Category: Events

The Irish Government, in partnership with the Arts Council for Ireland, has announced that Jennifer Thorp will be a recipient of the Decade of Centenaries Markievicz Award bursary scheme for artists in 2021.

The award, named in honour of artist Constance de Markievicz provides support for artists from all backgrounds and genres in producing new work that reflects on the role of women in the period covered by the centenary commemorations and beyond.

A full press release can be found here.

Adnan Al-Sayegh and Jenny Lewis will be reading from their ground-breaking dual-language Arabic/English version of part of Al-Sayegh’s astonishing anti-war epic poem ‘Uruk’s Anthem’. Giving voice to the profound despair of the Iraqi experience of recent wars, this superb translation brings the eloquent original Arabic epic to a new readership.

“To see such a significant selection from this major work of world literature in this thrilling translation gives me great pleasure. This fine poet of terror and tenderness has found the translators he deserves.” – Leona Medlin, Mulfran Press, Cardiff

https://cardiffpoetryfestival.com/2021-event-18/

MSt alumna Lani Yamamoto’s Ours and Others has been shortlisted for The Novel Prize 2020, “a new biennial award for a book-length work of literary fiction written in English by published and unpublished writers around the world”. The publishers are Fitzcarraldo Editions, Giramondo and New Directions.

Selected from from close to 1500 submissions worldwide, the six book shortlist includes:

(from the announcement)

“- Lani Yamamoto’s Ours and Others’, a metaphysical mystery of sorts in two parts. In the first, the child of a fallen cult leader tracks an escaped sibling through an endless forest; in the second, the amnesic narrator wakes in a strange, desolate land, and tries to piece together the past. Lani Yamamoto has written and illustrated six children’s books, published in fourteen languages. Her work has been nominated for the Nordic Council Children and Young People’s Literature Prize, the Icelandic Literary Prize for Children’s and YA Books, the Reykjavík Children’s Book Prize, and the Italian Scelte di Classe Award. She holds a BA in psychology from Bryn Mawr College, and master’s degrees in both creative writing and the study of religions from the University of Oxford. from the US, she has lived in Iceland for twenty-five years.
…

The Novel Prize offers $10,000 to the winner in the form of an advance against royalties, and simultaneous publication of their novel in the UK and Ireland by the London-based Fitzcarraldo Editions, in Australia and New Zealand by Sydney publisher Giramondo, and in North America by New York’s New Directions. The judges are looking for novels which explore and expand the possibilities of the form, and are innovative and imaginative in style.

The Novel Prize is managed by the three publishers working in collaboration. Submissions were open from 1 April to 1 July 2020, with Fitzcarraldo Editions reading submissions from Africa and Europe, Giramondo from Asia and Australasia, and New Directions from the Americas. The winner will be announced in February 2021, and published in early 2022.”

More on the prize and the shortlist here.