In a new chapter for the Irish Book Awards, 2018 marks the first year of a three year sponsorship with An Post. This partnership promises to be a wonderful fit for the awards with both sponsor and rights holder sharing common goals and ambitions for the advancement of books and reading in Ireland.
The Irish Book Awards have become a landmark event in the Irish bookselling calendar, supported by the entire industry. ONSIDE are delighted to once again sponsor the NON-FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR category.
SHORTLISTED ENTRIES
A RELUCTANT MEMOIR (ROBERT BALLAGH)
A fiercely honest and unvarnished autobiography from Ireland's most successful and controversial living artist.
Making his name as a Pop artist in the late 1960s and 70s, Robert Ballagh quickly achieved an international reputation. With little formal artistic training, he triumphed in his field despite often formidable hostility. His work was also strikingly topical and political, playing with classic images by Goya or Delacroix to express outrage about the situation in Northern Ireland.
But it is his series of realistic portraits of writers, politicians and fellow artists – often searingly inquisitive and moving in equal measure – that have won him lasting fame. His subjects include Brian Friel, Seamus Heaney, Samuel Beckett, James Watson, Francis Crick, Harold Pinter and Fidel Castro. And his remarkable self-portraits unsparingly document the process of his own ageing. This memoir is also a story of Ireland over the past sixty years, its violence, hypocrisy and immobility as well as its creativity and generosity.
CLIMATE JUSTICE: HOPE, RESILIENCE, AND THE FIGHT FOR A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE (MARY ROBINSON)
An urgent call to arms by one of the most important voices in the international fight against climate change, sharing inspiring stories and offering vital lessons for the path forward.
Holding her first grandchild in her arms in 2003, Mary Robinson was struck by the uncertainty of the world he had been born into. Before his fiftieth birthday, he would share the planet with more than nine billion people--people battling for food, water, and shelter in an increasingly volatile climate. The faceless, shadowy menace of climate change had become, in an instant, deeply personal.
ON THE EDGE (DIARMUID FERRITER)
Ireland’s Off-Shore Islands: A Modern History
The islands off the coast of Ireland have long been a source of fascination. Seen as repositories of an ancient Irish culture and the epitome of Irish romanticism, they have attracted generations of scholars, artists and filmmakers looking for a way of life uncontaminated by modernity or materialism. But the reality for islanders has been a lot more complex. They faced poverty, hardship and official hostility, even while being expected to preserve an ancient culture and way of life.
By documenting the island experiences and the social, cultural and political reaction to them over the last 100 years, On the Edge examines why this exodus has happened, and the gulf between the rhetoric that elevated island life and the reality of the political hostility towards them. It uncovers, through state and private archives, personal memoirs, newspaper coverage, and the author's personal travels, the realities behind the "dreadful rocks", and the significance of the experiences of, and reactions to, those who were and remain, literally, on the very edge of European civilisation.
MICHAEL O’LEARY (MATT COOPER)
Matt Cooper lifts the veil on the wildly successful and wildly controversial Ryanair CEO.
Based on extensive research - including with close associates of O'Leary - the book examines O'Leary's personality, beliefs and obsessions and describes how these have moulded the business he runs. Written by a multi-award-winning journalist and broadcaster, with a thirty-year career covering business and current affairs, it is a fascinating insight into the business behind the man, and the man behind the business.
NOTES TO SELF: ESSAYS (EMILY PINE)
The international sensation that illuminates the experiences women are expected to keep hidden--from addiction, anger, and sexual assault to joy, sensuality, and love.
In this collection of essays, Emilie Pine boldly confronts the past to better understand herself, her relationships and her role in society. Tackling subjects like addiction, fertility, feminism and sexual violence, and where these subjects intersect with legislation, these beautifully-written essays are at once fascinating and funny, intimate and searingly honest.
PEOPLE LIKE ME (LYNN RUANE)
Intimate and brave, People Like Me is the exhilarating story of one woman’s journey to the brink and back, emerging as a leading light for change in Ireland and an inspiration to women everywhere
A force of nature from the day she was born, Lynn Ruane grew up in a loving home in Tallaght, West Dublin. But in her early teens things began to unravel, and she fell into a life of petty crime and chaotic drug use. By age fifteen – pregnant with her first child, no longer attending school and still reeling from a series of shocking incidents in her personal life – Lynn decided she had enough of running away from herself and set about rebuilding her life…
