Mayo writer wins prestigious award

Mayo writer Colin Barrett has won the Nero Book Awards debut fiction prize for his first novel, Wild Houses.

The novel, which is set in Ballina, is about a small-town drugs feud, a kidnapping and a life-altering weekend. Mr Barrett is a native of nearby Knockmore and small-town life has provided a lot of inspiration for his fiction writing.

The Nero Awards began last year, replacing the Costa Awards, and are considered second only to the Booker Prize in critical and commercial significance. The judges were rich in their praise of Mr Barrett's debut novel. 

“Our winner Wild Houses was a clear standout for the sheer quality of its writing; a literary page-turner, with prose both lyrical and absorbing, brilliant dialogue and characters who seem to have walked off the street and onto the page.

"The wit and humour in this novel belies an undercurrent of menace, and yet there is deep empathy and compassion at its heart.”

Mr Barrett told The Irish Times that the award had come as "a very welcome surprise".

“I was always proud of Wild Houses when I finally finished it. Flaws and all, it was as good a novel as I could write at the time. But it felt like a book that might only be for me, not necessarily in terms of its subject matter, but it’s angles of approach, how it played out. And so I am left feeling very grateful and encouraged by its journey out into the world, and that readers have found merit in it, have found something in the stories of Dev, Nicky and Doll that resonated with them.” 

Mr Barrett’s first short story collection Young Skins won the Guardian First Book Award, the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. Its longest story, Calm with Horses, was adapted into a feature film starring Barry Keoghan in 2020. His second collection, Homesickness, made the New York Times 100 Notable Books of the Year and was a Book of the Year in The Irish Times. His stories have been published in the Stinging Fly, Granta, Harper’s and The New Yorker. Wild Houses was also longlisted for the Booker Prize.

Each category winner of the Nero Awards receives £5,000 and is now in the running for the Nero Gold Prize, Book of the Year 2024, which will be announced on March 5th. A judging panel, chaired by celebrated journalist and author Bill Bryson, will select the overall winner, who will receive an additional £30,000 prize. Last year’s inaugural Nero Gold Prize winner was The Bee Sting by Irish author Paul Murray. Fellow Irish author Michael Magee won the debut prize for Close to Home.