Guardian first book award 2014 goes to Irish writer ‘who can go the distance’

Colin Barrett’s intense stories of smalltown Irish life, Young Skins, praised as the work of an author ‘with a clear path ahead of them’
Read Diamonds, a story from the collection
‘An extraordinary debut’: The Guardian’s review
Podcast: Colin Barrett

The Irish writer Colin Barrett has won the 2014 Guardian first book award with a lyrical collection of short stories, Young Skins.

Born in 1982, Barrett grew up in County Mayo and worked for a mobile phone company in Dublin before returning to college to study creative writing. His stories began appearing in the Irish literary journal The Stinging Fly in 2009, with the magazine bringing out a collection four years later as Barrett signed with Jonathan Cape in the UK and Grove in the US.