Spill Simmer Falter Wither, Sara Baume’s debut novel, won The Rooney Prize for Irish Literature 2015 and was long listed for the Guardian First Book Award. She also won the Sunday Independent Newcomer of the Year award at the Bórd Gais Energy Book Awards 2015. Her novel was featured as one of this year’s student and staff chosen UL First Seven Weeks recommended books.

Sara Baume was born in Lancashire, but grew up in Co. Cork. She studied Fine Art in Dun Laoghaire College of Are and Design and completed a Masters in Creative Writing in Trinity College, Dublin.

In 2014 she was awarded the Davy Byrnes short story award, organised by the Stinging Fly in association with Dublin Unesco City of Literature, for her story Solesearcher1.Sara Baume won the Hennessy New Irish Writing Award earlier in 2015 for her short story Dancing, or Beginning to Dance and won the Emerging Fiction Award for the work.

Sara joined us for three UL One Campus One Book events:

• The launch of Spill Simmer Falter Wither on Wednesday 18th November in the Millstream Common Room, UL. At this event, Sara was introduced by Prof Joseph O'Connor, who had been the chosen author for UL One Campus One Book the previous year. Sara read a few sections of her book at the event, and the audience were also offered the opportunity to ask Sara questions about her novel.
• The second event for UL One Campus One Book took place on Wednesday 24th February, also in the Millstream Common Room. At this event, Sara discussed her college life, her writing habits and also how she went about writing her debut novel.
• The final event of UL One Campus One Book 2015/16 consisted of a How I Write, Ireland interview, in which Lawrence Cleary engaged Sara in a public interview about her writing processes and strategies. You can watch this interview with Sara here. 

A full set of resources from this How I Write, Ireland interview is available here.