Biography of The Year Shortlist

Book Profile
WITHOUT WARNING AND ONLY SOMETIMES is a story of an extraordinary childhood and how a girl who grew up in house where the Bible was the only book on offer went on to discover a love of reading that inspires her to this day.​

Author Profile
Kit de Waal is the author of the novels My Name is Leon, which was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award and won the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year, and The Trick to Time, which was longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction, and a short story collection, Supporting Cast. She is also editor of the Common People anthology, and co-founder of the Big Book Weekend festival. My Name is Leon was adapted as a film for BBC Two.

Book Profile
In 2021, Charlie Bird was diagnosed with motor neurone disease – a man whose voice was so
synonymous with his career faced losing it completely. Yet knowing he had just a short time left with
family and friends, what emerged was a great sense of resilience and motivation to take advantage
of every moment.
Here, Charlie reflects on his life and phenomenal broadcast career through the lens of his diagnosis,
as he ponders the big questions and takes stock of the small moments that we so often overlook.
Written over the course of 2022 as his health deteriorated, with the help of long-time friend and
fellow journalist Ray Burke, this is a candid and unforgettable story about the triumph of the human
spirit and, ultimately, what it means to be alive.


Author Profile
Charlie Bird is one of Ireland’s best-known and beloved broadcasters and journalists, with a stellar
career spanning almost forty years. In 2021, he was diagnosed with motor neurone disease, and he
has since worked tirelessly for charities across Ireland to increase awareness about this illness, while
raising millions of euros for organisations such as Pieta and the Irish Motor Neurone Disease
Association.

Ray Burke is from Galway and a graduate of University College Galway. He was News Editor of the
Irish Press and Chief News Editor of RTÉ News. He is the author of critically acclaimed books on the
Irish Press and on James Joyce. Since retiring from RTÉ News he has written for the Century Ireland
website and for the Irish Times and the Connacht Tribune.

Book Profile

It was February 2020 when Ed O’Loughlin unexpectedly heard that Charlotte, a friend from the old days, had just died young and before her time. He realised that he was being led to reappraise his life, his family and his career as a foreign correspondent and novelist in a new, colder light. 

This search for meaning becomes the driving theme of O’Loughlin’s year of confinement. The result is a haunting examination of the author’s early life and love, the journalists and photographers with whom he covered wars in Africa and the Middle East, the suicide of his brother,  his new work as an author, a family home on the edge of a graveyard, and the mysteries of memory, ageing and loss. 

Author Profile
ED O’LOUGHLIN was born in Toronto,
Canada, and grew up in Kildare town, Ireland.
After studying English at Trinity College Dublin,
he worked as a reporter. His first novel, Not
Untrue & Not Unkind was longlisted for the
Man Booker Prize 2009 and shortlisted for the
Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award.
His second novel, Toploader, a darkly comic
vision of the ‘war against terror’, was published
by Quercus in 2011. His third novel, Minds
of Winter (2016), was a finalist for the Giller
Prize and longlisted for the Sir Walter Scott
Prize for historical fiction. His fourth novel, This
Eden, a tech thriller, was published in 2021.
He lives in Dublin with his wife Nuala Haughey
and two children.

Book Profile
Growing up in conservative Saudi Arabia, Suad Aldarra felt stifled by the strictures placed on women. She yearned for the vibrant Syrian streets of her family's origin. When the opportunity arose to study at Damascus University, she jumped at the chance to move to a city she loved and to experience a degree of freedom she'd never known.

But when the war started, everything changed. Suddenly Suad was thrown into a world of relentless pressure desperately looking for a way out. Her degree in software engineering was the saving grace that allowed her to travel to Ireland on a working visa. Yet reaching safety came at a price ...

I Don't Want to Talk About Home is not a memoir about war and destruction. It's not about camps or boats. It's about the enduring love for a home that ceased to exist, building a life out of the rubble, and the parts of yourself you lose and find when integrating into a new world.
 
Author Profile
Suad Aldarra is a writer and data scientist based in Dublin. She was born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia to Syrian parents. In 2003 she moved back to her family home in Syria to study software engineering. After fleeing the war in 2012 she lived in Egypt and the US, before eventually settling in Ireland. In 2021, Suad was awarded the Art Councils of Ireland English Literature bursary. I Don't Want to Talk About Home is her debut memoir.

Book Profile

Bono - artist, activist and the lead singer of Irish rock band U2 - has written his autobiography: honest and irreverent, intimate and profound, Surrender is the story of the remarkable life he's lived, the challenges he's faced and the friends and family who have shaped and sustained him.

Book Profile
A luminous and haunting memoir from the prize-winning poet - a story of love, heartbreak and coming of age, and a fearless exploration of queer identity and trauma.

Author Profile:
 
Seán Hewitt was born in 1990. He is the author the poetry collection Tongues of Fire, which was awarded the Laurel Prize, and was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, the John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize, and a Dalkey Literary Award. He is the recipient of a Northern Writers' Award, the Resurgence Prize, and an Eric Gregory Award. Hewitt is a book critic for the Irish Times and teaches Modern British and Irish Literature at Trinity College Dublin.