The 2022 Michel Déon Non-Fiction Prize

The RIA is accepting nominations for the 2022 Michel Déon Non-fiction prize.

The Michel Déon Prize was founded in 2018 in memory of the French writer Michel Déon (1919-2016) who made the West of Ireland his home. It is a joint prize awarded in alternate years by the Royal Irish Academy in Ireland (funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs) and the Académie française in France. The winning author gets a prize of €10,000 and the honour of visiting the other country to deliver the Michel Déon Lecture the following year.

In December 2018 the Royal Irish Academy awarded the inaugural non-fiction prize to historian Breandán MacSuibhne for his book ‘The End of Outrage: Post-Famine Adjustment in Rural Ireland’ and he delivered his Michel Déon Lecture in Paris on 10 December 2019.   On 12 December 2019 the Académie française officially awarded their prize to fiction writer Stéphane Hoffmann for “Les Belles Ambitieuses” . On 29 September 2020 the Royal Irish Academy awarded the 2020 prize to Conor O’Clery for his book The Shoemaker and his Daughter (Penguin Randomhouse). Watch the online award ceremony below. The 2021 winner of the Académie française prize was Mr. François Cérésa. We look forward to welcoming both French prize winners to the Royal Irish Academy in September 2022.

The Competition
The Royal Irish Academy will award the 2022 Michel Déon non-fiction prize to the author of the book that the judging panel consider to be the best work of non-fiction published since 1 April 2020 in the eligible categories. In selecting the winner, the judging panel will be looking for: originality; quality of writing and contribution to knowledge and/or public debate.

For further information and to enter go to: https://www.ria.ie/grants-awards/prizes/michel-deon-prize