Irish Author Eimear McBride Wins Baileys Women’s Prize For Fiction

Irish author Eimear McBride has been named as the winner of the Baileys Women’s Prize For Fiction. The novelist saw off strong competition in the form of Donna Tartt and Chimamanda Ngozi to claim the title and the £30,000 (€37,000) prize. Her book, entitled A Girl Is A Half-Formed Thing, was initially rejected by publishers. After almost a decade sitting on the shelf, it was picked up by a small publisher in Norwich last year. Described by the chair of the judging panel, Helen Fraser, as “amazing and ambitious”, it is about a young woman’s relationship with her brother who has been diagnosed with a brain tumour. It also won the 2013 Goldsmiths Prize as well as the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year and made it onto the shortlists for the 2014 Folio Prize and Desmond Elliott Prize. McBride was born in Liverpool but spent most of her childhood in Ireland before returning to the UK in her late teens.