merrion street

Jimmy Deenihan TD, Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, will this evening (Friday 22 February 2013) in the Royal St. George Yacht Club, Dun Laoghaire, present the 2013 Irish PEN Award to John Banville for Outstanding Achievement in Irish Literature.

The original PEN dinner was held in London in October 1921 with 41 writers in attendance. In 1999 the first Irish PEN Award was presented to John B. Keane. Since then Brian Friel, Edna O’Brien, William Trevor, John McGahern, Neil Jordan, Seamus Heaney, Jennifer Johnston, Maeve Binchy, Thomas Kilroy and Roddy Doyle have been recipients.

Addressing the dinner, Minister Deenihan said: "John Banville is a worthy recipient of the Irish PEN award for outstanding achievement in Irish literature. I can think of no more deserving a recipient of such an honour than John , a writer of innumerable gifts, of immense talent, of superb reputation in Ireland and abroad. I am delighted to have this opportunity to gather together to acknowledge, honour, and celebrate a writer such as John " Minister Deenihan concluded.

"The Book of Evidence "was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the Guinness Peat Aviation award in 1989. "The Sea" won the Booker Prize in 2005, he was awarded the Franz Kafka Prize in 2011 and is a perennial contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature.