Davy Byrne's Irish Writing Award

Quick post, before I settle down for the remainder of the evening...

So, I nipped up to Dublin today for the announcement of the Davy Byrnes short story award, hosted ever so graciously in and by Davy Byrnes. Six fantastic writers were shortlisted , and earlier this evening, after three lovely speeches, Claire Keegan was awarded the prize for her story Foster.

Richard Ford, who judged the competition from the longlist of 30 stories (drawn from over 800 entries), gave the following citation on Claire's story:

A child’s rapt and eloquent vision of life-in-tumult between two families. In lifting a homely rural life to our moral notice, the story exhibits a patient attention to life’s vast consequence and finality, and does so through a lavish, discriminating appetite for language and its profound capacity to return us to life renewed.

So, well done to all the shortlisted, and to Claire for her winning story. I've read one of the stories so far - Kathleen Murray's Storm Glass, which is closely-woven and haunting and just plain fab. So, super-special congratulations to Kathleen for both the story and the short-listing - superb job!! The plan is that Stinging Fly will bring out an anthology featuring the shortlisted and winning stories this summer; one to look forward to :-) And well done to Declan Meade (editor of Stinging Fly) for spearheading, managing, and delivering the whole competition from beginning to end. An epic task. I suspect he's deserving of a significant break right about now...

As you can imagine, there was toasting galore this evening, and catching up with friends old and new. And bizarrely, the village of Baltimore was the subject of much conversation (Bushe's Bar, Glenans, Chez Youen, yadda yadda...)

Tomorrow will be another travel-heavy day - just saying this up front, in case the next entry is a smidge bleary, or non-existent, or features misspellings...