For almost fifty years, the Listowel Writers’ Week has brought writers and readers from Ireland and beyond to the beautiful town of Listowel. It runs a mixture of talks, workshops and entertainment, as it has grown to include different areas of the arts in Ireland. For the entire festival, the town is taken over by the arts and it is to the benefit of the visitors and the town as the home of John B. Keane celebrates the best of Ireland.
A large part of the festival and the build up to it, is a growing list of competitions, for both established and new writers to enter. The competitions are as follows
-The Bran MacMahon Short Story Award.
-Single Poem Award.
-Poetry Collection Award.
-Pigott Poetry Prize
-Eamon Keane Full Length Play Award.
-Novel of the year
-Duais Foras Na Gaeilge.
-Listowel Writers’ Week Original Humorous Essay Award.
-Creative Writing for adults with special needs
-Creative Writing for special educational needs and under
-Local Heritage Writing
-Young Journalist Award
Each competition has its own prize and they are very prestigious to win. The competition winners will also take their place in an annual print anthology, which is launched as a core element of the festival. During this launch, the winners read their work in front of a captive audience. Since the competitions focus on different ages and backgrounds, the launch continues this trend which adds to the sense of community and makes it much more unique and interesting than a standard launch. We at Lettertec / selfpublishbooks congratulate all the winners and participants with their great achievement.
This year, we were delighted to sponsor the anthology. As part of this sponsorship we designed the cover, the inside and then printed them. A beautiful image of Listowel was chosen for the cover that wraps around to the spine and the back. We were very proud to do this for what is a prestigious anthology. Our sponsorship means that all sales of the anthology goes straight back to the festival, helping it to continue to educate, expand and grow into the future. Anyone that has attended the festival will agree that that is a very good thing.
The anthology promotes not only the competitions, but Listowel Writers’ Week, Listowel town and all the writers’ that are featured in it. Putting a print edition of the anthology together isn’t easy, so the committee of the Listowel Writers’ Week should be commended for continuing to pursue this option. In particular, the editor Jeremy Murphy deserves extra phrase for continually pushing and promoting the anthology.
Any writer that is considering to enter the competitions next year should buy a copy of the anthology to see the high standard that they will be up against. They will also be in for a treat due to the high quality of winning entries.
Blurb
Writers’ Week Winners’ Anthology 2019 compiles all the winning entries from our most recent competitions. What makes our anthology so unique is its sheer diversity. The writers who win our unique competitions are accomplished, challenging, thought provoking and brilliant. But they also cross boundaries, break moulds, are daring and innovative, and are not afraid of risk.
The result: a wonderful patchwork quilt of literary talent. Within these pages, we have seasoned wordsmiths, but we also have new voices. Essays, stories, poems, plays, the innovative and the traditional, the realistic and the fantastical – our anthology is a stunning array of different genres and forms.
The anthology is, first and foremost, about the writers, we want to give them an opportunity to tell the world who they are. But it is also for the readers, so read, reflect, wonder, discuss, and most importantly, enjoy. Enjoy and keep reading!
Where to buy
The book is available to buy from the following outlets
Woulfe’s Bookshop Listowel
Kerry Writers’ Museum
Eason Listowel
Garveys Supervalu Listowel
