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]
Her third novel, Strange Hotel was published in February 2020. [8] McBride's first non-fiction work Something Out of Place: Women and Disgust was published in 2021. [9]
In September 2024, it was announced that McBride's fourth novel, The City Changes its Face, would be published in February 2025. [10]
She has contributed forewords to the Selected Poems of Anna Akhmatova (Folio Society), Sundog: the lyrics of Scott Walker (Faber & Faber) [11] and Edna O'Brien's The Country Girls Trilogy (Faber/ FSG). [12] [13] 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. [14] [15] [16]
In 2017 McBride was awarded the inaugural Creative Fellowship of the Beckett Research Centre, University of Reading. [17] [18] The fellowship resulted in Mouthpieces, a collection of three performance texts published in 2021. [19] [20]
In 2022 McBride wrote and directed A Very Short Film About Longing. [21] The film was screened at the 2023 BFI London Film Festival. It starred Joe Alwyn, Natalia Kostrzewa and Lashay Anderson and was soundtracked by Tindersticks. [22]
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. [23] [24] She spent her childhood in Tubbercurry in County Sligo and Castlebar, County Mayo. She recalled writing from the age of seven or eight. [25] 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. [25] 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.
Kamila Shamsie FRSL is a Pakistani and British writer and novelist who is best known for her award-winning novel Home Fire (2017). Named on Granta magazine's list of 20 best young British writers, Shamsie has been described by The New Indian Express as "a novelist to reckon with and to look forward to." She also writes for publications including The Guardian, New Statesman, Index on Censorship and Prospect, and broadcasts on radio.
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.
Ali Smith CBE FRSL is a Scottish author, playwright, academic and journalist. Sebastian Barry described her in 2016 as "Scotland's Nobel laureate-in-waiting".
Madeleine Thien is a Canadian short story writer and novelist. The Oxford Handbook of Canadian Literature has considered her work as reflecting the increasingly trans-cultural nature of Canadian literature, exploring art, expression and politics inside Cambodia and China, as well as within diasporic East Asian communities. Thien's critically acclaimed novel, Do Not Say We Have Nothing, won the 2016 Governor General's Award for English-language fiction, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards for Fiction. It was shortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize, the 2017 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, and the 2017 Rathbones Folio Prize. Her books have been translated into more than 25 languages.
Keith Ridgway is an Irish novelist and short story writer. He has won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the Prix Femina Etranger, the Prix du Premier Roman Etranger, the O. Henry Award, and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.
Rachel Cusk FRSL is a British novelist and writer.
Joseph O'Neill is an Irish novelist and non-fiction writer. O'Neill's novel Netherland was awarded the 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award.
Lavinia Elaine Greenlaw is an English poet, novelist and non-fiction writer. She won the Prix du Premier Roman with her first novel and her poetry has been shortlisted for awards that include the T. S. Eliot Prize, Forward Prize and Whitbread Poetry Prize. She was shortlisted for the 2014 Costa Poetry Award for A Double Sorrow: A Version of Troilus and Criseyde. Greenlaw currently holds the post of Professor of Creative Writing (Poetry) at Royal Holloway, University of London.
Lucy Caldwell is a Northern Irish playwright and novelist. She was the winner of the 2021 BBC National Short Story Award and of the 2023 Walter Scott Prize.
Francis Spufford FRSL is an English author and teacher of writing whose career has shifted gradually from non-fiction to fiction. His first novel Golden Hill received critical acclaim and numerous prizes including the Costa Book Award for a first novel, the Desmond Elliott Prize and the Ondaatje Prize. In 2007 Spufford was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
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.
The Goldsmiths Prize is a British literary award, founded in 2013 by Goldsmiths, University of London, in association with the New Statesman. It is awarded annually to a piece of fiction that "breaks the mould or extends the possibilities of the novel form." It is limited to citizens and residents of the United Kingdom and Ireland, and to novels published by presses based in the United Kingdom or Ireland. The winner receives £10,000.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 2014.
Nathan Filer is a British writer best known for his debut novel, The Shock of the Fall. This won several major literary awards, including the Costa Book of the Year and the Betty Trask Prize. It was a Sunday Times Bestseller, and has been translated into thirty languages.
Diana Omo Evans FRSL is a British novelist, journalist and critic who was born and lives in London. Evans has written four full-length novels. Her first novel, 26a, published in 2005, won the Orange Award for New Writers, the Betty Trask Award and the deciBel Writer of the Year award. Her third novel Ordinary People was shortlisted for the 2019 Women's Prize for Fiction and won the 2019 South Bank Sky Arts Award for Literature. A House for Alice was published in 2023.
A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing is the debut novel of Eimear McBride published in 2013.
Hermione Eyre is a British journalist, novelist, and former child actor.
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.
Sara Baume is an Irish novelist. She was named on Granta's Best of Young British Novelists list in 2023.
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