Gappah book "Easterly" up for award

Opinion — By on July 1, 2009 1:13 pm

By Petina Gappah

Some great and surprising news: my book has been short-listed for the Frank O’Connor Short Story Award which is funded by the Cork City Council and organised by the Munster Literature Centre. I have been shortlisted along with Charlotte Grimshaw from New Zealand, Shi-Li Kow from Malaysia, Phillip O Ceillaigh from Ireland,  and Wells Tower and Simon Van Booy from the United States.

This news was broken to the world yesterday afternoon not by a newspaper, but by a blogger, Women Rule Writer, at 13.14.   All bloggers hail thee, o fair Nuala.  See also the Munster Literature Centre website and this report from the Guardian.

The award has in previous years been won by my girl Yiyun Li, Haruki Murakami, Miranda July and Jumpha Lahiri, so it is a real honour to be on the short list.

This means that I get to go back to visit my new love, Ireland, of valley green and towering crag. Until I went to Ireland, I was always amused by those white (and African-American) tourists who go to one African country or city and come back proclaiming their love for Africa, all of  it, but I am telling you, I  went to Galway for two days and I fell in love with Ireland.

And I fell in love with the Irish. Well, not all of them, I mean, not the murderers, or thugs, or men who hit women or kids who throw litter everywhere -  unlike the Western tourists who love all Africans, I am more discriminating in my taste.

So I am really pleased to be going back to  Ireland, to Cork this time.

I am looking forward to meeting the other writers, and reading them, the only one whose work I know is Wells Tower, whose book (Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned ) I really liked. You will recall that he was one of the five writers reviewed by James Lasdun in his brilliant examination of the state of the short story a few months ago in The Observer.  I also like what I have read about him, I loved this statement, from an interview in the New York Observer:

Being a human being isn’t just all misery and despair.  There’s a lot of available joy out there, even if we don’t often find it. I think that fiction should find opportunities for joy.   I think what people really want is fiction that in some tiny way makes their life more meaningful and makes the world seem like a richer place. The world is awfully short on joy and richness, and I think to some extent it’s the fiction writer’s job to salvage some of that and to give it to us in ways that we can believe in.

I will drink to that. And to the Frank O’Connor award too. Cheers all round!

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