Submissions for 2023 Book Prize

Sean is back. Back in Belfast and back into old habits. Back on the mad all-nighters, the borrowed tenners and missing rent, the casual jobs that always fall through. Back in these scarred streets, where the promised prosperity of peacetime has never arrived. Back among his brothers, his ma, and all the things they never talk about. Until one night Sean finds himself at a party – dog-tired, surrounded by jeering strangers, his back against the wall – and he makes a big mistake. 

Michael Magee is the fiction editor of the Tangerine and a graduate of the creative writing PhD programme at Queen’s University, Belfast. His writing has appeared in Winter Papers, The Stinging Fly, The Lifeboat and The 32: The Anthology of Irish Working-Class Voices. Close to Home is his first novel. It was shortlisted for the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize 2023 and won the Rooney Prize for Literature 2023.

Micheál Burns lives alone in his family's bungalow at the end of Kerry Head in Ireland. It is a picturesque place, but the cliffs have a darker side to them: for generations they have been a suicide black spot. Micheál's mother saw the saving of these lost souls - these visitors - as her spiritual duty, and now, in the wreckage of his life, Micheál finds himself continuing her work. When his sisters tell him that they want to sell the land, he must choose between his siblings and the visitors, a future or a past.

Born in Tralee, County Kerry, on the south-west coast of Ireland, Noel O'Regan is the recipient of a number of awards, including a Seán Dunne Young Writer Award and an Arts Council Next Generation Artist Award.

His short fiction has appeared in publications such as The Stinging Fly, The London Magazine, Ambit, Banshee and Southword. His debut novel Though the Bodies Fall was published by Granta Books in August 2023.

In the seaside town of Kinlough, three old friends are thrown together for the first time in years. They were part of an original group of six inseparable teenagers in the summer of 2003, with motherless, reckless Kala Lanann as their group's white-hot centre. Soon after that summer's peak, Kala disappeared without a trace. 
  
Fifteen years later, human remains have been discovered in the woods. Two more girls have gone missing. As past and present collide, the estranged friends are forced to confront their own complicity in the events that led to Kala's disappearance, and to try to stop Kinlough's violent patterns repeating themselves. 
 
Against the backdrop of a town suffocating on its own secrets, in a story that builds from a smoulder to a stunning climax, Kala brilliantly examines the sometimes brutal costs of belonging, as well as the battle in the human heart between vengeance and forgiveness, despair and redemption.

Colin Walsh's short stories have won several awards including the RTE Francis MacManus Short Story Prize and the Hennessy Literary Award. In 2019 he was named Hennessy New Irish Writer of the Year. His writing has been published in the Stinging Fly, the Irish Times and broadcast on RTE Radio 1 and BBC Radio 4. KALA is his first novel. He is from Galway and lives in Belgium.  

A love song to a location, and an exploration of whether murder can ever be justified, THE MURDER LOOP is a crime novel set amid the rugged landscapes of the Wild Atlantic Way.  

Following personal trauma, Kate “Cass” Cassidy has resigned from the detective squad and retreated to her hometown in Co Kerry to work a community policing beat, where she is immediately assigned an unsolved case—a murder with no clear suspects and few leads.  

At the same time, her colleagues are chasing a marauding gang committing violent burglaries in the region. When an elderly farmer is killed, the evidence points in only one direction—until a former US soldier, Mason Brady, sets the investigation on a startling new path. What neither Cass nor Brady realise is the extent to which their actions will cause both cases to overlap and see them become each other’s greatest threat. 

Paul O’Brien, writing under the pen name Ben Barnes, has spent much of his career managing and reporting on crises at the intersection between politics, communications and media. He is a former Irish government spokesperson, advisor and speechwriter. Prior to government, he was the political editor of the Irish Examiner newspaper, appearing frequently on TV and radio. He sees government and journalism as two sides of the same coin: working for the public good. He has a law diploma from King’s Inns, Ireland’s oldest school of law; a master’s degree in journalism from Dublin City University; and an English degree from University College Cork. He has stood in the Oval Office, China’s Great Hall, and other centres of power, but his heart is in scenic Co Kerry, on Ireland's Wild Atlantic Way, where he lives with his wife and three children. ‘The Murder Loop’ is his debut novel. 

Sunil Rao seems a surprising choice of investigator. Chaotic and unpredictable, the former agent is the antithesis of his partner Lieutenant Colonel Adam Rubenstein, the model of a military man. But Sunil has the unique ability to distinguish truth from lies: in objects, words and people, in the past and in real time. And Adam is the only one who truly knows him, after a troubled past together. Now, as they battle this strange new reality, they are drawn closer than ever to defend what they both hold most dear. 

Prophet can weaponise the past. But only love will protect the future. 

Co-written with Helen Macdonald. 

Sin Blaché is an author and musician. They have been writing horror and sci-fi stories all their life. Prophet is their first novel. Born in California, they live in the Northwest of Ireland and can be found obsessing over obscure folk instruments, being an ambivalent saviour to feral cats, and playing too many video games. 

Helen Macdonald is a writer, poet, naturalist and historian of science. Their books include H is for Hawk, which won many prizes including the Costa Book of the Year and the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction, and the Sunday Times bestselling Vesper Flights. They live in Suffolk with their two parrots. 

In the wilds of Connemara, a lone cowboy exacts a terrible revenge; an abused brother and sister settle scores with their ‘ol’ unkie’; a grieving man steers his river-craft towards a shocking reckoning; an Irish Vietnam veteran makes a phone call in an attempt to finally break the horror. In these tense, by turns troubling and uplifting stories, Fergus Cronin reveals the savagery, the tenderness and the humour that is at the heart of human nature. Winner of the Maria Edgeworth Short Story Prize 2022, with his debut collection Cronin adds his voice to those of the finest contemporary Irish short story writers.

West Virginia, 1897. When young Zona Heaster Shue dies only a few months after her wedding, her mother Mary Jane becomes convinced that Zona was murdered - and by none other than her husband, Trout, the handsome blacksmith beloved in their small Southern town.

But when Trout is put on trial, no one believes he could have done it, apart from Mary Jane and Zona's best friend Lucy, who was always suspicious of Trout. As the trial raises to fever pitch and the men of Greenbrier County stand aligned against them, Mary Jane and Lucy must decide whether to reveal Zona's greatest secret in the service of justice. But it's Zona herself, from beyond the grave, who still has one last revelation to make.

Aoife Fitzpatrick is a native of Dublin, Ireland. Her debut novel, The Red Bird Sings, won the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize in 2020. The winner of the inaugural Books Ireland short-story competition, her work has also been recognised by the Séan O'Faoláin Prize, the Elizabeth Jolley Prize and by the Writing.ie Short Story of the Year award. Aoife received an MFA in Creative Writing at University College Dublin in 2019 and in 2020, she was the recipient of a literature bursary from the Arts Council of Ireland.

Eva looked out the attic window of their charming guest house and watched the sun rise. She thought she might be sick. Splayed on the lawn below was Frank, apparently out cold. Her husband snored in the bed behind her. She loved Shay, of course she did, but right now the only person she wanted to think about was Conor. She didn't want to think about Bea or Lizzie or what Lizzie might have got up to with Shay.  

Frank's 48th birthday had given the three couples an excuse for a much needed night away from children, nagging bills and ailing parents. The drink flowed, life in Dublin with all its stress felt a long way away. When Frank proposed they swap partners, it felt deliciously, irresistibly reckless. All the women had to do was text a man of their choice.  

The only rule?  No falling in love.

Lauren Mackenzie grew up in Sydney, Australia but now lives in Dublin with her family. After a long career as a screenwriter and editor in film and television, she returned to fiction in 2o17, completing an MA in Creative Writing in UCD. She was shortlisted for Cuirt New Writing Prize, Hennessy New Irish Writing, and Fish Short Story Prize. She has been published in The Stinging Fly, The Moth, Banshee, the Irish Times, and The Lonely Crowd among others. Recently she was awarded Literature Bursaries by the Arts Council of Ireland and in 2021, her novel, The Couples, was a joint winner of the Irish Writers Centre Novel Fair 2021.

A young married woman begins an intense affair with an older man as a way of escaping her manipulative mother. But she comes to realise that her lover is a mirror image of her mother – just as seductive, just as demanding, and ultimately just as dangerous.

Set in modern-day Ireland, this unsettling novel from Belfast based journalist Fionola Meredith charts the course of a unlikely and deeply dysfunctional ‘age-gap’ relationship to its inevitable conclusion, Disturbing yet darkly humorous, forensic but somehow compassionate,  this compelling debut unflinchingly reveals what lies at the heart of the male fear of intimacy, and the hidden impulses which can drive our most fatal attractions.

Fionola Meredith is a writer, broadcaster and commentator. She is a long established contributor to the Irish Times and to BBC Northern Ireland and writes a weekly opinion column in the Belfast Telegraph. She lives in Belfast with her husband, Robbie, and their Dalmatian dog, Ripley.

A backpacker in India admires the integrity of cockroaches. An amputee dwarf hustles a biker gang in the last chance saloon. A young girl discovers the magic of poitín. The Bat Man saves lives on a Thai beach. Santa Claus ruins Christmas. Bono is constipated. A U.S. marine kills Donald to save America.

Capital Vices is a story collection like no other. Dark, disturbing, wild and comic. An exhilarating joyride in the splendid company of outlaws, chancers, rogues and vagabonds.

Conor Montague is from Galway. Prior to settling on a pen as his weapon of choice, Conor winged it as a nightclub manager, bin man, music promoter, builder, adventure travel guide, academic, bare-knuckle boxer, dive master, estate agent, marijuana grower, tutor coordinator, magazine editor, sports coach, security consultant, researcher, stand-up comic and DJ, spending time in East Africa, North Africa, Southeast Asia, India, Nepal, South America, the Caribbean, Australia, the US and mainland Europe.

Conor is a graduate of the MA in Writing at NUI Galway. He is co-director of London Writers Eclective and resident playwright at the Irish Cultural Centre, Hammersmith.

His short fiction has been placed/shortlisted for The Bridport Prize, the Hammond House International Literary Prize, The V.S. Pritchett Short Story Prize, The Bath Flash Fiction Award, Reflex Flash Fiction Competition, Writer’s Bureau Short Story Prize, the Fish Prize and Flash 500.

Conor also writes for stage and screen.

Ro McCarthy, single in her fifties and working a quiet job, is sustained by her love of books and her deep friendships. Although she still doesn’t approve of marriage – not even for the straights – she is canvassing for yes in the 2015 marriage equality referendum. But, as the ghosts of her activist past join her on the campaign trail and her eagerness to confront a familiar discrimination turns to obsession and fury, Ro must finally face the long-buried trauma and loss of her youth.

Thirty years earlier, Ro is a young Cork woman living her best life in Boston, undocumented and working multiple jobs, making life-long friends, and falling in love with Jenny. Soon, however, the young gay men who have become Ro’s new family – from Ireland and elsewhere – begin to die. Shocked and grieving, she finds purpose in AIDS activism and a community that is loving and living against all odds.

Katherine O'Donnell was born in Cork and spent her childhood on the naval base at Haulbowline island, attending a two-teacher school. She studied at University College Cork and later Boston College on a Fulbright Scholarship. She worked briefly as a journalist in RTÉ. Katherine is now Professor of the History of Ideas at UCD’s School of Philosophy. She has been an activist for many years, involved in, most notably, the Justice for Magdalenes Campaign and, more generally, with justice issues and the LGBTQ+ community. Katherine practices Buddhism and acupuncture and splits her time between Dublin, Cork and her converted camper van. Slant is her debut novel.

Noelle is an efficient and friendly hotel cleaner, a model employee. Or so she’d have you think. The trouble is that she can’t help taking little ‘souvenirs’ as she cleans. Nothing of value, just tokens of happy, normal lives: a lipstick, a hair clip, some tweezers. And by the time the guest has noticed, she’s long gone. 
 
As she starts at her 21st hotel, she’s determined to beat her record of one month in a five star hotel before suspicion falls on her. But when she meets her new colleagues, her plans are complicated. These women aren’t just hands pushing carts down lonely hotel corridors: they are women with lives full of happiness and worry, pain and joy. The kind of lives Noelle has never known how to live. They make her wonder what it might be like to have real friends, people to stick around for… 

Senta Rich is an Irish author, who began her career as an advertising copywriter. During her time working in advertising, she also wrote radio plays and magazine articles, before moving into the world of screenwriting. She now writes regularly for film and TV. She lives in Dublin with her husband and son. Hotel 21 is her debut novel. 

Sacked from his first job in Dublin, Mark McGuire arrives in the dismal town of Ashcross to take up a new role as customer service assistant for Ireland’s second-biggest pet food brand, WellCat. From his initial impressions, it’s a toss-up whether he’ll die of misery or boredom. 

He couldn’t be more wrong. For starters, the improbably cute receptionist, Kevin, seems willing to audition as the man of Mark’s dreams. There’s also the launch of a hush-hush new product, Future Fish, on the horizon. Not to mention the ragtag band of exorcists, alien-hunters and animal rights warriors who are all convinced WellCat is up to no good. Why are these crackpots so keen on getting close to Mark? And will their schemes ruin his career prospects? 

In a deliciously daft comic caper, Conor Sneyd perfectly captures the powerlessness of low-rung office life as well as the seductive zealotry of our times. 

Conor Sneyd was born in Dublin in 1990. He studied English literature at Trinity College. He also has a master’s degree from Trinity in interactive digital media. After a brief stint teaching English in Japan, he spent a number of years working as an environmental and animal rights activist. The larger-than-life characters he encountered in this field served as inspiration for his debut novel, Future Fish. He moved to the UK in 2015. He now lives and works in London, where he has a day job overseeing web content for a well-known trade union. He lives with his boyfriend Gordon.

As a doctoral student at Trinity College Dublin, Darren Walton is trying to decode an elaborate conspiracy he stumbled across as an undergraduate. To do so he must locate an alternate Ireland named Camland, the existence of which is proven when he discovers a literary journal whose contents mirror his own past. With proof of his wild theories, Darren is sure academic fame is imminent. But for this he is willing to sacrifice not just his sanity and physical safety, but also his relationships with the ones who love him most.

In breathless prose, Declan Toohey weaves a contemporary yarn of academic intrigue and youthful irreverence, sexual fluidity and neurodiversity. Experimental and trippy, hilarious and compassionate, Perpetual Comedown is a riotous reckoning of the definition of the self.

Declan Toohey was born in Scotland and raised in County Kildare, Ireland. His fiction has been published in Channel, Soft Punk, and the anthology Queer Love, among other outlets. In 2021 he was a co-winner of the IWC Novel Fair and in 2022 he won the Maeve Binchy Travel Award and received an Agility Award from the Arts Council of Ireland. More recently, he graduated from University College Dublin with an MFA in Fiction.

For Con and Fiona, the past is seeping into the present. She is haunted by the fallout from a long-ago love. He is distracted by thoughts of the enigmatic Kirsten, and experiencing memory problems. Then a terrifying diagnosis sends them both spiralling, their pasts coming to meet them ever quicker now, even as each tries to push it away.  

Can we ever really know the person closest to us, or are we forever destined to be a mystery to each other? Tides Go Out is about the secrets we hide, even from ourselves, the shifting sands of memory, and the redemptive power of music.  

Julian Vignoles, a Co Wicklow native living in Dublin, worked in RTÉ between 1979 and 2012, as a radio and TV producer, and later, commissioning executive. He was a member of the governing body of the Eurovision Song Contest between 2006 and 2011. He won three Jacobs awards for radio documentary making, and an IFTA award in TV. 

He is the author of three published non-fiction titles since leaving his broadcasting career: A Delicate Wildness: The Life and Loves of David Thomson, Lilliput Press 2014; 

Glamour, Music and Myth: Inside the Eurovision Song Contest, Liffey Press 2015; Rory Gallagher - the Man Behind the Guitar, Collins Press 2018 (Gill Books 2021). 

In 2020, he turned to fiction. His short story, ‘Scenes from a Return Journey’ won the Anthology Short Story prize in 2021. This year, another story, ‘Nothing More the Sea Can Do’ was the January winner of the Irish Independent’s New Irish Writing.  

Random Acts of Optimism by Alison Wells is a lively, highly imaginative and delightful collection of short fiction. This book contains a breath-taking range of subject matter and themes. A librarian and an elderly person form
a bond during lockdown. There are ghosts. There are problems with plumbers. There are dinosaurs on the Isle of Wight. There is a story written from the point of view of a letter. There are stars, meringues, memories in jars, a spaceman. Most of all, there are people, trying to cope with life and all its travails.

Alison Wells was born in London, raised in Kerry and lives in Bray, near Dublin with her husband and four children. A graduate of Communication Studies and Psychology, she is now an enthusiastic librarian. Alison has been awarded residencies at Cill Rialaig, Co. Kerry. Her literary short fiction has been Pushcart prize nominated and shortlisted for Hennessy New Irish Writing, Bridport, BBC Opening Lines and Bray Literary Festival.

Her writing has appeared in The Stinging Fly, The Lonely Crowd, Crannóg, UK National Flash Fiction anthologies Jawbreakers and Scraps, and New Island/RTÉ Arena’s New Planet Cabaret. Eat! was highly commended in the Irish Writers Centre Novel Fair 2019. In 2020 she was a finalist with The Exhibit of Held Breaths. Her Head Above Water blog explores creativity and resilience.  

Through a series of vignettes, the nameless female narrator of Quotidian revisits the rooms of her past to reconcile the malcontent she experiences as a mother, wife and homemaker. Unearthing repressed disappointments, desires, fears and expectations, she begins piecing together, in an intimate and honest narrative, her perceived ordinary, inconsequential life. In doing so, she becomes increasingly estranged from her spouse and her invisible friend, Miss C. When her life begins to spiral into free fall, the narrator, despite struggling to maintain normalcy, toys briefly with a sham flirtation before salvation arrives in the unlikely form of a homeless musician.

Mary Wilkinson is a published writer of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. She has written for radio and is a Pushcart Prize nominee. She lives in Galway.

It's 1914, and talk of war feels far away to Henry Gaunt and Sidney Ellwood, safely ensconced in an idyllic boarding school in the English countryside. At seventeen, they're too young to enlist, and anyway, Gaunt is fighting his own private battle - an all-consuming infatuation with his best friend, the dreamy, poetic Ellwood - not having a clue that Ellwood is in love with him, always has been. When Gaunt's German mother asks him to enlist in the British army to protect the family from anti-German attacks, he signs up immediately. 
 
The front is horrific and though Gaunt tries to dissuade Ellwood from joining him on the battlefield, Ellwood soon rushes to join him. In the trenches, Ellwood and Gaunt find fleeting moments of solace in one another, but their friends are all dying, right in front of them, and at any moment they could be next. 

Alice Winn lives in Brooklyn, where she writes screenplays. She grew up in Paris and was educated in British boarding schools. She has a degree in English Literature from Oxford University. In Memoriam is her debut novel.