Congratulations to Anakana Schofield whose extraordinarily bonkers (in a good way) novel Bina was named winner of the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award 2021 earlier in the week. She receives €15,000 prize money.
As you will know, I had planned to read every book on the shortlist, but life got in the way (I spent the best part of 8 weeks getting finance for a mortgage, buying a property and then moving in), but I did manage to read three out of five novels. Out of those, Bina was by far my favourite. In my review I said:
It’s a perturbing story but one that gives plenty of food for thought — about ageing, misogyny and euthanasia, to name but a few — but there are enough kooky elements (Bina, for instance, dreams a lot about David Bowie) to add an absurdist element to the tale, one that offers plenty of laughs and light relief.
I can’t find an official press release about the prize (the official website is just horrible to navigate), but you can read more about the winner via this news story from the Irish Examiner.
Reading Matters 
Ha! official websites seem to be de rigeur these days, the NSW PLA being a case in point and the MF not much better.
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Yes and there’s no reason why they should be that way. Websites are super easy to create these days and manage. At work I run 5 different websites and constantly add new pages and bits to them, some of this I can do myself, other bits I talk to a web agency. I know the Kerry Prize website is just run by some volunteers as part of an annual writing week event but it could do with a bit of structure and perhaps recreating it all in WordPress would make it so much easier for someone to run.
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Actually I get the impression that the MF and the NSW PLA are done by some website designer who graduated in ‘visual impact’ but missed the tute on knowing your audience. Anyone who follows any of these prizes wants first of all a list, preferably printable. We don’t all wander around bookshops and libraries with our phones open on their slow-moving websites.
And surely the organisers who want us to promote their award (if they’re too a-hem “busy” to put out a press release and send it to people who are useful to them) should tell their designers that we want a *list*.
The Dublin Lit Award people know how to do it, I download their list into Excel and then sort it so that I can brag about the Australians on the longlist:)
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I was delighted to hear this. I loved Bina ( and Martin John) so am glad to see some recognition going her way.
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Yes, I was very happy she won. I met her a few years ago at the Greenwich lit festival … she signed my Canadian copy of Martin John … and she was such an upbeat person it was hard to fathom she could write such dark stuff!
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