Literary award for O’Brien

Tuamgraney-born author Edna O’Brien has scooped the top prize at one of the world’s largest international short story awards this week for her book Saints and Sinners.
O’Brien’s publication came out on top from the six shortlisted authors for the 2011 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award announced at a ceremony in the Metropole Hotel in Cork on Sunday.
She is the first Irish author to scoop the €35,000 prize fund since it was established in 2005.
The East Clare woman was one of two Irish authors shortlisted for the prestigious award, Colm Tóibín being the other, and she was up against American resident and Beijing-born Yiyun Li, Canadian debutante Alexander MacLeod, American debutante Suzanne Rivecca, and American author Valerie Trueblood.
Born and raised in Tuamgraney, she has lived in London for many years.
Since her debut novel The Country Girls, O’Brien has written over 20 works of fiction along with a biography of James Joyce and Lord Byron. She now adds to her many other accolades, which include the Irish PEN Lifetime Achievement Award, the American National Art’s Gold Medal and the Ulysses Medal.
Her collection Saints and Sinners follows characteristic Edna O’Brien trademarks offering her wonderful lyricism, powerful evocations of place and a glorious and an often heart-breaking grasp of people and their desires and contradictions.
It is the first year two Irish authors have been shortlisted for this award, which was established in 2005 and previous winners have included Haruki Murakami, Jhumpa Lahiri and Simon Van Booy.
Adjudicating this year’s entries were Irish novelist and short story writer Alannah Hopkin, music and book critic for The Guardian, BBC and ITAL London Times Chris Power, and Irish poet, novelist and librarian Thomas McCarthy. They described her entry as demonstrating a lustful comfort in the face of the human condition.