Louise O’Neill

Louise O’Neill grew up in Clonakilty, a small town in West Cork.  Her first novel, Only Ever Yours, was released in 2014.  Only Ever Yours went on to win the Sunday Independent Newcomer of the Year at the 2014 Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards; the Children’s Books Ireland Eilís Dillon Award for a First Children’s Book; and The Bookseller‘s inaugural Young Adult Book Prize 2015.

Louise’s second novel, Asking for It, was published in September 2015 to widespread critical acclaim.  She went on to win the Specsavers’ Senior Children’s Book of the Year at the 2015 Irish Book Awards, the Literature Prize at Irish Tatler’s Women of the Year Awards, and the American Library Association’s Michael L. Printz Award.  Asking for It was voted Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards 2015 and spent 52 weeks in the Irish top 10 bestseller list.  The New York Times called it ‘riveting and essential’ and The Guardian named O’Neill ‘the best YA fiction writer alive today’. Both novels have been optioned for screen.

O’Neill’s first novel for adults, Almost Love, was published in March 2018.  The Surface Breaks, her feminist re-imagining of The Little Mermaid, was released in May 2018.  It has been shortlisted for an Irish Book Award, the Specsavers National Book Awards, the YA Book Prize, and longlisted for the Carnegie Medal.