2024 Michel Déon Prize now open for nominations

The 2024 Michel Déon Prize for non-fiction was opened to nominations today by the Royal Irish Academy. The €10,000 prize will be awarded in September 2024 for the best non-fiction book by a writer living in Ireland. The winning author will give the 'Michel Déon Lecture' in France in 2025.

The Michel Déon Prize, funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs, will be awarded to the author of the book that the judging panel consider to be the best work of non-fiction published in the previous two years from the eligible categories: autobiography, biography, cultural studies, history, literary studies, philosophy and travel.

The object of the prize is to:
- honour the life of Michel Déon by continuing his work in supporting and championing writing talent
- sustain the legacy of Michel Déon in celebrating the richness and diversity of cultural experience in Europe

The 2022 prize was awarded to journalist Sally Hayden for her book My Fourth Time, We Drowned. In 2020 the RIA awarded the prize to journalist Conor O’Clery for his book The Shoemaker and his Daughter. The inaugural prize in 2018 was presented to historian Breandán MacSuibhne for his book The End of Outrage: Post-Famine Adjustment in Rural Ireland.

Nominations

Download the full terms and conditions for entry

Nominate a title for consideration online.

The closing date for nominations is midnight on 8 April 2024.

Michel Déon

Michel Déon (1919 –2016) is considered to have been one of the leading French writers of the 20th century, who made Ireland his home in the 1970s until his death in 2016. He published over fifty works of fiction and non-fiction and was the recipient of numerous awards, including the Prix Interallié for his 1970 novel, Les Poneys sauvages (The Wild Ponies). Déon's 1973 novel Un taxi mauve (A Purple Taxi) received the Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française and in 1978 he was elected to the Académie française.