Mexican Literary Magazine looking for Irish Writers

An exciting new opportunity for young Irish writers!
Cuadrivio, a Mexican literary magazine, is putting together a collection of young Irish writers for the next edition and are seeking submissions from Irish writers under 35 years of age.
You can contact the editor, Joaquin at joaguimar@gmail.com and http://cuadrivio.net   for more information.
Best of luck, and let us know how you get on!

National Day of Action

Friday, 17 September


In solidarity with all the other arts organisations concerned that funding for the arts might be regarded as less important than other demands on the public purse, the Writers’ Centre is participating wholeheartedly in this Day of Action. We hold that writers and writing are highly effective contributors to our society and our economy, and that some of the income generated by our sector particularly through cultural tourism should be re-invested in the sector to nurture writing for the future and to cultivate a society of readers.

Our action on the day will be as follows:

At 1.00 pm the Chairman of the Irish Writers’ Centre, Jack Harte, will walk from our premises, 19 Parnell Square, accompanied by a piper to lay a wreath at the Garden of Remembrance in honour and in recognition of all the dead generations of writers who contributed to the creation of our state and the formation of our national identity. As part of this ceremony, Liam Mac Uistin will read his poem that is inscribed on the back wall of the Garden and that encapsulates the spirit of this commemorative shrine.



All present will then return to the Writers’ Centre, where writers and members of the public will read short pieces from the writers we are commemorating. For this purpose we are inviting the public in advance to nominate the writers who should be recognised, to choose a suitable poem or piece of prose that is representative of that writer’s work, and to come along and read it on the day. The obvious writers such as Pearse, Connolly, McDonagh, and Plunkett, will be included but we have already nominations for such people as John McGahern, Benedict Kiely, and Kate O’Brien.



The Invitation: Any of our supporters or members of the public who would like to nominate a writer and be considered for participation in this event should submit their proposals, titled Day of Action, to info@writerscentre.ie

More information can be found at http://www.ncfa.ie/

The living and working conditions of artists in the Republic and North of Ireland.

Arts Council study reveals poor living and working conditions of artists

The average professional artist living in the Republic of Ireland earns just €14,500 a year from his or her art, despite having a higher level of formal education than the wider labour force, new research shows.
The data, published this month by the Arts Council and the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, reveals how many artists are now working on the island, and the challenges they face as they pursue their chosen professions.

In the most comprehensive study for a generation, the two Arts Councils have shed critical new light on what it means to be an artist, writer, painter, musician or performer in modern day Ireland, north and south.
The Living and Working Conditions of Artists in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland shows that artists are an exceptionally highly educated group, with over two-thirds having attained a university degree. They are also hard working, putting in more than 55 hours per week and frequently holding down extra jobs to support their creative endeavours.

In stark contrast to their academic achievements and evident commitment, however, the overwhelming majority of artists still earn just two-thirds of the average income for all others workers. Lack of provision for pensions also spells financial hardship ahead for the current generation of artists.
The findings of the report will influence how the Arts Councils continue to provide support and the measures they take to improve conditions for artists on the island.

Here's the full report.

Irish Wheelchair Association Competition Winners

IWC is delighted to announce the winners of the Irish Wheelchair Association 50th Anniversary Creative Writing Competition.

In first place we have Kevin B. Clancy with his poem, 'Otley's Island', and in joint second place we have, Corina Duyn with her autobiographical piece, 'Edvard Munch meets Louis Armstrong' and Jerry O'Shea with his short story, 'Sheila'.

Michael J Farrell was judge, and he was suitably impressed with the talent shown.

The Irish Writers' Centre wishes to congratulate these three on their fantastic achievements!

What’s the use of a creative writing course?

People write. If they’re good enough, they get published. Then they write more and get more things published. Then they earn lots of money. All this happens smoothly and words flow in a constant stream of inspiration.

Pah! If only the business of writing were that simple!

Human beings are a complicated lot and writers themselves are a scruffy, jumbled bag. They write very different things and in very different ways. One thing holds true though, whether you wop words out on the page quicker than a laser-jet printer, or mull over your masterpiece for decades; it’s a long, tough road and you will probably write alone. You may get lonely and self-doubt could well tag along for the ride.

Creative writing courses are a great way to shake off pesky cling-ons of uncertainty and isolation that can be so severe as to make some writers give up completely. The chance to sit in amongst like-minded people who love to shuffle words around and tell stories, coming with their own ideas and angles, can be an invigorating experience not just for a complete beginner, but just as much for a writer who’s been battling along alone for a good while. And a writer at absolutely any stage can meet an inspirational writer or teacher who highlights something about their writing that they could not themselves see.

Want some hard proof of the brilliant revitalising power a writing course can have? No problem…

Poet Jane Clarke took part in a poetry course at the IWC back in 2007 led by Catherine Phil MacCarthy. She sowed the seeds of a poem there, The Lighthouse Keeper, drawing on Catherine’s encouragement to explore persona and to absorb herself completely in someone else’s life

Jane finished the course and abandoned the poem, thinking it was not really working and that she would return to it later. It didn’t happen. That is until, three years later, Jane found herself in another poetry course at the Centre, this time led by Paula Meehan, whose focus was very different; breath, rhythm and line. Inspired once more, Jane rustled through her papers at home, pulled out that poem and reworked it from a new angle. She then submitted it to an international poetry competition, the iYeats Poetry Contest, and won first prize.

Jane, a member of the Airfield Writers’ Group, has been writing for a long time and has had many poems published, but she has no doubt that putting yourself into different, creative experiences can take you in exciting writing directions. So as well as a chance to learn new things, a creative writing course could be just as useful in giving you an external stimulus; to put it another way, a blooming good kick up the typewriter!

Congratulations to Jane on her win and we look forward to seeing more of her work published in the future.

Design our new logo

The Irish Writers’ Centre is rebranding and to celebrate the rejuvenation of the Centre they are inviting interested parties to create a new logo for the organisation this summer.

The aim is to portray the sense of community amongst the Prose writers, Poets and Playwrights of Ireland. The winning design will be selected for its innovation and understanding of the concept of the Irish Writers’ Centre. The Centre encourages aspiring and established designers to partake. The logo will be chosen by a panel of judges made up of board and staff members of the Irish Writers’ Centre.

Submissions should be sent to info@writerscentre.ie
Closing date: 20th August 2010

For more details visit http://www.writerscentre.ie/html/logodesign.html

Dalkey Book Festival

You may still be recovering from your Bloomsday hangovers, but it's worth continuing your literary odyssey, and taking the train out to Dalkey for the first annual Dalkey Book Festival, which starts today. It may be Dublin's newest literary festival, but it's certainly got an impressive line-up, the sheer diversity and innovation of some of the events is pretty impressive. I've been poring over the programme for the last two weeks, and I've compiled a wish list of my fantasy weekend at Dalkey Book Festival. Here it is:

Friday 18th June.

6pm. See The Happy Prince in the Town Hall. Yes, it's aimed primarily at children, but you can never have enough Oscar Wilde and Michael James Ford's adaptation of the story has had fantastic reviews.

Saturday 19th June.

10am. Guided Joycean Walk. Bloomsday may have been on Wednesday, but you can never have enough Joyce. Starting the festival early will also give you the moral highground over the latecomers who show up in the afternoon. Appearing at the heritage centre at 10am shows that you mean business. And it's free.

12pm. Decorate a Cupcake Competition at Select Stores. Select Stores is the mecca of organic foodmarkets. It's almost worth making a pilgrimage out to Dalkey just to visit it... so the prospect of being able to ice cupcakes in such a lovely shop is absolutely irresistable.

1pm. Writing about Art. Bruce Arnold, critic extraordinaire, will be giving a talk about writing on the arts in the Tramyard Gallery. I've tried to write about art repeatedly, and trust me, it's much harder than you might think. Pick up some tips from an expert and enjoy the fabulous art that is displayed in the gallery (including my mother's paintings!!).

2.30pm. Children's Puppet Show. Need I say more?

3pm. At this point, I know that problems will arise due to the fact that two brilliant authors are due to speak at the same time. Marita Conlon-McKenna, who wrote Under the Hawthorn Tree will be doing children's story-telling at the same time that Joseph O'Connor will be reading from his new novel, Ghost Light. I'm torn between the two of them.

6pm After all this literary diversion, a little relaxation might be in order. Luckily, The Irish Times Favourite Wines event is at On The Grapevine, and guess what, it's free. Make the most of the wine tasting, because the evening won't stop here...

10pm. Oh yes, the fun continues, as you're going to be PARTYING WITH ROSS O'CARROLL KELLY! Paul Howard will be doing a reading at The Queens followed by Rosser himself spinning the decks. Fun times.

11.40pm. The partying should be well underway by now, but it's time to get out of the pub and on to the most exciting event of the entire festival. Make your way down to St Begnet's Graveyard (yes, I'm serious) for Midnight Poe, and see Bewley's Cafe Theatre's acclaimed Poe Show in the most eerie setting ever.

Sunday 20th June

11.30am. Make sure you get up in time to catch the wonderful Maeve Binchy, who'll be giving a free talk in Finnegans. Don't miss it, no matter what happened after the Midnight Poe last night.

2.30pm. Ferdia McAnna and Lia Mills will be giving some advice on how to write memoirs. If the weekend has gone according to plan so far, this workshop might come in useful.

6pm. Finish off the weekend with the Midsummer's Night Barbeque at the Fitzpatrick Castle Hotel. There'll be Prosecco on the lawn with barbeque and music, to round off the festival in a suitably summery way.

Check out the festival programme for the complete listings - there were lots of brilliant things that I didn't mention, this being one of the most unashamedly subjective posts ever to taint the archives of the Writers' Centre blog.

Beginnning the Novel

While Ali was having fun at the Bloomsday Festival talk at the Dublin Writers' Museum yesterday, I was taking part in one of the weekend courses at the centre: Beginning the Novel, which was taught by Catherine Dunne. I've been toying with the idea of writing a novel for an embarrassingly long time, so the opportunity to take a course on the subject was too tempting to resist. The course was very well structured, and as it was a small class, there was plenty of opportunity for each person to receive a lot of feedback on their writing. Some of the exercises were a little daunting - attempting to sum up the plot of an as-yet unwritten novel in five sentences is not exactly the easiest thing in the world - but we certainly got a lot of feedback from Catherine, and she provided some genuinely great advice on how to improve what we had already written. A lot of information was packed into a short space of time - it was a very intensive couple of days - and if you're thinking about taking one of these courses in the autumn, I'd highly recommend it.

Bloomsday has kicked off!

It's Day Two of the Bloomsday Festival and we managed to sneak in a quick lunch time lecture on sex and music in James Joyce's Ulysses. The event entitled 'shall i wear a red yes' was taking place next door at the Dublin Writer's Museum.

The great Dublin actor and Joyce enthusiast Barry McGovern greeted a packed room of 50 odd people and enthralled us with a spirited reading complete with musical interludes.

We look forward to attending other events before the festival wraps up. We will definitely attend David Norris's one-man Joycean show 'Do you see what I'm hearing'. We might even make a trip to Sweny's Chemist to gawk at the people dressed in character and purchase a bar of delightfully fragrant lemon soap.

Maurice Harmon: When Love is Not Enough

We're really looking forward to the launch of Maurice Harmon's new collection of poetry, When Love is Not Enough, published by Salmon Poetry. The launch is being hosted in association with Poetry Ireland and takes place in the Unitarian Church in St Stephen's Green, on Tuesday 15th June at 6.30pm. The following day sees a further celebration of Maurice Harmon's work, this time in the Kevin Barry Room of the National Concert Hall. The composer, Derek Bell, has written Of Caílte's Time, a suite for Irish harp inspired by one of Harmon's recent works, to celebrate the poet's eightieth birthday. For more information on both events, visit Poetry Ireland's website.

Halo Life Book Launch

Pop down to the Irish Writers' Centre tomorrow, June 8th at 6.30pm for the launch of Jane Ovbude's Halo Life, a collection of uplifting essays, poetry, romance and thoughts concentrated on the idea of diversity. If the frankly disgusting weather is making the idea of trekking all the way to Parnell Square a bit off-putting, be warned: we're closing for the month of July, so if you want to come to one of our delightful book launches, your time is running out!

May Lonely Voice!

Last week the Irish Writers’ Centre was treated to shaggy dog stories, sadistic narrators, stirring statues and ladies tangled up in webs as the winners of this month’s Lonely Voice Short Story competition gathered to read aloud their various tales. As always we were delighted to see a wide range of styles and a diverse array of topics to tickle our fancy.



Micheal O’Loughlin (author of a short story collection and several poetry collections) selected this month’s winning entries and was on hand to give a few words about this month’s winning entrants. He praised the winners for their attention to style and form and for eschewing the typical route of Irish writers to focus on very detailed, very realistic content.


We were delighted to see a range of ages and backgrounds amongst our writers this month. One of the main aims of this competition has always been to provide a platform for writers at all stages of their careers and with all approaches to their craft so it was really rewarding to see the beginnings of new literary generation coming together.


Particularly gratifying was the large audience that showed up to support the event. It was great to see such a turn-out for emerging writers and even better to see how much they enjoyed the night. From the first word spoken, the audience were on the edge of their seats.


We want to extend big congratulations to all those who took part this month: David Cahill, Pat O ‘Connor, Elizabeth Reapy and Cathy Sweeney. We wish them all the best and hope to have them back again soon.

For our part, all here at the Irish Writers' Centre are looking forward to the next Lonely Voice. The submission deadline for our September event is Friday 27th so get writing!


To read more about the Lonely Voice, visit our main website http://www.writerscentre.ie







.

Dedalus Press Book Launch

Tonight sees a double book launch at the Centre, showcasing two new collections of poetry published by the Dedalus Press: Afterlife by Padraig J. Daly, and Drifting Under the Moon by Ger Reidy. Check out the Dedalus Press's excellent website for more information - it's well worth a visit - they even have an audio recording of Padraig Daly reading two of his poems, to get you into the spirit for tonight's event!

The Lonely Voice: May shortlist announced!

Congratulations to this months winners of the Lonely Voice Short Story competition!

Cathy Sweeney - The Web
Cathy Sweeney lives in Bray. In 2008 she was a runner up in the Sean O'Faolain Short Story Competition. In July 2009 she read at the Writers’ Centre as part of the Stinging Fly’s new writers’ season and in October 2009 she won the someblindalleys short story competition.
David Cahill - Until Tomorrow
David Cahill recently received his diploma in Journalism from Dublin Business School and is now studying English at University College Dublin. He is twenty one years old and lives in Swords, Co. Dublin
Pat O'Connor - Don't Start Reading This Story Unless You Are Sitting Down
Pat O'Connor lives near Limerick with his wife and children and has been writing for many years.
Elizabeth Reapey - Moving Statues
E.M. Reapy is a 25-year-old writer from Claremorris. She has recently completed an M.A. in Creative Writing from Queen’s University Belfast. Her work has been featured in La Bouche Magazine, Flash International and several local publications. In 2009, she was shortlisted for Over the Edge New Writer of the Year Award and she is the founder and current editor of wordlegs online magazine.

The readings will kick off at 7pm on Thursday 27th of May, refreshments will be provided and all are welcome!

The Atlantis Collective Launch Second Short Story Collection

The Atlantis Collective Launch Second Short Story Collection

The Atlantis Collective launch 'Faceless Monsters' at The Irish Writers' Centre on Friday May 21st. The short story collection contains new work from the eight members of the group who have been meeting on a weekly basis in the Galway Arts Centre for the past two years. This is the second book by the group. Last year's debut 'Town of Fiction' was described by Des Kenny as ‘an important collection’ containing 'gems of stories'.

Though the individual styles of the writers may vary, when it comes to the quality of the work they have plenty in common, according to contributing editor Nuala Ní Chonchúir. ‘Each writer draws from a separate well – there are the humorists and the dark-lovers, the long-short writers and the flash aficionados – but they are all clearly dedicated to achieving excellence in their art.’

The launch of ‘Faceless Monsters’ takes place in The Irish Writers' Centre, Parnell Square, Dublin 1, at 7pm. There will be refreshments and readings. Copies of the book will be available on the night and also through the Atlantis Collective website, www.atlantiscollective.com

The Atlantis Collective are Colm Brady, Alan Caden, Dara Ó’ Foghlú, Aideen Henry, Trish Holmes, Paul McMahon, Conor Montague, and Máire T. Robinson. 
 

Write for Your Life talks to the Irish Writers' Centre

So everyone. The Writers' Centre has delved into the mysterious world of the Podcast.

A little while ago, I had the pleasure of chatting to Iain Broome who runs a great website for writers in the UK called Write for Your Life, about the frolicking funding fiasco in the Irish Arts and literature in particular.

If you can cope with the fact that I used the word "basically" and the expression "you know" about a million times, much to my embarrassment, you may find the interview of interest. The Writers' Centre's bit comes in after 20 mins as the first bit of the podcast is an interview with Manuela Boyle, a writer and founder of a spoken word night in Sheffield.

A small footnote: I noticed that I said The Irish Writers' Centre had its funding pulled in 1998 rather than 2008 at one point. Whoopsie! You all know the story anyway...

Write for Your Life Podcast

On navigating yourself through the Slush Pile: Publishing Day at the Irish Writers' Centre

Exactly how many pages of your story will an editor actually bother reading? Would an extraordinary cover-letter ever better your chances of getting noticed by a publisher or an agent? And if you do ever get accepted by one of them, once you’ve finished doing an elaborate victory dance and telling everyone you’ve ever met, how much writing will you have time for what with online publicity, blogging, tweeting, networking and touring yourself?

These were all questions put to the expert panel of publishing industry professionals at our Publishing Day last Saturday 8th May. In an intimate setting, each speaker presented key points on their area of speciality, from representing authors to discovering authors to trawling the earth for stories worth writing, then opened themselves up for the bit everyone had come along for; the chance to quiz them with their burning questions on the ins and outs of the publishing process.

Ciara Considine, commissioning editor at Hachette Books and afterwards literary agent Jonathan Williams started things off with the hard-edged bottom line of it all. Synopses more often than not, turn out to be over-wrought snooze-fests that struggle to do justice to an actual text. With piles and piles of texts for them to get through, you’d better just have a jaw-dropping opening and stick it to them in the first few pages or you might as well forget it.

They told anecdotes which we all scoffed at out loud but there were no doubt more than a few red cheeks about! For example, a lot of people send texts with cover letters and CVs which include everything from their children’s names to the grades they got at school 40 years ago. The message from both of them was clear; just write something amazing and research which agents or publishers are most likely to be as excited by it as you are. Whatever you do, don’t just start at A in the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook and work you way through!

They were followed by digital publishing expert Eoin Purcell and literary publicist Cormac Kinsella who talked about how to use digital media to prolong your writing career and what kind of publicity is involved in a finished book respectively. One of the audience confessed to me that Eoin’s bit on digital publishing was the bit she was least looking forward to but that it had been the most eye-opening and interesting of all in terms of the tools it had given her to push herself forward in the clamouring crowd of would-be writers.

Some useful tips? Experiment with making snippets or whole bits of your texts available online. There are some excellent sites (e.g. smashwords and kindle) where you can set up a pay-to-view system for your work that bypasses agents and publishers completely. In some cases, the customer themselves can suggest how much or how little they’d like to pay to read something you’ve written. In short, there are more and more options for getting yourself read in this day and age and if you don’t explore them, the chances you’ll succeed are pretty slim.

We brought our final speaker in to clear the house out quickly at the end of the day. At least that’s what he suspected! In reality, everyone could have sat there into the small wee hours listening to prolific writer Dermot Bolger’s tales of the farcical life of a writer. His hilarious presentation, which not once followed his notes but was more a glorious oral short-story collection spanning his life pre-writing with all the characters he met back then, to now and his life hobnobbing with other writers, achieved something special; it got everyone pumped up and ready to go with pen in hand to set the world alight with their writing.

And so we all went home to write.

The Not-So Lonely Voices of April

Left to right: Orla Price, Jan Carson, Molly McCloskey, Anne Harris and Susan Lanigan

Bouncing burlesque sex-scenes, two-headed people, burning butterfly houses... it can only be The Lonely Voice! Last night, the Irish Writers' Centre was home to all the above as this month's winning short story writers read from their differing yet all highly entertaining stories, selected by this month's guest judge Molly McCloskey (author of two short story collections, a novel and a soon to be published non-fiction book).

Molly was on hand to explain why exactly it was she picked the four stories on subjects as diverse as book club sex-scandals, imaginary operations to remove superfluous heads and using the funerals of strangers to cope with your own personal loss. In particular, Molly drew attention to the power of the opening line, when a writer has so little word count to play with, and she praised this month's winners for their grabbing starts.

Of this month's winners, all happened to be of the female variety yet each writer came with a different bag of experience and very different writing styles. Two came down from the North to attend the reading and all of the writers revelled in the chance to meet others ploughing away at the craft of the short story and to share experiences and ideas.

I definitely heard a lot of laughing from the audience and I imagine they were inwardly "aaww-ing" at all the touching moments in the stories and at the quality of the writing and so I can only glean from all this, that a good time was had by all. Having organised the thing, I am of course completely biased. I should also note that the MC'ing (also me) was of the utmost quality and good taste.

Big congratulations to the winners who shared in April's experience with us; Susan Lanigan, Anne Harris, Orla Price and Jan Carson. We wish them well in their future writing endeavours.

For us here at the Irish Writers' Centre, it's onwards to the May Lonely Voice (May 27th). Submission deadline is tomorrow so get writing and don't forget to knock us out with the opening line!

To read more about the Lonely Voice, visit our main website http://www.writerscentre.ie/.

May Lonely Voice Short Story Competition!

LONELY VOICE STILL ACCEPTING SUBMISSIONS!

If you missed your chance to submit for the April Lonely Voice short story competition don't fret! The Irish Writers' Centre is still taking in stories until this Friday 30th April for the May event. Up to four short story writers will be selected and invited to read their work at the Centre on Thursday 27th May.


Please send the short story you would like to read (max 3,000 words and limited to one entry per person per month) and a short bio to: thelonelyvoice@gmail.com. Please attach bios and stories seperately and make sure they are in .doc format. Your name should not appear on the story.

Please note: The Lonely Voice May Event will be the last Lonely Voice competition before the summer break in June. The competition will restart in September.

Oh and don't forgot the winners of the April event will take place on Wednesday 28th April and is free, so come along to hear the very best of this month's submissions!

National Poetry Competition Open for Entries      



 Now in its 33rd year, the Poetry Society’s National Poetry Competition is one of the world’s biggest and most prestigious poetry competitions. Winners include both established and emerging poets and for many the prize has proved an important milestone in their professional careers. Add your name to a roll-call of winners that includes Carol Ann Duffy, Ian Duhig, Philip Gross, and Jo Shapcott – and have your work published in the Poetry Society’s leading international journal, Poetry Review.
 
The judges this year are poets George Szirtes, Deryn Rees-Jones and Sinéad Morrissey. The prizes are: £5,000 for the overall winner, £2,000 for the second, £1,000 for the third and seven commendations of £100.
 
The deadline is 31 October.
Enter online or download an entry form at http://www.poetrysociety.org.uk/