Month: November 2025
Dia Duit Éire!
Ireland is taking centre stage this week. I’m preparing for my travels there later this week (see below), but before that, tomorrow, on Monday 24th Nov, I’ll be taking part in the Book of the Year 2025 online event with Halfway up the Stairs, an award-winning children’s bookshop in Greystones, Co. Wicklow, one of the only children’s bookshops in Ireland. I’m looking forward to meeting the team, thanking them for supporting and loving My Name is Jodie Jones, meeting the other authors, and finding out what their Book of the Year is for 2025. https://halfwayupthestairs.ie/events/
On Thursday, I’m flying to Dublin for Winners’ Ceremony for the A Post Irish Book Awards. I’m so excited! I haven’t been to Ireland for (too many) years, and what a glorious reason to be returning to the motherland. My excellent editor, Anthony Hinton, and brilliant agent, Jessica Hare, are joining me for the glam black tie ceremony. I’m very grateful to The Powers That Be at my day job for letting me have Friday as well so don’t have to rush back the morning after the ceremony. I don’t know how inspiring or energetic my teaching would be if I had to get up early and fly back for a full teaching day.
Just as well …
An Post Irish Book Awards and another great review.
I’m honoured and delighted to have been shortlisted for Teen and Young Adult Book of the Year in the A Post Irish Book Awards. The shortlist was announced on 22 October, and the award ceremony is on 27th November, so I’ll be off to Dublin for the glitz and glamour of a night with some of the brightest and best of Ireland’s writers. There are no storytellers as skilled as the Irish; we are a tale-bearing, yarn-spinning, word-loving bunch. Irish writers have always been radical, progressive, profound, creative and groundbreaking. Look at Lawrence Stern, Jonathan Swift, James Joyce, WB Yeats, Samuel Beckett, Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker, Edna O’Brien, Maeve Binchy, George Bernard Shaw … the list goes on. And in more recent years, Irish writers are quite rightfully shining on the world stage, with the likes of John Banville, Anne Enright, Colm Tóibín, Sally Rooney, Roddy Doyle, Eimear McBride, Maggie O’Farrell, Claire Keegan, Emma Donoghue … honestly, I could fill an entire post with a list of Ireland’s astonishingly brilliant authors, poets and playwrights. I’m honoured to spend a night in the same room as the others on the shortlists. My fellow Teen and YA shortlistees are so imaginative and skilled: there is stiff competition indeed. Good luck to them all. You can vote for My Name is Jodie Jones here (you don’t need to vote in every category!): https://www.irishbookawards.ie/vote/
My Name is Jodie Jones has been out for two months now, and the stunning reviews keep coming in: this one by Fiona Noble in The Observer this weekend is gorgeous.
https://observer.co.uk/culture/books/article/young-adult-fiction-of-the-month-spellbinding-stories
Thank you so much, Fiona!
Emma Shevah 