Cork author Cónal Creedon honoured with US literary award

One of Cork’s favourite authors has added another award to an already impressive haul of recent international wins.

Devonshire Street author, playwright and filmmaker Cónal Creedon was honoured over the weekend in the Irish American Heritage Centre in Chicago, at a gala banquet celebrating the Irish American Books, Arts and Music (iBAM) 2024 Awards.

Other recipients of the iBAM 2024 included journalist and author Fintan O’Toole , traditional Irish musicians Altan, and Belfast-born actor Ciarán Hinds.

With the iBAM awards now in their 16th year, previous winners include Frank McCourt, John B Keane, Maeve Binchy, and Marian Keyes.

Mr Creedon’s home city was well-represented at the awards banquet, with the Lord Mayor of Cork, Dan Boyle, and Cork city librarian Patricia Looney joined by Irish Consul-General Brian Cahalane and Irish Vice-Consul Pádraig Manning.

Dedicated 

In his acceptance speech, Mr Creedon dedicated his award to the memory of his mother Siobhan Blake, "one of 10 formidable sisters born on the Beara Peninsula, West Cork”.

Acknowledging Irish America, he recalled that his grandfather had joined a previous generation of Irish migrant workers travelling from West Cork to Butte Montana at the turn of the last century, and had been one of the lucky few who had managed to make it to back to Ireland to begin a family.

Mr Creedon said he was delighted to celebrate his 2024 iBAM award alongside Altan, adding that it had a sense of ‘rotar mór an tsaoil’ - the big wheel of life - as he recounted first meeting the band in the mid-1990s at the Westport Arts Festival in Co Mayo, where he had received his first ever literary award, The George A Birmingham Award.

Earlier this month, Mr Creedon was awarded the World Cultural Council Leonardo Da Vinci 2024 award for Arts at McGill University in Montreal.

Mr Creedon’s collection of essays, Spaghetti Bowl, is on sale in Waterstones Cork.