THE CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED Irish writer Anne Enright will be honoured with the Bob Hughes Lifetime Achievement Award at the An Post Irish Book Awards 2022.

The awards take place on 23 November, where Booker Prize-winning Enright will be presented with the award in front of an audience of authors and members of the book and publishing community. 

Her career has spanned three decades, including seven novels, three collections of short fiction and a non-fiction book about motherhood. Her most recent novel is Actress, which came out in 2020. Speaking to The Journal that year about her career, she said:

”I’ve been writing for 30 years and you know, the first 10, which is solid anxiety as far as I can recall and not getting it right and never being sure. I am still unsure.

“But now I know that uncertainty is a way of life for a writer and that it’s not a bad place to be in. And I’d rather be uncertain than doggedly certain the way some people are. And, so I like that: the freedom of the creative space.”

Other recipients of the lifetime achievement award over the years include Sebastian Barry, Colm Toibín, Eavan Boland, Maeve Binchy, Séamus Heaney, JP Donleavy, Paul Durcan, John Banville, John McGahern, Edna O’Brien, William Trevor, and Jennifer Johnston.

In conferring the award, the Board of the Irish Book Awards stated:

“Anne Enright has occupied a central position in the cultural life of Ireland for over three decades. In a literary career that has delivered seven novels, three short story collections, a memoir of motherhood, and the 2007 Booker Prize for her fourth novel, The Gathering, Enright has been an integral part of Ireland’s contemporary literary renaissance, earning her a substantial international reputation in the process.

“Detecting ‘a familiar Irish talkiness in her work’ the critic, James Wood, has described her as a rich, lyrical prose writer, who cascades among novelties – again and again finding the unexpected adjective, the just noun.”

The board described Enright as “a quintessentially Irish writer”, adding that “she is widely admired in her own country for the wit, warmth, and eloquence she brings to the role of artist and public intellectual, never more so than when fulfilling her role as the inaugural Laureate for Irish Fiction in the years between 2015 and 2018″.

Booksellers, like readers and critics, have favourite writers. Any book sold keeps Yeats’s “greasy till” chiming but there are certain writers whose work booksellers actively enjoy recommending to their customers. Booksellers warm to authors who fulfil the peripheral demands of public profile and trade interaction with good grace. It is those good friends of the book trade that our Lifetime Achievement Award is designed to honour and no writer has been a greater friend to Irish booksellers than Anne Enright.

Brendan Corbett, Chairperson of the An Post Irish Book Awards, said that Enright is an inspiration, not just to her readership, but to younger writers breaking through. 

The An Post Irish Book Awards celebrates and promotes Irish writing to the widest range of readers possible, recognising the cream of Irish talent across 18 categories, including  TheJournal.ie Best Irish Published Book of the Year.

A one-hour special, hosted by Oliver Callan, will be broadcast on RTÉ One television on Wednesday 7 December exploring the six books and authors competing for the accolade of ‘An Post Irish Book Awards Book of the Year 2022’.

The public are being asked to cast their votes online for the best books of the year on the An Post Irish Book Awards website www.anpostirishbookawards.ie. All voters will be entered into a prize draw to win one of five €100 National Book Token vouchers. Voters can cast their votes until voting closes on 10 November.