Record Number of Entries for the 2009 Cork City - Frank O’Connor Short Story Award.

The growing popularity of the Cork City - Frank O’Connor Short Story Award, one of the world’s richest literary prizes and the largest for the short story, means that this year’s longlist will be the last presented under the old rules. The longlist consists of all eligible titles entered for the award. There are fifty-seven titles on this year’s longlist. Leading names on the list include Booker winner Kazuo Ishiguro, Orange Prize winner Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche, multiple prize-winning poet Sean O’Brien and previously short-listed authors Philip O Ceallaigh and Charlotte Grimshaw. British and American authors account for thirty-two entries between them. This year also brings a strong showing by writers from developing countries, with entries from India and Africa. Entries in translation also figure strongly with titles by Catalonian, Estonian, Dutch, German, Icelandic and Macedonian authors. This year the Frank O’Connor International International Short Story Award is being renamed The Cork City – Frank O’Connor Short Story Award, in acknowledgement of Cork City Council’s generous funding of the award. At €35,000 the award is the largest in the world for the short story form and monetarily is greater than the Costa Book of the Year Award and the Orange Prize. Cork City Council funds the award in recognition of the city and region’s association with world-class short story writers such as Frank O’Connor himself, Elizabeth Bowen, Sean O’Faolain and William Trevor. The shortlist of six will be decided in late June with the winner announced on September 20th at the close of the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Festival in Cork.