Two Irish poets, Seán Hewitt, a fiction reviewer for The Irish Times, and James Conor Patterson, from Newry and now living in Belfast, have won Eric Gregory Awards at the Society of Authors’ Awards at Southwark Cathedral, London this evening. They each win £4,725 for a collection of poems by a poet under 30, Lantern and Bandit Country respectively. The 81-year-old Irish debut novelist Norma Macmaster was the runner-up for the inaugural Paul Torday Memorial Prize. The prize is named after Torday, who published his first novel Salmon Fishing in the Yemen at the age of 60. Kate Mosse, Paul Torday Memorial Prize judge, said of runner-up Norma MacMaster’s Silence Under a Stone: “A beautiful, subtle, elegant novel!

Source: The Irish Times June 17, 2019 19:30 UTC