THE AN Post Irish Book Awards has announced that Anne Enright is the recipient of this year’s ‘Bob Hughes Lifetime Achievement Award’.
As the 2022 Lifetime Achievement honouree, Enright will join a host of other distinguished recipients of the award including Sebastian Barry, Colm Tóibín, Thomas Kinsellaa, Eavan Boland and Maeve Binchy.
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”.
"A quintessentially Irish writer, 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.
Brendan Corbett, Chairperson of the An Post Irish Book Awards, said:
“The Board of the An Post Irish Book Awards is delighted to present the 2022 Lifetime Achievement Award to Anne Enright. She has been an inspiration, not just to her readership, but to younger writers breaking through. The Irish book industry will be forever in her debt."
The An Post Irish Book Awards celebrate and promote Irish writing to the widest range of readers possible. Each year it brings together a vast community passionate about books – readers, authors, booksellers, publishers and librarians – to recognise the very best of Irish writing talent across 18 categories.
The award will be presented at the awards ceremony on 23 November.
