'I always remember coming into Limerick and the feeling of the city' - Booker Prize winner

BOOKER Prize-winning author Paul Lynch has been chosen to receive a Limerick Person of the Month award for his outstanding literary achievements.

Born in Limerick and living in Caherdavin as an infant, before moving to Donegal and later, Dublin, Paul has been writing novels for over 18 years and subsequently won the prestigious Booker Prize in 2023 for his novel, Prophet Song.

He says becoming a novelist was something of a eureka moment while travelling in Italy.

“I always wanted to be a reader, but I never thought about becoming a novelist until something happened me around the age of 30.

“I always wanted to work with words and language and I started working with newspapers around 19 before working as a subeditor and a critic, later.

“The moment I remember, I was on holidays in Sicily, on an island called Lipari, and I was in a taxi going up a hill and I just had this thunderbolt moment, an illumination, where I just realised that I was a writer and I was meant to write.

“What’s interesting is that I have no idea how I knew I was meant to be writing novels, because I had never written fiction before, but the intuition was very powerful.”

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Paul now has a host of best-selling books, including his debut novel Red Sky in Morning and later, The Black Snow, and Grace.
He does say that while he found “he was ready” to write when he began, he notes that it “has not been easy”.

“People often think writing is some sort of glamorous life, but I can assure you it’s not.

“But when the Booker came along, it was really marvelous, but it was after 15 years and wasn’t overnight. It was my fifth novel.

“It was something like a fairytale, that happens to others but not you. A remarkable experience.”

Additionally, Paul’s uncle is actor, director and writer, Gerry Stembridge, who is also a Limerick native.

Gerry is most well known for his 1989 satirical radio series Scrap Saturday, in association with writing partner and Father Ted actor, the late Dermot Morgan.

While living away from Limerick for many years now, Paul said “it is great” to receive the Person of the Month award and that “at the core of [his] being”, he is “a Limerick person”.

“Limerick is also home, it is where the vast majority of my relatives live and my parents live, and it’s where I went on my holidays, mostly, as a child,” he explained.

“The place has a lot of meaning for me, winning this award is very nice indeed!”

“As kids, we would drive all day down from Donegal to Limerick and it was the longest drive, we would be exhausted - the days before motorways.

“I always remember coming into Limerick and the feeling of the city and then pulling up outside my grandparents’ house. It has never left me.”

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Paul was presented with an honorary doctorate by the University of Limerick (UL) in April, 2025. He said it is a “real honour to be awarded that distinction”, albeit he feels he is still “relatively young” to receive such an accolade!

“UL is full of writers I admire such as Joseph O’Connor and Donal Ryan, and it has got a really strong creative writing faculty.

The doctorate was not something I even saw coming!”

Looking ahead to the future, Paul is working on something top secret and while he said that his Booker-winning novel Prophet Song was a fan favourite, he will be giving fans “something completely different”.

“Why would I write the same book twice?” he said, with a grin.

The Limerick Person of the Month award is jointly sponsored by the Limerick Leader, Southern Media and the Clayton Hotel Limerick.