Eimear is a fully fledged success
A WOMAN is a fully-fledged success.
Debut novelist Eimear McBride was announced as the winner of the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award for 2014 at Writers’ Week opening night in a stunning achievement for the longform newcomer. The coveted award has a prize fund of €15,000.
The Sligo native won the coveted prize for her novel A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing, returning to a town she’s been familiar with since childhood by dint of her Ballylongford family.
“North Kerry has always had a special place in my heart, and more so now than ever!” Eimear joked with The Kerryman after her great win.
Eimear learned of her win after emerging bleary-eyed from a Sydney flight on Tuesday. “It certainly perked me up from the jetlag when I found out I’d won the Kerry Group award and it’s great to be back in Listowel as I haven’t been in the town since I was about 12,” Eimear said.
“We used to come down to Ballylongford in the summer to visit my aunt and uncle, Eugene and Breda Glover, and the area has always had a strong place in my heart.”
She’s still getting over the shock of the reaction to her debut novel, not least because she had given up on it after so many rejection letters from publishers.
“It took nine years to get it published, in which it spent most of the time in a drawer. It made it into print thanks to a Norwich bookshop owner and friend of mine who was setting up a publishing house, and Faber and Faber came on board as co-publishers in March.”
A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing, which draws its subject matter from the death of her brother from a brain tumour 15 years ago, has also won the Goldsmiths’ Prize for Fiction and has been shortlisted for the Bailey Prize.
Eimear soaked up the atmosphere of Writers’ Week. “The festival is great to me, I want for nothing! I think the special thing about Writers’ Week that sets it apart from other festivals is the place and its heritage, its connection to John B Keane. His presence is greatly missed,” she said.