hays Poetry Prize. His journalism has appeared in magazines and newspapers including the New York Times and the New York Post. Van Booy is the author of The Secret Lives of People in Love, now translated into several languages. He lives in New York City, where he teaches part-time at the School of Visual Arts and at Long Island University. He is also involved in the Rutgers Early College Humanities Program (REaCH) for young adults living in underserved communities.