Michelle Gallen | |
---|---|
Born | County Tyrone |
Occupation | Writer |
Education | Trinity College, Dublin University of Stirling |
Website | |
www |
Michelle Gallen is an Irish novelist who has written fictionalised accounts of The Troubles in her comedy novels, based on her upbringing in Castlederg, near the border between Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland. She has stated that she wants to shine a light on this experience's impact on families and communities. [1]
She was shortlisted for the Costa Book Award for First Novel for Big Girl, Small Town. [2] The audiobook version was narrated by actress Nicola Coughlan.
She won the Comedy Women in Print Prize for her second novel Factory Girls. [3]
The Booker Prize, formerly the Booker Prize for Fiction (1969–2001) and the Man Booker Prize (2002–2019), is a prestigious literary award conferred each year for the best single work of sustained fiction written in the English language, which was published in the United Kingdom and/or Ireland. The winner of the Booker Prize receives £50,000, as well as international publicity that usually leads to a significant sales boost. When the prize was created, only novels written by Commonwealth, Irish, and South African citizens were eligible to receive the prize; in 2014, eligibility was widened to any English-language novel—a change that proved controversial.
Dame Beryl Margaret Bainbridge was an English writer. She was primarily known for her works of psychological fiction, often macabre tales set among the English working class. She won the Whitbread Awards prize for best novel in 1977 and 1996, and was nominated five times for the Booker Prize. She was described in 2007 as a national treasure. In 2008, The Times named Bainbridge on their list of the "50 greatest British writers since 1945".
Castlederg is a town in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. It lies on the River Derg and is near the border with County Donegal, Ireland. It stands in the townlands of Castlesessagh and Churchtown, in the historic barony of Omagh West and the civil parish of Urney. The village has a ruined castle and two ancient tombs known as the Druid's Altar and Todd's Den. It had a population of 2,980 people at the 2021 census.
Meg Tilly is an American-Canadian actress and writer.
Sebastian Barry is an Irish novelist, playwright and poet. He was named Laureate for Irish Fiction, 2018–2021.
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Paul Murray is an Irish novelist, the author of the novels An Evening of Long Goodbyes (2003), Skippy Dies (2010), The Mark and the Void (2015), and The Bee Sting (2023). The Bee Sting was shortlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize and won an Irish Book Award as Novel of the Year, as well as 2023's inaugural Nero Book Award,
Tahmima Anam is a Bangladeshi-born British writer, novelist and columnist. Her first novel, A Golden Age (2007), was the Best First Book winner of the 2008 Commonwealth Writers' Prizes. Her follow-up novel, The Good Muslim, was nominated for the 2011 Man Asian Literary Prize. She is the granddaughter of Abul Mansur Ahmed and daughter of Mahfuz Anam.
Maggie O'Farrell, RSL, is a novelist from Northern Ireland. Her acclaimed first novel, After You'd Gone, won the Betty Trask Award, and a later one, The Hand That First Held Mine, the 2010 Costa Novel Award. She has twice been shortlisted since for the Costa Novel Award for Instructions for a Heatwave in 2014 and This Must Be The Place in 2017. She appeared in the Waterstones 25 Authors for the Future. Her memoir I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death reached the top of the Sunday Times bestseller list. Her novel Hamnet won the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2020, and the fiction prize at the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Awards. The Marriage Portrait was shortlisted for the 2023 Women's Prize for Fiction.
Claire Keegan is an Irish writer known for her short stories, which have been published in The New Yorker, Best American Short Stories, Granta, and The Paris Review.
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What Was Lost is the 2007 début novel by Catherine O'Flynn. The novel is about a girl who goes missing in a shopping centre in 1984, and the people who try to discover what happened to her twenty years later. What Was Lost won the First Novel Award at the 2007 Costa Book Awards, and was shortlisted for the overall Costa Book of the Year Award.
Skippy Dies is a 2010 tragicomic novel by Paul Murray. It was shortlisted for the 2010 Costa Book Awards, longlisted for the 2010 Booker Prize, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
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Patrice Lawrence MBE, FRSL is a British writer and journalist, who has published fiction both for adults and children. Her writing has won awards including the Waterstones Children's Book Prize for Older Children and The Bookseller YA Book Prize. In 2021, she won the Jhalak Prize's inaugural children's and young adult category for her book Eight Pieces of Silva (2020).
Sally-Ann Murray is an author from South Africa.
Milkman is a historical psychological fiction novel written by the Northern Irish author Anna Burns. Set during the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the story follows an 18-year-old girl, "middle sister," who is harassed by an older married man known as "the milkman" and then as "Milkman". It is Burns's first novel to be published after Little Constructions in 2007, and is her third overall.
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The Bee Sting is a 2023 novel by Irish writer Paul Murray, published by Macmillan. The book depicts the dysfunctional, hapless lives of the Barnes family of Ireland, with portions of the book dedicated to the lives of each of the four family members. It was shortlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize and won both the An Post Irish Book of the Year award and the Fiction category and overall winner, the Gold Nero, in the inaugural Nero book awards.
It tells the story from the dark heart of the community, revealing the human growth and resilience of a proudly ungovernable community on the very edge of Britain