UL One Campus, One Book 2015/16 announced

By Seán Lynch

Sara Baume’s Spill Simmer Falter Wither has been announced as the 2015/16 featured novel for UL One Campus, One Book.

The novel follows a lonely 57-year-old Irish man and his small one-eyed misfit of a dog, through four distinct seasons.

There will be three events for this year’s UL One Campus, One Book, open to everyone to attend.

The launch event for this year’s novel will be a reading by Sara Baume from the novel.

Sara will be introduced at the event by Prof Joseph O’Connor, Frank McCourt Professor of Creative Writing at UL.

Prof O’Connor, whose novel The Thrill of it All was last year’s UL One Campus, One Book, described the novel as: “Utterly wonderful. It’s the most impressive debut novel I’ve read in years.”

The launch will take place on Wednesday, 18th November at 4pm in the Millstream Common Room.

Ms Baume will talk about the relationships between visual art and literary art in the second event, later in the year.

The event will include visual presentations and there will be a discussion about the influences on visual and literary art afterwards.

The final event of the UL One Campus, One Book will be the eighth edition of the How I Write, Ireland series.

Lawrence Cleary, writing consultant in the Regional Writing Centre, will engage Sara in a public interview about her writing process and strategies.

The interview will give an insight into how the novelist writes, while also giving time for audience members to ask questions of Sara as a way of informing their own writing processes and strategies.

UL One Campus, One Book is a UL initiative, led by the Regional Writing Centre and the Centre for Teaching and Learning, encouraging students and staff to read the same book and talk to one another about it.

Spill Simmer Falter Wither, Sara Baume’s debut novel, won The Rooney Prize for Irish Literature 2015 and was long listed for the Guardian First Book Award.

In 2014 she was awarded the Davy Byrnes short story award, organised by the Stinging Fly in association with Dublin Unesco City of Literature, for her story Solesearcher1.

Sara Baume won the Hennessy New Irish Writing Award earlier in 2015, just a month after the novel was published.

Ms Baume also won the Emerging Fiction Award for her short story Dancing, or Beginning to Dance.

The novel was featured as one of this year’s UL First Seven Weeks recommended books.

She was born in Lancashire, grew up in County Cork and studied Fine Art in IADT Dun Laoghaire, before completing the MPhil in Creative Writing at Trinity College.

Rick O’Shea, 2FM radio DJ reviewed the novel on his blog, saying: “I’d devour it all over again tomorrow. One of the most memorable novels I’ve read in years.”

Details of the One Campus, One Book events will be available at the Writing Centre’s website: ul.ie/rwc.

Any questions or queries about the project can be directed to: writingcentre@ul.ie.