Don’t miss your opportunity to enter this year’s Allingham Festival Poetry and Flash Fiction competitions! The deadline is this Friday, September 21st, at midnight.
This year’s judges of the poetry competition are Jessica Traynor and Theo Dorgan, with Una Mannion and Paul Mc Veigh judging the Flash Fiction competition.
Jessica Traynor is well known to Allingham Festival-goers as she delivered the very memorable Allingham Lecture a few years ago, drawing links between Yeats and Allingham. A prize-winning poet, Jessica runs workshops in the Irish Writer’s Centre, has worked as Literary Manager for the Abbey Theatre, and contributes regularly to RTÉ radio. Jessica will host the Wild Atlantic Writers session on Friday at the Allingham Festival.
Theo Dorgan is no stranger to the Allingham Festival either, having delivered an fascinating lecture on art and poetry in the Abbey Arts Centre several years ago. Well-known as a writer, poet, lecturer and broadcaster, Theo’s work has earned him many awards over the years. Theo is also a member of Aosdána.
Una Mannion teaches the BA in Performing Arts and is the Chair of the new BA in Writing and Literature Degree at Sligo IT. She has won several awards for her work, including prizes from the Allingham Festival and the 017 Hennessy New Irish Writing Prize for the poem ‘Crouched Burial’. Una will run writing workshops for Leaving Cert students at this year’s festival.
Paul Mc Veigh’s first novel The Good Son won The Polari Prize and The McCrea Literary Award, and was shortlisted for several other awards. He has taught creative writing and judged many international literary competitions. Paul co-founded the London Short Story Festival, of which, he was Director and Curator for 2014 & ’15. He is associate director at Word Factory, the UK’s national organisation for excellence in the short story. Paul will also host a workshop for writers on Saturday morning at the Allingham Festival.