Bruen Captures Irish Lit Honor

Here’s something to brighten up your Sunday a bit.

Irish novelist Ken Bruen has been declared as this year’s iBAM! Awardee for Literature. He will receive his prize during a “gala dinner” to be held on October 14—the opening day of the 2016 iBAM! (Irish Books, Arts, and Music) celebration—in the Erin Room at Chicago’s Irish American Heritage Center. Previous recipients of the same award include Maeve Binchy and Frank McCourt.

In response to news of his win, Bruen told the Galway Advertiser, “I’m truly delighted and stunned. I’m over the moon.”

The iBAM Chicago Web site explains that “Ken has written over 50 books and is one of the most prominent Irish crime writers of the last two decades. Born in Galway in 1951, he spent 25 years traveling the world before he began writing in the mid-1990s. As an English teacher, Bruen worked in South Africa, Japan, and South America, where he once spent a short time in a Brazilian jail. He has two long-running series: one starring a disgraced former policeman named Jack Taylor, the other a London police detective named Inspector Brant.”

Bruen’s 12th and latest Taylor novel, The Emerald Lie, is due out from Mysterious Press this coming September.