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    Is this the first time ever a parent and child are up for the same literary prize?

    Jonny Diamond
    By 
    August 6, 2020, 12:46pm

    The good news is that there’s a very strong chance someone in the Sweeney family walks away with £2,000 as winner of the 2020 Butler Literary Award, which goes to “the best first publication by an Irish writer in any literary form, or a first publication in a new form by an already published writer” (I, too, am a little confused by this).

    Is there bad news? One hopes that if either Cathy Sweeney (mother) or Lucy Sweeney Byrne (daughter) wins the award, they will magnanimously treat the other to a nice dinner. BUT. As Czelaw Milosz is often attributed as saying, “When a writer is born into a family the family is finished.” So… two writers in the same family, up for the same prize?

    2020 Butler Literary Award awards Cathy Sweeney family Lucy Sweeney Byrne prizes

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