2022 is shaping up to be a vintage year; stay tuned for more details in the weeks to come. In the meantime, be warned that "Bird on the Wire" tickets are selling fast. Get them while you can.
Hot on the heels of her nomination for the Booker prize, Claire Keegan is back in the “cultural competition” news. This time for the Oscars!
The wonderful movie, An Cailín Ciúin, based on her book, Foster, has been selected by the Irish Film and Television Academy (IFTA) as Ireland’s entry for the 95th Academy Awards in the Best International Feature Film category.
We are delighted to announce that those who come to see Claire during the Allingham Arts Festival will have the opportunity to see this amazing film the following week when it is screened by our friends in the Ballyshannon Film Club on 9th Nov.
We are proud and delighted to announce that Claire Keegan will appear at the 2022 festival. Claire's novel, Small Things Like These has recently been named on the long list for this year’s Booker Prize. At 116 pages, it is the shortest book recognised in the prize’s history. It has already won the Prix Littéraire des Ambassadeurs en Irlande, The Kerry Prize for best Irish novel and The Orwell Prize for Political Fiction.
Claire was raised on a farm in Wicklow. Her works of fiction are translated into thirty languages. Antarctica won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature and was a Los Angeles Times Book of the Year. Walk the Blue Fields won the Edge Hill Prize for the finest collection of stories published in the British Isles.
Foster won the Davy Byrnes Award — then the world’s richest prize for a story — and was recently named by The Times UK as one of the top 50 works of fiction to be published in the 21st Century. Her stories have been published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Granta, and Best American Stories.
Her appearance is set to be a literary highlight for this year's festival.
Prize-winning poet Kate Ennals will judge the entries in our 2022 Poetry Competition. Kate is the author of three collections of poetry: At The Edge, Threads and Elsewhere. Winner of the Westport Arts Festival Poetry Competition in 2017, Kate’s work has been published in literary and on-line journals including Crannog, The International Lakeview Journal, Boyne Berries and many more. A well-known leader of poetry and writing workshops, she organises At The Edge - Cavan, a series of literary readings funded by the Cavan Arts Office.
Before earning an MA in Writing at NUI Galway in 2012, Kate worked in UK local government and the Irish community sector. She is currently a Board Member of PEN na hÉireann / PEN Ireland. She has lived in Ireland for nearly 30 years. Her blog can be found at kateennals.com.
The Awards Ceremony for the winning entries in the Allingham Poetry and Flash Fiction competitions will be webcast during the 2022 Allingham Festival, Nov 2-6. The Poetry Competition is open through 16 September 2022. Guidelines and entry forms are now available.
Acclaimed novelist and short-story writer Mia Gallagher will judge the entries in the 2022 Allingham Flash Fiction Competition. The Competition is currently open for entries through 16 September – see rules and entry forms
Mia Gallagher is the author of two novels: HellFire (Penguin, 2006) and Beautiful Pictures of the Lost Homeland (New Island, 2016). Her first short-story collection, Shift, was published in 2018.
Her award-winning short fiction has been published widely in Ireland and abroad. She is a contributing editor to The Stinging Fly, and has enjoyed the role of writer-in-residence in many environments. Her reviews, articles and essays have been published in the Irish Times, The Guardian, the Sunday Independent, The Stinging Fly, Architecture Ireland, Circa, and Books Ireland.
The Awards Ceremony for the winning entries in the Poetry and Flash Fiction competitions will be webcast during the 2022 Allingham Festival, Nov 2-6.