John Creedon and Edel Coffey among winners at Irish Book Awards
John Creedon, Edel Coffey and Marian Keyes: winners in tonight's Irish Book Awards
Irish Examiner columnist Edel Coffey was among the winners at the An Post Irish Book Awards, collecting the Crime Fiction Book of the Year for Breaking Point.
Speaking on her win, Breaking Point author Edel Coffey says she is “absolutely delighted” with the acknowledgment.
“It has not sunk in obviously, but I’m absolutely thrilled. It’s a real acknowledgment of the book actually…I just feel really happy for the book,” she says.
Her debut novel sees one of its main characters, Adelaide struggle to balance being a mother and returning to work.
A mother of four, Coffey’s youngest child was just a couple of months old when she first started to think about writing Breaking Point and as she puts it herself, “life was crazy”.
“I really could not get my head around that there are people who did this all the time every day with full-time jobs and without partners,” she says.
“It just felt like society is so fast passed now and our major priority is not human beings, its productivity, and its work and we’ve forgotten that we actually have to protect people and we have to protect children.
“That was kind of the main motivation behind it, [it] was something that I recognised in my own life and I wanted to sort of bring it to light. Nobody seems to talk about this. Why are we not talking about it?.”
Louise Kennedy, John Creedon and Marian Keyes were some of the other winning authors at the event, held in the Convention Centre Dublin on Wednesday evening.
Charlie Bird also claimed victory in the biography section, while West Cork resident Eoghan Daltun took the Lifestyle award for an account of his rainforest rewilding project.
- Novel of the Year: Trespasses – Louise Kennedy
- Best Irish-Published Book of the Year: An Irish Folklore Treasury – John Creedon
- Non-fiction Book of the Year: My Fourth Time, We Drowned – Sally Hayden
- Lifestyle Book of the Year: An Irish Atlantic Rainforest: A Personal Journey into the Magic of Rewilding – Eoghan Daltun
- Cookbook of the Year: The Daly Dish: Bold Food Made Good – Gina and Karol Daly
- Sports Book of the Year: Kellie – Kellie Harrington, with Roddy Doyle
- Biography of the Year: Time and Tide – Charlie Bird, with Ray Burke
- Children’s Book of the Year – Junior: Our Big Day – Bob Johnston, illustrated by Michael Emberley
- Children’s Book of the Year – Senior: Girls Who Slay Monsters – Ellen Ryan, illustrated by Shona Shirley Macdonald
- Teen and Young Adult Book of the Year: Let’s Talk – Richie Sadlier
- Irish Bookshop of the Year: Bridge Street Books, Wicklow
- Irish Language Book of the Year: EL – Thaddeus Ó Buachalla
- Poem of the Year: Wedding Dress – Martina Dalton
- Short Story of the Year: This Small Giddy Life – Nuala O’Connor
- Crime Fiction Book of the Year: Breaking Point – Edel Coffey
- Popular Fiction Book of the Year: Again, Rachel – Marian Keyes
- Newcomer of the Year: There’s Been a Little Incident – Alice Ryan
- Author of the Year: John Boyne
