Ireland has announced that Man Booker prize-winning novelist Anne Enright will serve as its first fiction laureate, a post that is the first of its kind.

Enright, who has written five novels, including The Gathering, about a family after a brother’s suicide, many short stories, and a book of essays, was chosen by a panel of six Irish Arts Council judges from a pool of thirty-four candidates, including Emma Donoghue, Roddy Doyle, Eimear McBride, and others, after several bookstores, libraries, arts organizations, book clubs, and individual writers submitted a total of 119 nominations. The choice of Enright, however, was “unanimous,” wrote Blake Morrison, one of the Arts Council judges, in The Guardian.

“As our chair, Paul Muldoon, put it,” he continued, “Anne Enright’s fiction has helped the Irish make sense of their lives for the past quarter century—and helped the rest of the world understand Ireland.”

Enright will receive a total of €150,000 over the three year period, teach at University College of Dublin and New York University, deliver lectures and participate in public events, and ultimately be the “face” of Irish fiction while continuing her work as a creative artist.