The An Post Irish Book Awards has established itself over the years as the most prestigious event in the Irish literary calendar. Lesser known authors have become household names and established writers have cemented their names as some of the nations favourite artists.
Another Avenue has been involved with the production of the An Post Irish Book Awards for many years, both facilitating the AV output at the live event and creating the television show. A mainstay in the schedule, the show has always achieved high viewer numbers and acclaim.
In recent years the winners of the various awards have qualified to be considered for the Irish Book of the Year Award. An esteemed panel of literary experts, writers and academics whittle all the winners down to six books and authors and this six becomes the shortlist.
For the first time this year Another Avenue produced the Irish Book of the Year for television. The show was a live panel show hosted by Oliver Callen and the six shortlisted books were as follows:
Roisin O’Donnell – Nesting
Grainne O’Brien– Solo
Joseph O’Connor – Ghosts of Rome
Andrew Porter -Heart on my Sleeve
Sarah Corbett Lynch – A Time for Truth
Manchán Magan (Megan Luddy illustrator) -Ninety-Nine Words for Rain (and One for Sun)
For each of the authors we produced a high quality VT, filming with people from their lives and expanding on their literary backgrounds, also explaing reason why they wote on theri paticular subject for their books. These VT’s served as the backbone to the studio show, and set the scence to the interview themselves .
For the studio section of the show, we built a set in the Library Room of the RDS and invited a live studio audience. As a departure from previous shows, we sat all of the nominees together so that they could have an organic conversation about the books and the process of writing. The atmosphere was great throughout filming with each of the authors showing an obvious professional respect for each other and revelling in the opportunity to celebrate each others work.
The winner this year was announced as Joseph O’Connor, Ghosts of Rome which the panel agreed was an incredible piece of work from one of Irelands most enduring literary talents. The show aired to much praise and very favourable ratings on RTE, we at Another Avenue look forward to making it bigger and better in 2026.
