Following the publication of her acclaimed debut novel, The Amusements, last summer, Aingeala Flannery has been announced as the latest recipient of the John McGahern Annual Book Prize.

The prize of £5,000 goes to the year's best debut work of fiction by an Irish writer, or a writer who has lived in Ireland for more than five years.

The award was initially set up in 2019, by the Institute of Irish Studies at the University of Liverpool, in memory of renowned Irish writer John McGahern.

Previous winners include Adrian Duncan for Love Notes from a German Building Site (2019), Hilary Fannin for The Weight of Love (2020), and Louise Kennedy for The End of the World is a Cul de Sac (2021).

The Amusements, which Flannery describes as "a novel of interconnected stories", takes place in Tramore, Co. Waterford.

"[T]he people who come from small towns have a love-hate relationship with it,” Flannery reflected last year, in an interview with Hot Press. “There’s so much that’s attractive and there’s that sense of community, of family and your personal history tied up with it. But that can also be suffocating. It’s that constant conflict between what nurtures and what suffocates.”

Aingeala Flannery. Copyright Miguel Ruiz.

She also discussed the book's captivating cast of characters.

“They’re just like imaginary friends,” she said. “You’re walking around and instead of obsessing over your own family and friends, you’ve got this fictional family down in Tramore. They became people in my mind. I was going up and down to Tramore… I was going to visit these characters that didn’t exist outside of my head!”

Aingeala Flannery will give a reading from The Amusements as part of a special John McGahern Annual Book Prize event at the Liverpool Literary Festival, taking place at the Victoria Gallery & Museum in Liverpool in October 7.

The John McGahern Book Prize is now accepting submissions for works published in 2023 – with a judging panel that includes Colm Tóibín, Janet Beer, Frank Shovlin, and Eleanor Lybeck.