By Marc O’Sullivan, Arts Editor, Irish Examiner - Monday, September 19, 2011
THE veteran Irish writer Edna O’Brien was last night named the winner of the 2011 Frank O’Connor Short Story Award for her collection, Saints and Sinners. O’Brien received the prize in person, at the Metropole Hotel in Cork. She is the first Irish writer to win.
The award, worth €35,000 and now in its seventh year, is the richest in the world for a collection of short stories. It is sponsored by Cork City Council and organised by Munster Literature Centre as part of its annual Cork International Short Story Festival. In announcing O’Brien as the winner, Munster Literature Centre director Patrick Cotter praised the standard of this year’s entries, which he said was uniformly high.
The decision to award O’Brien the prize was, he said, a majority one, and not unanimous, and there had been some heated debate among the judges, who included the poet Thomas McCarthy, novelist and journalist Alannah Hopkin, and music and book critic Chris Power.
The other shortlisted authors were Yiyun Li, Alexander McLeod, Suzanne Rivecca, Valerie Trueblood, and the Irish writer Colm Toibin.
Frank O’Connor’s daughter, LIadin, was on hand to present O’Brien with a copy of O’Connor’s book, The Habit of Getting It Down Right.
O’Brien was born in Tuamgraney, Co Clare, in December 1930. She first began writing short stories in Dublin, to which she had moved to study pharmacy.
O’Brien’s literary heroes were Frank O’Connor, Sean O Faoláin and Peadar O’Donnell, who published her first stories in the literary magazine The Bell.
"I didn’t know much about seduction in those days. I still don’t. But Peadar O’Donnell would buy me sweets rather than ply me with drink, and he told me that I needed to read a lot more. I’m still grateful to Peadar for that, that he encouraged me to educate myself."
O’Brien’s earliest books were the novels The Country Girls, The Girl With Green Eyes and Girls in Their Wedded Bliss. For many years, her books were banned in Ireland.
Picture: Edna O’Brien, winner of the Frank O’Connor Short Story Award, for her collection, Saints and Sinners. Picture: Cillian Kelly
Read more: http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/obrien-first-irish-author-to-win-short-story-award-167995.html#ixzz1YQMaWkv9
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