Nominated by Bibliothèque publique d’information, Paris, France

The 2022 DUBLIN Literary Award longlist of 79 books has been painstakingly narrowed down to a shortlist of just 6 titles. The award, sponsored by Dublin City Council, is the world’s most valuable annual prize for a single work of fiction published in English, worth €100,000 to the winner. The DUBLIN Literary Award will be presented during ILFDublin. Nominated by libraries around the world, all the books on the shortlist can be read in both physical and digital formats, from libraries around the country and through BorrowBox.

This exclusive limited podcast series, hosted by Jessica Traynor and Séan Hewitt, is designed to give you access to the authors behind the 6 shortlisted titles. Their conversation about The Art of Losing is followed by an interview with author Alice Zeniter and translator Frank Wynne. Alice is the prize-winning author of four novels. She is also a playwright and theatre director. With The Art of Losing, Alice has created a powerful drama about a family struggling with the weight of the past, and the reality of their displacement from their homeland. Naïma has always known of her family’s Algerian heritage but until this moment in her life, the reality of her family’s past has meant very little to her. Born and raised in France, she knows Algeria through her grandparents stories, the food they cook for her, the precious objects they managed to save from their old life. Silence surrounds everything. Why was her grandfather Ali forced to leave Algeria? Her father claims to remember nothing – he is a self-made man and his present is of his own making. But now, Naïma is going back, to discover the truth for herself. A hymn to a lost homeland, The Art of Losing asks why we seek redemption in the past.

Frank Wynne is an Irish translator who has translated and published comics and graphic novels. He has won numerous awards for his translations, including the DUBLIN Literary Award 2002, the Scott Moncrieff Prize, and the Premio Valle Inclán.

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Jessica Traynor is a poet, essayist and librettist. Her debut poetry collection, Liffey Swim, was shortlisted for the Strong/Shine Award. The Quick was a 2019 Irish Times poetry choice. Awards include the Ireland Chair of Poetry Bursary and Hennessy New Writer of the Year. Paper Boat, a new opera commission from Irish National Opera and Music for Galway, will premiere in April 2022. Residencies in 2021-22 include the Yeats Society Sligo, The Seamus Heaney Home Place and the DLR LexIcon. Her third collection, Pit Lullabies, has just been published by Bloodaxe Books, and is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation.

Seán Hewitt’s debut collection, Tongues of Fire, was published by Jonathan Cape (2020). It won The Laurel Prize in 2021, and was shortlisted for The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, the John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize, a Dalkey Literary Award. In 2020, he was chosen by The Sunday Times as one of their “30 under 30” artists in Ireland. His memoir, All Down Darkness Wide, is published with Jonathan Cape and Penguin Press (2022). He is a Poetry Critic for The Irish Times and teaches Modern British & Irish Literature at Trinity College Dublin.