Popular Cork author to receive prestigious literature award in Chicago

A POPULAR Cork author will be clearing space on what is already a busy mantlepiece, as he receives a prestigious award in the US later this year.

The Irish Books, Arts and Music (iBAM) awards take place every year at the American Irish Heritage Center in Chicago and celebrate the best in Irish culture.

This year, the iBAM award for literature will go to Devonshire author and playwright Cónal Creedon.

Past recipients of the iBAM award for literature include Frank McCourt, Marian Keyes, John B Keane, Maeve Binchy, Colm McCann, Mary Dempsey, Colm Tobin and Tim Pat Coogan.

The award will be presented to Mr Creedon at a ceremony in Chicago in October.

The announcement comes after news that Mr Creedon will be this year’s recipient of the World Cultural Council award for arts at a ceremony at McGill University in Montreal, in October.

Popularity

Mr Creedon has long enjoyed popularity in the United States, and he first presented a coast-to-coast seven-city reading tour as a guest of the Irish American Cultural Institute back in 2007.

Since then he has been a regular visitor stateside, speaking at universities and Irish festivals, introducing screenings of his documentaries and attending productions of his stage plays, with numerous productions of his plays produced in New York.

Limerick-born author Malachy McCourt said recently of Mr Creedon’s writing: “They say if Dublin was burnt down it could be rebuilt again by reading the work of James Joyce.

“Well the very same could be said about Creedon’s work, Cork City could be built from his words.”

Writing in the New York Times, critic Rachel Saltz said of him: “Mr Creedon’s words are enough to create a world that is at once comic and dramatic, poetic and musical”.