An Post Award Nominations and Winners

I was fortunate in 2025 to have been able to interview some top authors for our Bookcited! podcast and I was thrilled to see some of them picking up nominations and awards for their books in the An Post Awards recently
Jane Casey (The Secret Room) and Steve Cavanagh (Two Kinds of Stranger) were both nominated for Best Crime Fiction and both joined us for chats on the podcast during BookWeek this year. Of the 6 authors nominated for Author of the Year we have talked to three of them on the podcast- Elaine Feeney, Colm Toibin and Donal Ryan.

In the Novel of the Year category we have interviewed 4 of the 8 authors about their books - Elaine Feeney talked to us about her book Let Me Go Mad in My Own Way set in rural Ireland – a nod to her own family experiences – and Wendy Erskine has been with us both on the podcast and in person during Book Week this year to promote her first novel The Benefactors – set in Belfast. Garrett Carr joined Wendy on the stage during Book Week in Belfast Central to talk about his first adult novel – The Boy From the Sea – a heartfelt love letter to Killybegs, the town he grew up in in Donegal. A baby is abandoned on a beach and the community pull together to support the family who adopt him – such lovely gentle storytelling that you won’t want to stop reading! I recommend the audiobook for this- and of course listen to the podcast episode to get the background and hear from the author.

And last but not least, Joseph O’Connor joined us to talk about The Ghosts of Rome – the second in the trilogy The Rome Escape Line – based during WW2 and focusing on the group of resistance civilians who helped escaped prisoners of war hide from the Gestapo – it is loosely based on actual events and personalities. The story is fast moving, at times brutal but riveting all the same and I am thrilled to hear that it has won and been awarded the An Post Novel of the Year for 2025. Pete and I really enjoyed meeting him and I am looking forward to the third and final novel of the trilogy.