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Elaine Feeney announced as the winner of the Kate O’Brien Award 2021 

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Elaine Feeney pictured above has been announced as the winner of the Kate O’Brien Award 2021 

 

Elaine Feeney announced as the winner of the Kate O’Brien Award 2021 


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By I Love Limerick correspondent Jade Crowe

The winner of the 7th annual Kate O’Brien Award for a debut novel from an Irish female author has been announced as As You Were by Elaine Feeney. 

The Award was presented as part of the 37th annual Limerick Literary Festival in Honour of Kate O’Brien on February 28, 2021. The event is one of Ireland’s most prominent festivals and has been running since 1984.                 

The Kate O’ Brien Awards feature content that is known to be the best in Irish and international contemporary literature. Given current COVID restrictions, this year’s festival made its virtual debut from February 26 to 28 via Zoom and YouTube. The Kate O’Brien Award also comes with an E2000 cash Prize sponsored by Bill and Denise Whelan. 

The event continues to honour the life and works of Kate O’ Brien while attracting participants from all over the world. Building on this significant history, the Limerick Literary Festival seeks to promote Limerick nationally as a place of literary excellence and to provide a platform where readers can meet their favourite authors. This year’s panel of readers for the awards included Limerick Literary Festival Committee members Vivienne McKechnie, Eileen O’Connor, Marie Hackett and Donal Ryan and Niall MacMonagle 

‘As You Were’ by Elaine Feeney was chosen as the winner of the award from a shortlist including ‘The Temple House Vanishing’ by Rachel Donoghue, ‘Oona’ by Alice Lyons, ‘A Quiet Tide’ by Marianne Lee, ‘Big Girl Small Town’ by Michelle Gallen and ‘This Happy’ by Niamh Campbell.

Elaine Feeney

The cover of ‘As You Were’ by Elaine Feeney

Elaine was born in the West of Ireland and lives in Athenry. She published her first chapbook, Indiscipline in 2007, and has since published three collections of poetry, Where’s Katie? (2010), The Radio Was Gospel (2014) and Rise (2017) with Salmon Publishing. She was commissioned in 2016 to write a national screen and stage piece, WRoNGHEADED by the Liz Roche Company, which has toured internationally since its first run at Tiger Dublin Fringe Festival. Aileen was Poetry Ireland’s Poetry Ambassador in 2018. She was also commissioned in 2019 by Minerva Projects to respond to the work of American artist, Daisy Patton.  

Elaine strives to write about national identity, institutions and particularly women in Ireland. She teaches English & History at St. Jarlath’s College for Boys, Tuam. Elaine also teaches Creative Writing & Poetry at the National University of Ireland, Galway while also having the role of Creative Director of the Tuam Oral History Project at the same university that works with survivors of the Tuam Mother and Baby Home to archive their narrative. Feeney’s work has been widely published and anthologized including, Poetry Review, The Stinging Fly, Oxford Poetry, Poetry Ireland, The Irish Times, The Manchester Review, Stonecutter Journal and Coppernickel. Her debut novel, As You Were, was published by Harvill Secker/ VINTAGE in March 2020.  

Vivienne McKechnie said, “It has been a wonderful year of debut novels for Irish female writers, the standard was very high this year with a wide range of genres including crime, intrigue, romance, as well as literary fiction and short stories, with so many submissions of such high calibre that it was impossible to reduce the shortlist to four and we felt that the six chosen represented the wonderful range of talent emerging in Ireland today. We have a very strong shortlist, and it will be difficult to choose a winner. We were delighted by the imaginative journeys we were taken on.”  

Vivienne McKechnie also noted that “The Kate O’Brien Award is for a novel of excellence, one which does something innovative with language and ideas and the powerful, poignant and deeply moving novel ‘As You Were’ by Elaine Feeney us our very worthy winner for 2021.”

 
 
 
 

Richard is a presenter, producer, songwriter and actor. He was named the Limerick Person of the Year (2011) and won an online award at the Metro Éireann Media and Multicultural Awards (2011) for promoting multi-culturalism online. Richard says that the ilovelimerick.com concept is very much a community driven project that aims to document life in Limerick. So, that in 20 years time people can look back and remember the events that were making the headlines.