Roscommon Arts office announces details of two literary awards
The adjudicator for this year’s Roscommon New Writing Award is Mary Branley.
The Arts Office at Roscommon County Council has announced details of this year’s Roscommon New Writing Award and the Roscommon Chapbook Bursary The Roscommon New Writing Award 2024 (for short fiction and poetry) is organised as part of the Arts Office’s Literary Development Programme. This is the twelfth year of what is now an established event in literary calendars. It is funded by Roscommon County Council and the Arts Council of Ireland and supported by the Roscommon Herald.
This year, with the introduction of a poetry category, two winners will each receive a monetary prize of €500 for short fiction or €500 for poetry and will have their winning entries printed in the Roscommon Herald. Two runners-up will receive €100 each for short fiction or for poetry.
The adjudicator for this year’s competition is Mary Branley - a poet, writer and musician based in north Sligo. She is the author of three collections of poetry, most recent A Pinch of Snow in a Black Velvet Glove Lepus Print 2021. Her poetry has been included in many anthologies such as Windharp: Poems of Ireland Since 1916, The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing. She was awarded the Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship in 2008. Closely associated with Kids’ Own Publishing Partnership, a children’s publishing house, Mary has facilitated children’s writing for over twenty-three years and forty-five titles.
She was commissioned to write a libretto on the life of Countess Markievicz, by Ukrainian composer Olesya Zdorovetska, and this work Freedom Letters was performed at The Model as part of Cairde Festival ’23. She has collaborated with GreenBirdFlying since 2021 on poetry/music fusion and performed with them many times. A new CD is forthcoming in July 24 to be launched at Cairde Festival in Sligo.
Winner of the 2023 Award for Short Fiction was Wayne Denniston.
The Roscommon Chapbook Bursary is to the value of €600 and will go towards the cost of publishing what is known in the trade as a ‘chapbook’, i.e. a literary pamphlet. The award is aimed primarily at emerging writers in Roscommon who have not had a book published. The award is for a collection and will be about thirty pages in length, from cover to cover. It will typically contain between fifteen and twenty-five poems or three to six short stories, depending on the length of each story.
The 2024 competition will be adjudicated by Brian Leyden - the author of the bestselling memoir, The Home Place; the story collection, Sweet Old World: New and Selected Stories; and the novels Death & Plenty and Summer of ’63. A regular contributor to Sunday Miscellany, his work for radio includes the documentaries No Meadows in Manhattan; Even the Walls Were Sweatin’; and An Irish Station Mass. He co-wrote the feature film, Black Ice, which was acquired by Netflix. He also scripted The Sheemore Ambush video for the Decade of Centenaries; and the Famine Attic Memorial audio installation for the Workhouse, Carrick-on-Shannon. His work for the stage includes Old Flames and Remember Me which premiered in the Hawk’s Well Theatre, Sligo in May 2023. Writer, Bernard MacLaverty, has described his work as ‘life remembered with precision and love’. His new novel is Love These Days.
The deadline for receipt of applications for each of the award categories is 5 p.m. on May 20th.
Application forms and further information are available at http://www.roscommoncoco.ie/en/services/community/arts-office/literature.html or from SColeman@roscommoncoco.ie.
