UEA alumna Anne Enright has been appointed as the inaugural Laureate for Irish Fiction. She will receive €150,000 over the three-year term of the Laureateship, during which she will continue write, while teaching Creative Writing at University College Dublin and New York University. She will also deliver an annual lecture and curate a programme of public events to promote greater engagement with Irish literature and reading, with particular emphasis on nurturing the short story and on the translation of Irish work into other languages. Anne (pictured) was born in Dublin in 1962 and graduated from the UEA MA in Creative Writing in 1987. Her first book, a collection of short stories called ‘The Portable Virgin’, was published in 1991 and was the winner of the Rooney Prize. Among her novels are ‘The Gathering’ (2007), which won the 2007 Man Booker Prize and the Irish Novel of the Year Award, and ‘The Forgotten Waltz’ (2011), winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal. Her new novel, ‘The Green Road’, will be published in May.
Anne Enright appointed Laureate for Irish Fiction
