Thursday, September 30, 2010

2010 Over The Edge New Writer of The Year: THE RESULTS

The winners of this year's Over The Edge New Writer of The Year competition were announced by competition judge James Martyn at the September Over The Edge: Open Reading this evening in Galway City Library.

PRIZES GO TO NICOLA GRIFFIN & SEAMUS SCANLON

Nicola Griffin won the poetry section with her poem ‘Pandora’s Well’. She will receive €300 in prize money and Salmon Poetry will read without prejudice a manuscript of her poetry.

Nicola Griffin pictured centre
Nicola Griffin grew up in Cheshire in the North West of England and studied Psychology and Sociology at the University of Keele in Staffordshire. She has lived in East Clare since 1997. She writes poetry, non-fiction and fiction, is a graduate of the MA in Writing at NUIG and a participant in the Advanced Poetry Workshop at Galway Arts Centre. She has a regular column in Inland Waterways News and her poetry has recently been published in Ropes Unravelled, The Sunday Tribune, The Stinging Fly, Behind The Masks and Crannóg.

Seamus Scanlon won the fiction section with his story ‘The Butterfly Love Song’. Seamus is also the 2010 Over The Edge New Writer of The Year. He will receive €700 in prize money and will be a Featured Reader at an Over The Edge: Open Reading in the next few months.


Seamus Scanlon, 2010 Over The Edge New Writer of The Year
Seamus Scanlon is originally from Galway but has lived in New York City for the past few years, where he has been a student of creative writing at City College New York. Seamus was short-listed for the 2009 Hennessy New Irish Writing Award and his work has appeared in Global City Review, Promethean and the Journal of Experimental Fiction. He has read his work at The Cell Theater, the Mysterious Bookshop, McNally Robinson Bookshop, St. Patrick's Day Literary Brunch, the Ulysses Bar and the Over The Edge open-mic.

The following fiction writers were highly commended by competition judge James Martyn:
Niamh Mulvey for her story ‘Swansong’
Kevin Doyle for his story ‘Those Days He Was Here’
Suzanne Walsh for her story ‘The Best Job’
Evelyn Parsons for her story ‘Mr. Right’.

The following poets were highly commended:
Marie Cadden for her poem ‘Seduced’
Tom Lavelle for his poems ‘One-To-One’, ‘Citeog’ and ‘Beds’
Angela Carr for her poems ‘Brink’, ‘After The Storm’ and ‘Once I Was A Tree’
Maresa Sheehan for her poems You’re your Greens’, ‘Parsnips and Cats’, and ‘A Strawberry of a man’
James O’Toole for his poem ‘Template For The Future’.

Over The Edge would like to thanks our competition sponsors, Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop and Michael D. Higgins TD, our competition judge James Martyn and all the writers who entered this year’s competition.

The competition short-list can be read here
http://overtheedgeliteraryevents.blogspot.com/2010/08/short-list-announced-for-2010-over-edge.html

The long-list can be read here
http://overtheedgeliteraryevents.blogspot.com/2010/08/2010-over-edge-new-writer-of-year-long_18.html