GLEN DIMPLEX AWARD WINNERS

At a ceremony in Dublin last night, Sally Nicholls was named Glen Dimplex New Writer of the Year 2008, for her book Ways to Live Forever, published by Scholastic Children's Books. Sally wrote the story at the tender age of twenty-three years. It tells the story of an eleven year-old boy dying of leukaemia.

The Glen Dimplex Award celebrates first books by writers.

The winner of the Fiction category was Allan Bush for his book Last Bird Singing (Seren); the Biography/Non-fiction Book category was won by Nia Wyn for Blue Sky July (Seren); the Poetry prize went to Will Stone for Glaciation (Salt Publishing); and the prize for best Irish-language book went to Simon Ó Faoláin for Anam Mhadra (Coiscéim).

Many congrats to all.

GLEN DIMPLEX AWARD SHORTLIST

The 2008 Glen Dimplex New Writers Awards have announced their shortlists in five different categories: Fiction, Poetry, Children's, Irish language and Non-fiction/Biography. Congrats to all the shortlistees.

There's a total prize fund of €45,000, and the award is for a writer's first ever book (not their first in a given genre).

The fiction shortlist is as follows:

Allan Bush - Last Bird Singing - Seren

Aifric Campbell - The Semantics of Murder - Profile Books

Daniel Davies - The Isle of Dogs - Serpent’s Tail

Rowan Somerville - The End of Sleep - Orion Publishing (Check out Rowan's website here. It's quite mad!)

David Szalay - London and The South-East - Random House Group Ltd

Robin Yassin-Kassab - The Road from Damascus - Hamish Hamilton


And the poetry list, which includes three collections from Salt - big congratulations to them!


Paul Batchelor - The Sinking Road - Bloodaxe Books Ltd

Ciaran Berry - The Sphere of Birds - The Gallery Press

Valeria Melchioretto - The End of Limbo - Salt Publishing

Eleanor Rees - Andvaste's Hair - Salt Publishing

Kathryn Simmonds - Sunday at the Skin Launderette - Seren

Will Stone - Glaciation - Salt Publishing

The other shortlists can be found here: Glen Dimplex 2008