Eimear McBride (born 6 October 1976) is an Irish novelist, whose debut novel, A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing , won the inaugural Goldsmiths Prize in 2013 and the 2014 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction. [1] [2]
Eimear McBride (born 6 October 1976) is an Irish novelist, whose debut novel, A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing , won the inaugural Goldsmiths Prize in 2013 and the 2014 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction. [1] [2]
McBride wrote A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing in 6 months, but it took nine years to get it published. Galley Beggar Press of Norwich finally picked it up in 2013. [3] The novel is written as a stream-of-consciousness and recounts the story of a young woman's complex relationship with her family. [4]
McBride's second novel The Lesser Bohemians was published on 1 September 2016. [5] Set in Camden Town in the 1990s, it tells the story of the turbulent relationship between an 18-year-old drama student and a 38-year-old actor. McBride discussed the book on Woman's Hour on 8 September [6] and it was reviewed on BBC Radio 4's programme Saturday Review on 17 September. [7]
She has contributed forewords to the Selected Poems of Anna Akhmatova (Folio Society), Sundog: the lyrics of Scott Walker (Faber & Faber) [8] and Edna O'Brien's The Country Girls Trilogy (Faber/ FSG). [9] [10] Her short stories have appeared in The Guardian , Prospect magazine, The Long Gaze Back (Little Island Press), Dubliners 100 (Tramp Press), Winter Papers (Curlew Editions) and on BBC Radio 4. [11] [12] [13]
In 2017 McBride was awarded the inaugural Creative Fellowship of the Beckett Research Centre, University of Reading. [14] [15]
McBride was born in Liverpool in 1976 to Irish parents, both of whom were nurses. The family moved back to Ireland when she was three. [16] [17] She spent her childhood in Tubbercurry in County Sligo and Castlebar, County Mayo. She recalled writing from the age of seven or eight. [18] At the age of 17, McBride moved to London to begin her studies at The Drama Centre, but realised after graduating that she had no interest in becoming an actress.
McBride has a love for Russian literature and spent four months in Saint Petersburg in 2000. On her return, she worked as an office temp and travelled. [18] She completed her first novel during this time. In 2006, she returned to Cork for a time and began work on her second novel. McBride moved to London in 2017 with her husband and daughter after spending several years living in Norwich.
The James Tait Black Memorial Prizes are literary prizes awarded for literature written in the English language. They, along with the Hawthornden Prize, are Britain's oldest literary awards. Based at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, United Kingdom, the prizes were founded in 1919 by Janet Coats Black in memory of her late husband, James Tait Black, a partner in the publishing house of A & C Black Ltd. Prizes are awarded in three categories: Fiction, Biography and Drama.
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The Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award is an annual award for Irish authors of fiction, established in 1995. It was previously known as the Kerry Ingredients Book of the Year Award (1995–2000), the Kerry Ingredients Irish Fiction Award (2001–2002), and the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award (2003-2011).
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 2013.
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This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 2014.
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A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing is the debut novel of Eimear McBride published in 2013.
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The Lesser Bohemians is the second novel by Eimear McBride. It was published on 1 September 2016 and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 2017.
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