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Please send your poems, stories and reviews to the editor, who is currently looking for new material.
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Submit your poetry, fiction, reviews, non-fiction to Virtual Writer...The editor is seeking poems up to 40 lines, and fiction, non fiction and reviews up to 2,500 words. |
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| Would you like to join a local writers group? We have a list of groups currently meeting in the Longford area.
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Irish Book Awards Shortlist Announced
Anne Enright, Joe O'Connor, Roddy Doyle, Julia Kelly, Diarmaid Ferriter and Frank McCourt are among the authors who have been shortlisted for the upcoming Irish Book Awards.
The awards, which are now in their third year, feature nine categories and are the only industry wide event of their kind in the Irish book sector.
'The Gathering' by Anne Enright; 'Zugzwang' by Ronan Bennett; 'Redemption Falls' by Joe O'Connor; and 'The Silver Swan' by Benjamin Black are all in the running for Irish Novel of the Year.
Julia Kelly is nominated in the Irish Newcomer of the Year category for her novel 'With My Lazy Eye', which is up against 'In the Woods' by Tana French; 'There Are Little Kingdoms' by Kevin Barry; and 'Secret Diary of a Demented House Wife' by Niamh Greene.
Diarmaid Ferriter's 'Judging Dev' is nominated in three categories, including Non-Fiction Book of the Year; while Roddy Doyle's 'Wilderness' and Frank McCourt's 'Angela and the Baby Jesus' are up for awards in the children's category.
A gala ceremony to announce the winners will take place in The Round Room at the Mansion House in Dublin on 24 April.
A Lifetime Achievement award in Irish Literature will also be handed out on the night.
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Read Diane Greco's introduction to hypertext.
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Welcome to the The Virtual Writer, a site for creative writing, literary news and reviews.
When I sit down at my writing desk, time seems to vanish. I think it's a wonderful way to spend one's life.
Erica Jong
When I'm writing, I know I'm doing the thing I was born to do.
Anne Sexton
When once the itch of literature comes over a man, nothing can sure it but the scratching of a pen.
Samuel Lover
When your writing is filled with detail, it has a lot more impact.
Ivan Levison
Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.
Rudyard Kipling
A word is a bud attempting to become a twig. How can one not dream while writing? It is the pen which dreams. The blank page gives the right to dream.
Gaston Bachelard
All the fun is in how you say a thing.
Robert Frost
All words are pegs to hang ideas on.
Henry Ward Beecher
Asking a writer what he thinks about criticism is like asking a lamppost what it feels about dogs.
John Osborne
Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for.
Socrates
Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them.
Flannery O'Connor
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Pat Boran wins Major Award
Dedalus Press poet and publisher Pat Boran has been announced as the recipient of the 2008 O Shaughnessy Award for Poetry, presented by the University of St. Thomas Center for Irish Studies, St. Paul, Minnesota.
The $5,000 O Shaughnessy Award for Poetry, established in 1997, honors Irish poets. The award is named for Lawrence O Shaughnessy, who taught English at St. Thomas from 1948 to 1950, formerly served on the university board of trustees and has recently retired as head of the I.A. O Shaughnessy Foundation.
Pat Boran was born in Portlaoise, Ireland in 1963 and currently lives in Dublin, where he has been Writer-in-Residence with Dublin City Libraries, Dublin Corporation and Dublin City University. Until recently program director of the Dublin Writers Festival, in 2005 he became director of the Dedalus Press. He has published four full-length collections of poetry, the first of which, The Unwound Clock, won the 1989 Patrick Kavanagh Award for an outstanding first book. It was followed by Familiar Things (1993), The Shape of Water (1996) and, in 2001, As the Hand, the Glove, all published by the Dedalus Press. He is also the author of a book of short fiction for children, All the Way from China (Poolbeg Press, 1998) and two nonfiction works, The Portable Creative Writing Workshop (revised edition, New Island, 2005) and A Short History of Dublin (Marino/Mercier Press, 2000). Boran also regularly reviews for Irish newspapers and literary journals. In 2005, Salt Publishing in the UK published his New and Selected Poems, reissued last year by Dedalus.
Boran writes frequently about his childhood in a quiet Irish town and of the suggestion of mystery that can be found in daily routine. Dennis O’Driscoll, a past winner of the O Shaughnessy award, says of Boran that he is “a spirited celebrator of the local and the known.”
Previous winners of the O Shaughnessy Award are Eavan Boland, John F. Deane, Peter Sirr, Louis de Paor, Moya Cannon, Frank Orsmby, Thomas McCarthy, Michael Coady, Kerry Hardie, Dennis O’Driscoll and Seán Lysaght.
Virtual Writer would like to congratulate Pat on this prestigious win, which underlines his significance as a poet of international stature. He has been closely associated with Longford over the past two years, facilitating workshops at the National Writers Group Festival and also collaborating with the Longford Arts Office on the production of their creative writing DVD, "The Awakened Life". For details of his next DVD, which features a creative writing workshop, watch this space.
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