AWB Vincent American
Ireland Fund Literary Award 2005
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A.W.B. Vincent, who established the award over three
decades ago, reminded guests of the Award’s
influence on past winners, which include Seamus Heaney.
In presenting the 2005 award Thomas McCarthy stated
that Trevor was selected “…for his brilliant
prose, for his insight into human character, for
his bridging the emotional sea that divides English
and Irish life…”
Thomas McCarthy later had this to say: “I
have always felt that the Literary Award is a vital
component in the annual life of the Funds as well
as an absolutely vital intervention in the continuing
life of Irish writing. The Award works that way because
it is a significant intervention, really affecting
the life of those who receive it. The Ireland Funds
does enormous quiet good in this land all the time,
but symbolic trenchant interventions such as the
Literary Award does remind the world of the clout
of The Ireland Funds. It is visible action, and that
raises everyone’s morale, not least the lucky
author.”
2005
Worldwide Conference >
Photos:
1. UCC President, Professor
Gerry Wrixon
2. Aula Maxima, UCC
3. Loretta Brennan Glucksman, Chairman of The American Ireland Fund and William
Trevor
4. Dr. AWB Vincent
|
William Trevor
Novelist and short-story
writer William Trevor was born in Mitchelstown, County
Cork, in the Republic of Ireland on 24 May 1928.
He was educated at St Columba's College, County Dublin,
and Trinity College, Dublin. He worked briefly as
a teacher, and later as a copywriter in an advertising
agency before he began to work full-time as a writer
in 1965. He was also a sculptor and exhibited frequently
in Dublin and London. His first novel, A Standard
of Behaviour, was published in 1958.
His fiction, set mainly in Ireland and England, ranges from black comedies characterised
by eccentrics and sexual deviants to stories exploring Irish history and politics,
and he articulates the tensions between Irish Protestant landowners and Catholic
tenants in what critics have termed the 'big house' novel. He is the acclaimed
author of several collections of short stories, and has adapted a number of his
own stories for the stage, television and radio.
His novels include The Old Boys (1964),
which won The Hawthornden Prize; The Boarding House
(1965); The Love Department (1966); Mrs Eckdorf
in O'Neills Hotel (1969); Miss Gomes and the Brethern
(1971); Elizabeth Alone (1973); The Children of
Dynmouth (1976), which won the Whitbread Award 1976;
Other People's Worlds (1980); Fools of Fortune (1983)
which won the Whitbread Award 1983; The Silence in
the Garden (1988) which won the Yorkshire Post Book
of the Year Award ; and Two Lives (1991), which was
shortlisted for the Sunday Express Book of the
Year Award and includes the Booker-shortlisted novella
Reading Turgenev.
Felicia's Journey (1994) won both
the Whitbread Book of the Year and the Sunday Express
Book of the Year awards. His seven collections
of previously short stories were brought together
with four new stories as the Collected Stories of
William Trevor (1992). Two further selections, Ireland:
Selected Stories, and Outside Ireland: Selected Stories,
were published by Penguin (UK) in 1995.
A collection
of his autobiographical essays entitled Excursions
in the Real World appeared in 1993. He is the editor
of The Oxford Book of Short Stories (1989) and
has written plays for the stage and for radio and
television. His latest short story collection is
The Hill Bachelors (London, Viking, 2000), for
which he received 2001 The Irish Times Irish Literature
Prize for Fiction. In 1976 he received the Allied
Irish Banks' Prize and in 1977 he was awarded an
honorary CBE in recognition of his services to
literature. In 1992 he received The Sunday Times
Award for Literary Excellence and in 1999 the David
Cohen British Literature Prize.
He lives in Devon
and is a member of the Irish Academy of Letters. |
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