The John McGahern Annual Book Prize Saturday 5 October, 11.30am

Join us for the annual John McGahern Book Prize and hear excerpts from the winning entry: Close to Home by Michael Magee.

Free

Now in its fifth year, the prize was established by the University’s Institute of Irish Studies to promote new Irish fiction and to celebrate the memory of one of Ireland’s greatest masters of prose fiction, John McGahern (1934-2006). The competition carries an award of £5,000, for the best debut novel or short story collection by an Irish writer or writer resident in Ireland published in the year 2023.

Following a range of high-quality submissions from across both novels and short story collections, novelist and writer Colm Tóibín selected Michael Magee’s Close to Home as the winner of this year’s prize. A moving work of fiction about two working-class brothers navigating masculinity in post-conflict Belfast, Close to Home was described by Tóibín as “a new and memorable portrait of a young protagonist, caught between innocence and experience, as imagined by a supremely talented writer.”

Michael Magee will discuss his book with Dr Niall Carson, the Joint Patronage Lecturer in Modern Irish Literature at the Institute of Irish Studies on Saturday 5 October.