It is time to cast your vote in the 2025 International Flann O’Brien Society Awards!

Longlist and Nominations

Every two years, to coincide with the International Flann O’Brien Society conference, the Society awards two official prizes to the best book-length publication and best essay-length publication on the writing, life, and reception of Brian O'Nolan (pseud. Flann O'Brien, Myles na gCopaleen). 

We are now opening the nomination process for the 2025 International Flann O’Brien Society Awards. The winners will be announced at An Fód Dúchais: Home, Heritage and Origins, the 8th International Flann O’Brien Conference at Strabane, 24-27th June 2025.

The selection process will follow the same format as past editions of the awards. Shortlists for each category (Best Book-Length Publication 2023–24 and Best Essay-Length Publication 2024–24) will be determined by a popular electronic vote. The winners will then be chosen from the shortlists by impartial judges appointed from outside the Society. 

The rules

Each member of the International Flann O’Brien Society may nominate up to 3 titles in any category (3 articles; 3 books; 2 books + 1 article; 2 articles + 1 book... any combination works). Longlisted scholars may nominate their own work. 

Eligible works

• All peer-reviewed works of article-length scholarship on Brian O’Nolan and his writing that were published in the years 2023–24 are eligible. 
• For peer-reviewed book length works, books that were published or in press during that period will be considered. A book considered in one round of awards cannot be entered into subsequent years’ awards.

The full longlist of candidates is found below.

Deadline

We are pleased to invite you to submit your 3 nominations (see rules above) from the following longlist to the jury at newsletter.ifobs@gmail.com by no later than 6pm (Irish Time) Friday 28th March 2025.

The Longlists

Best Book-Length Publication 2023–24

• Ebury, Katherine, Paul Fagan, and John Greaney. Flann O’Brien and the Nonhuman: Environments, Animals, Machines. Cork University Press, 2024.
• Harris, Tobias W. Flann O’Brien and the European Avant-Garde, 1934–45: Dublin’s Dadaist. Bloomsbury, 2025. 
• Ó Conchubhair, Brian. Myles na gCopaleen agus Flann O’Brien: An Saol Bocht. Leabhar Breac, 2025.

Best Article-Length Publication 2023–24

• Abu, Talia. ‘Mickey Finn: Inebriation and Creativity in Myles na gCopaleen’s “Drink and Time in Dublin”’. The Parish Review: Journal of Flann O’Brien Studies 7, no. 2 (2024): 1–19. DOI: https://doi.org/10.16995/pr.11072 
• Adar, Einat. ‘Consenting Cows: Animal Justice in At Swim-Two-Birds’. In Flann O’Brien and the Nonhuman: Environments, Animals, Machines, edited by Katherine Ebury, Paul Fagan, and John Greaney, 109–23. Cork University Press, 2024.
• Allen, Nicholas. ‘At Swim O’Brien: Water, Structure, and Aesthetics’. In Flann O’Brien and the Nonhuman: Environments, Animals, Machines, edited by Katherine Ebury, Paul Fagan, and John Greaney, 25–40. Cork University Press, 2024.
• Baciu, Ana-Marie. ‘Flann O’Brien: The Author’s Rhetorical Masks’. In Fairy Tale and the Shift in Identity Poetics from Modernism to Postmodernism, 113-124. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2023.
• Bacon, James. ‘For Steam Men: Myles na gCopaleen and Irish Rail’. In Flann O’Brien and the Nonhuman: Environments, Animals, Machines, edited by Katherine Ebury, Paul Fagan, and John Greaney, 216–34. Cork University Press, 2024.
• Bates, Julie. ‘Writing with Air in The Third Policeman’. In Flann O’Brien and the Nonhuman: Environments, Animals, Machines, edited by Katherine Ebury, Paul Fagan, and John Greaney, 41–55. Cork University Press, 2024.
• Brooker, Joseph. ‘“The Play, boy, of the Wet, Stern World”: Flann O’Brien and John Millington Synge’. The Parish Review: Journal of Flann O’Brien Studies 7, no. 1 (2023): 1–6. DOI: https://doi.org/10.16995/pr.8648
• Burnette, Jessie. ‘“better in his grave than in that bed”: The Construction of Rest in Flann O’Brien’s At Swim-Two-Birds’. The Parish Review: Journal of Flann O’Brien Studies 7, no. 1 (2023): 1–21. DOI: https://doi.org/10.16995/pr.10735
• Clemens, Ruth Alison. ‘“a vast sequence of imponderable beings”: Becoming-imperceptible in The Third Policeman and Cees Nooteboom’s The Following Story’. In Flann O’Brien and the Nonhuman: Environments, Animals, Machines, edited by Katherine Ebury, Paul Fagan, and John Greaney, 252–69. Cork University Press, 2024.
• Ebury, Katherine, Paul Fagan & John Greaney. ‘Editors’ Introduction: Brian O’Nolan’s Nonhuman Imaginary’. In Flann O’Brien and the Nonhuman: Environments, Animals, Machines, edited by Katherine Ebury, Paul Fagan, and John Greaney, 1–21. Cork University Press, 2024.
• Fagan, Paul. ‘Flann O’Brien’s Vibrant Atmospheres’. The Parish Review: Journal of Flann O’Brien Studies 8, no. 1 (2024): 1–24. DOI: https://doi.org/10.16995/pr.16349
• Fagan, Paul. ‘Wasting Timelessness: Lewis Carroll, Flann O’Brien, and Modernist Temporality.’ In Modernism in Wonderland: Legacies of Lewis Carroll, edited by John Morgenstern and Michelle Witen, 217–39. London: Bloomsbury, 2024.
• Fagan, Paul. ‘An Béal Bocht and the Ethics of the Modernist Laughing Apocalypse.’ In Ethical Crossroads in Literary Modernism, edited by Katherine Ebury, Bridget English, and Matthew Fogarty, 31–49. Modernist Constellations series. Clemson, SC: Clemson University Press, 2023. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.2862490.6
• Foster, Jonathan. ‘“the reassuring unmistakability of the abiding earth”: Nature Writing, State Engineering, the Anthropocene in The Third Policeman’. In Flann O’Brien and the Nonhuman: Environments, Animals, Machines, edited by Katherine Ebury, Paul Fagan, and John Greaney, 73–87. Cork University Press, 2024.
• Fraser, James. ‘more to it than the monstrous exchange of tissue for metal’: Reading the O’Nolan Bicycle’. In Flann O’Brien and the Nonhuman: Environments, Animals, Machines, edited by Katherine Ebury, Paul Fagan, and John Greaney, 181–98. Cork University Press, 2024.
• Fuchs, Dieter. ‘Milesian Rewritings of the Annunciation to the Virgin in “The Martyr’s Crown” via Petronius, Dante, and Shakespeare’. The Parish Review: Journal of Flann O’Brien Studies 8, no. 1 (2024): 1–19. DOI: https://doi.org/10.16995/pr.15135
• Giemza, Bryan. ‘Birdman, Fly: A Reconsideration of Flann O’Brien’s At Swim-Two-Birds and the Pre-Christian Cloak of the Sweeney Tales’. Christianity & Literature 72, no. 2 (2023): 241–67. DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/chy.2023.a904919
• Greenblatt, Yaeli. ‘Drawing Corca Dhorca: Animal Vulnerability in An Béal Bocht and its Graphic Adaptation’. In Flann O’Brien and the Nonhuman: Environments, Animals, Machines, edited by Katherine Ebury, Paul Fagan, and John Greaney, 142–60. Cork University Press, 2024.
• Harkin, Dominic. ‘“‘Is it Life?’ [. . .] ‘I Would Rather Be Without it’”: Flann O’Brien and the Fictive State of Exception’. In Pained Screams from Camps: Collected Essays and an Italian-English Edition of Aldo Quarisa’s Diary, edited by Aisling Reid, Valentina Surace, and Galileo Sartor. Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2024. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111297149-012
• Harkin, Keelan. ‘Trials of Legitimacy: Emergency Powers, Habeas Corpus and Nonhuman Witnesses in At Swim-Two-Birds’. In Flann O’Brien and the Nonhuman: Environments, Animals, Machines, edited by Katherine Ebury, Paul Fagan, and John Greaney, 161–77. Cork University Press, 2024.
• Harris, Tobias W. ‘Parasites: Signal and Noise in Rhapsody in Stephen’s Green’. In Flann O’Brien and the Nonhuman: Environments, Animals, Machines, edited by Katherine Ebury, Paul Fagan, and John Greaney, 124–41. Cork University Press, 2024.
• Hatipoğlu, Gülden. ‘Archival Suspicion and Authorial Desire in The Dalkey Archive’. IDEAS: Journal of English Literary Studies 3, no. 1 (2023): 31–43.
• Houston, Lloyd Meadhbh. ‘“Veni, V.D., Vici!”: Flann O’Brien, Sexual Health, and the Exhaustion of Irish Modernism’. In Irish Modernism and the Politics of Sexual Health. Oxford University Press, 2023.
• Ilyas, Kashif. ‘Literary Nonsense and Language: Linguistic Destabilization and Subversion in Flann O’Brien’s At Swim-Two-Birds’. Latest Trends in Multidisciplinary Research & Development (2023): 7–11.
• Imazeki, Yuta. ‘Flann O’Brien’s Radio Jamming’. In Flann O’Brien and the Nonhuman: Environments, Animals, Machines, edited by Katherine Ebury, Paul Fagan, and John Greaney, 235–51. Cork University Press, 2024.
• Khasawneh, Deema and Jordan Kawther Karain. ‘The Literary Circus of Flann O’Brien’s Novels: A Reading of At Swim-Two-Birdsand The Third Policeman’. The International Journal of Literary Humanities 21, no. 1 (2023): 145–60. DOI: https://doi.org/10.18848/2327-7912/CGP/v21i01/145-160
• LaBine, Joseph. ‘“Information, Please”: Brian O’Nolan and the Radio’. The Parish Review: Journal of Flann O’Brien Studies 7, no. 2 (2023): 1–17. DOI: https://doi.org/10.16995/pr.9171
• Long, Maebh. ‘“Not with a bang but a whimper”: Uncovering Pandemic Strains in Flann O’Brien’s Later Works’. Irish Studies Review 31, no. 4 (2023), 488–501. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09670882.2023.2261390
• Mansouri, Shahriyar. ‘“Forego the reality of all the simple things”: On Object-Oriented Reality as Metaphorical Vortex in Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman’. Journal of Philosophical Investigations, 18, no. 48 (2024): 261–76. DOI: https://doi.org/10.22034/jpiut.2024.61392.3748
• McGarrity, Maria. ‘Mid-Century Malaise and Desublimation in Samuel Beckett, Flann O’Brien, Kate O’Brien and Edna O’Brien’. In Modern Irish Literature and the Primitive Sublime. New York: Routledge, 2024. 67–96. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003297390-4.
• Mihálycsa, Erika. ‘Diminishing the Authorial Footprint: Objects and Texts of Reuse and Refuse in Flann O’Brien’s At Swim-Two-Birds’. Estudios Irlandeses: Journal of Irish Studies 19 (2024): 140–53. DOI: https://doi.org/10.24162/EI2024-12521
• Mills, Elliott. ‘Paper Environments: Crisis and Control in At Swim-Two-Birds’. In Flann O’Brien and the Nonhuman: Environments, Animals, Machines, edited by Katherine Ebury, Paul Fagan, and John Greaney, 56–72. Cork University Press, 2024.
• Mulligan, Christin M. ‘The Abhumanity and Animality of An Drochshaol: Faminised Environments of Becoming in An Béal Bocht’. In Flann O’Brien and the Nonhuman: Environments, Animals, Machines, edited by Katherine Ebury, Paul Fagan, and John Greaney, 88–105. Cork University Press, 2024.
• O’Grady, Thomas. ‘A Cold Case of Irish Facts: Re(:)visiting John Stanislaus Joyce’. James Joyce Quarterly 61, no. 1–2 (Fall 2023–Winter 2024): 15–28. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/jjq.2023.a927913
• Robin, Thierry E. ‘“Not quite dead but definitely queer”: Flann O’Brien’s Thanatophiliac Characters’. The Parish Review: Journal of Flann O’Brien Studies 8, no. 2 (2024). DOI: https://doi.org/10.16995/pr.17037
• Schaaf, Holly Connell. ‘Putting Iron on You: Mobility and Internalised Ableism in The Third Policeman’. In Flann O’Brien and the Nonhuman: Environments, Animals, Machines, edited by Katherine Ebury, Paul Fagan, and John Greaney, 199–215. Cork University Press, 2024.

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