Writer in Residence wins literary prize for her book on Irish women emigrants
“The honour of the Michel Déon Prize will draw attention to the challenges, resilience and quite remarkable achievements of these Irish emigrant women’s lives”
A St John's poet, essayist, reviewer, and editor has been awarded the 2024 Royal Irish Academy Michel Déon Prize for non-fiction.
Vona Groarke, the College's Writer in Residence, won the award for her book, Hereafter: the Telling Life of Ellen O’Hara, a poetic account of Irish women domestic servants in New York in the 1890s.
Vona said she was ‘delighted and honoured’ to have been awarded the prize. “I’m also thrilled for the book’s subject, Ellen O’Hara, and for all the Ellens, whose stories deserve to be better known and contributions to Irish society pre-independence more fully acknowledged,” she added.
“The honour of the Michel Déon Prize will, I hope, draw attention to the challenges, resilience and quite remarkable achievements of these Irish emigrant women’s lives.”
The Michel Déon Prize was founded in 2018 in memory of the French writer, Michel Déon (1919-2016), who made the West of Ireland his home. It is a joint prize awarded in alternate years by the Royal Irish Academy in Ireland, funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs, and the Académie française in France. The winning author receives €10,000 and the honour of visiting France or Ireland respectively to deliver the Michel Déon Lecture the following year.
Royal Irish Academy President Pat Guiry presented the prize to Vona during a ceremony at the Academy in Dublin on Wednesday (23 October).
Hereafter: the Telling Life of Ellen O’Hara (New York University Press, 2022) arose out of Vona’s time as a Cullman Fellow at the New York Public Library in 2018-2019.
The 2024 prize has been awarded to the author of the book that the judging panel considers to be the best work of non-fiction published between 12 April 2022 and 8 April 2024 in the eligible categories of autobiography, biography, cultural studies, history, literary studies, philosophy, and travel. Judges look for originality, quality of writing and contribution to knowledge and/or public debate.
Hereafter… was chosen from a shortlist of six titles ranging from memoir to a study of historical landscaping, as well as history and ecology books. The others were: All Down Darkness Wide by Seán Hewitt (Penguin Random House), An Irish Atlantic Rainforest: A Personal Journey into the Magic of Rewilding by Eoghan Daltun (Hachette Books Ireland), Landscape Design and Revolution in Ireland and the United States, 1688-1815 by Finola O’Kane (Paul Mellon Centre/Yale University Press), Making Empire: Ireland, Imperialism, and the Early Modern World by Jane Ohlmeyer (Oxford University Press) and The Celestial Realm by Molly Hennigan (Eriu).
Vona joined St John’s College as Writer in Residence in 2022. As well as Hereafter: The Telling Life of Ellen O’Hara, she has published 12 other books, including eight poetry collections, a book-length essay about art frames – Four Sides Full – and her Selected Poems, winner of the 2017 Pigott Prize for Best Irish Poetry Collection.
As well as being a prize-winning author and poet, Vona is an experienced teacher. At St John’s, she runs The Short Book Club for students, academics and staff, and offers guidance and support for those writing poetry, fiction or creative non-fiction who would like to develop their work. Vona also promotes creative writing with guest readings and other events.
Banner image: An 1874 illustration from Harper's Weekly of Irish emigrants leaving Queenstown (now Cobh), Ireland, for New York. Credit: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington DC 20540 USA.
Published: 25/10/2024