Louisburgh author Mike McCormack has been celebrating on the double this week, with the news that his third novel Solar Bones, which is written as a single sentence novel, was this week picked as the winner of the Goldsmiths Prize for Fiction and with it the €10,000 prize money for the winner and has been shortlisted for Irish Book of the Year. The Goldsmiths Prize was established in 2013 to celebrate the qualities of creative daring associated with Goldsmiths University and to reward fiction that breaks the mould or opens up new possibilities for the novel form. The annual prize of £10,000 is awarded to a book that is deemed genuinely novel and which embodies the spirit of invention that characterises the genre at its best. McCormack was announced as the winner of this award on Wednesday.
The Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards 2016 shortlist announced recently also features McCormack, for his novel Solar Bones, while Elizabeth Reapy (EM Reapy ) from Claremorris secured a nomination for her book Red Dirt in the Sunday Independent Newcomer of the Year category.
This is the 11th year of the Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards, which are dedicated to honouring Irish writers across the entire publishing spectrum. The full shortlist was selected from a panel of industry experts. The public are being asked to cast their vote on the best books of the last year via the Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards' website www.bgeirishbookawards.ie Votes can be cast until midnight tonight, Friday, and the winners will be announced at a gala event in The Double Tree by Hilton Hotel (formerly The Burlington ) on Wednesday next November 16. Following the gala event, voting will begin for the overall ‘Book of the Year Award’ which will be announced in early December. To cast your vote for the overall Book of the Year visit www.irishbookawards.ie
