Author Keith Ridgeway has won the 26th annual Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. He was presented with the £6,000 prize by Dr Daniel Rooney and his wife, Patricia, at a ceremony in Dublin last night.
Mr Ridgeway's first novel, The Long Falling, was first published in 1998 both in Europe and in the US, where it was nominated in 1999 for a Lambda Literary Award. It has since been translated into Spanish, Dutch and French.
Dr Rooney is vice-president of the Ireland Fund in the US.