Carlow College, St. Patrick’s hosted its twelfth Annual Literary Awards and Creative Writing Showcase in VISUAL on Tuesday 16th April. This annual event gathers together the College literary community for a night to recognise and celebrate the creative writing talent of its students with awards presented for best in prose and poetry writing over the past year. This year’s awards were presented by Donegal poet, Annemarie Ní Churreáin.
Friends and family, staff, students and past graduates of Carlow College, were in attendance for what was an engaging and entertaining evening. The night opened with members of the Third Year Creative Writing class presenting a showcase of their writing. The class gave a series of readings of poems, as they provided a dramatic, moving, and varied showcase of their work.
Speaking at the awards Lecturer in English and Creative Writing, Dr Derek Coyle, commented on ‘how exciting it is to see the next generation of young Irish writers discover their voices. So varied, and with so much to say. The Literary Awards helps provide them with a platform. This event is organized along fully professional lines and gives our students a valuable insight into, and first-hand experience of, how literary competitions work, and what is involved in being active on the literary scene.’
The following Awards were presented in the categories of Poetry and Prose:
Poetry
1st Prize – ‘They Built a ‘Boots’ Upon Our Love’ by Jacob Ray-Halliday
2nd Prize – ‘Whiskey on the Brain’ by Kelsey Motherway
3rd Prize – ‘Scrubbers’ by Stewart Quinn
Prose
1st Prize – ‘Your Train is Coming’ by Megan Byrne
2nd Prize – ‘Closer’ by Shannon O’Doherty
3rd Prize – ‘The Bookkeeper’ – Colin Leonard; and, ‘Sanctuary’ by Mary O’Neill
Following the Awards, Annemarie Ní Churreáin commended the entrants on the high standard of their work and encouraged all participants to keep persevering and working hard at refining and improving their craft. A spellbound audience heard her read a selection of work from across her career, with a focus on her recently published pamphlet, Ghostgirl. Ní Churreáin’s work places women’s experience at the centre, and imaginatively explores what it might have been like to live in one of Ireland’s state run institutions. After a question and answer session, Carlow College, St Patrick’s students with literary ambitions were left with plenty to consider and with the doors of inspiration opened.
Carlow College offers Creative Writing as part of its BA (Hons) in Arts & Humanities and BA (Hons) in English & History degrees, as well as, part-time study options for lifelong learners with the Certificates in Creative Writing – Fiction and Poetry courses.
Full details of the Awards winners and their winning pieces are available at www.carlowcollege.ie/student-literary-awards
