Nominees for the Hennessy Literary Awards 2016

THE NOMINEES 

Emerging Poetry

Liz Quirke For Nurture and Juno

“The poems reach back to before my daughter Juno was born and the doubts, fears and feelings I tried to process as a nonbiological parent,” says Quirke, who is originally from Tralee, Co Kerry, but now lives in Spiddal, Co Galway, with her wife and daughter. Quirke won the 2015 Poems for Patience Competition and is working on her first collection.

Alan Weadick For Hunger’s Mother and Neglect

“These poems have had a long gestation period, with the 1970s subject matter taking its time to find the form that it eventually found,” says Weadick. “Emotions recollected with, if not quite tranquillity, then perhaps some of the clarity that distance brings.” Weadick lives in Dublin with his wife and two children. His stories have been broadcast on RTÉ radio for the Francis MacManus Short Story Competition.

Paul Balfe For Curtains, Grotto, Don’t Buy a Damaged One and Future Tense

Born in 1960, Balfe grew up in Dublin. He studied medicine at Trinity College Dublin and is now a surgeon at St Luke’s Hospital in Kilkenny. He believes that poetry should arrest us, stop us in our tracks, make us think. “In a world saturated with noise it’s more important than ever.”

Siobhán Flynn For In my Mother’s house nothing went to waste, Joining the women and My inner child is a teenage boy

“I think my inspiration comes from the borderland between memory and imagination,’’ says Flynn, who lives in Dublin with her husband, two sons and a dog. “I simmer ideas until an image come to mind that I have to explore or a line comes into my head that won’t go away until I write it down.” Flynn is a member of Airfield Writers, has also been shortlisted in a number of other competitions and is working towards a first collection.

Jane Clarke For Isobel, The Blue Bible, and Every Tree

"I wrote Isobel in memory of my partner's parents," says Clarke, who lives in Glenmalure, Co Wicklow. "I never met Isobel's father, but through her stories I came to know this interesting man, passionate about literature and music." Clarke, who has been previously shortlisted for Hennessy awards, holds an MPhil in writing from the University of South Wales. Her first collection, The River, was published last year.

Aoife Lyall For For Sale, Dublin Puzzle, and Hooks & Eyes

Lyall, from Dublin, lives and teaches in the Scottish Highlands. “It was deeply unsettling to move out of the family home and the country in the same breath. These poems were inspired by the pain of leaving the familiar behind, my frustrations as a rootless expat, and my eventual recognition of the highlands as a place of unapologetic splendour.” Lyall is working to develop a performance poetry platform in Inverness.

First Fiction

Tony McGuinness For The Ghent Altarpiece

 "I wrote the story a few days after seeing Philomena, the film based on The Lost Child of Philomena Lee, by Martin Sixsmith," says McGuinness, who is from Dublin and has been shortlisted for the PJ O'Connor awards for radio drama and longlisted for the Australian Book Review Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize.

Anne Griffin For Grace 

"In this story I explore what happens when a work colleague dies," says Griffin. "In particular, I was interested in when someone new arrives to sit at the desk that once was theirs. In my story that someone turns out to be Monica, and this is her tale." Griffin lives in Westmeath but is a native of Dublin. She was longlisted for the 2014 RTÉ Guide/Penguin short story competition and is currently doing an MA in creative writing at UCD.

Justin McCarthy For Caseload

“Growing up in a rural setting, I have found myself drawn to the vitality of cities and to the complexities of sibling relationships, not having had any of my own,” says McCarthy. “Later, having lived abroad, I felt at ease placing my characters in Paris, where they could experience a crosscultural milieu while retaining their Irish identity.” McCarthy grew up in Wicklow and also lived as a child in Jerusalem, Beirut, Geneva and London. He lives with his family in Sandymount, in Dublin.

Ríona Judge McCormack For Some Strange Moon

"My story was inspired both by my time in the peculiarly beautiful Magaliesburg mountain range and by recurring questions of identity, family, and crosscontinental relationships," says Ríona Judge McCormack. Originally from Dublin, she has spent nine years working in international development, and has recently started to write fiction. She currently lives in Johannesburg, in South Africa, where she is editing her first novel. In February she was awarded the inaugural Beggar Press short story prize, and she has been highly commended in the London Magazine short-story competition.

Celine Naughton For Dreams of Flying

"The idea of the story came when I stumbled across a letter from an old boyfriend in the attic," says Naughton, who is a journalist, copywriter, editor and author from Bray, Co Wicklow. Her debut novel, Sink to Slumber, is available on Amazon.

Niamh Donnelly For How to Float

"For me, stories always grow out of a small detail or intriguing sentence I find in my mind," says Donnelly. "For How to Float I couldn't shake the image of a young woman who, despite believing life is about sticking your pierced tongue out to the world, still thinks of her body as something that might take up too much space on a man's bed." Donnelly graduated from Trinity College Dublin in 2013 with a BA in English literature and French and has just graduated from the University of Limerick with an MA in creative writing.

Emerging Fiction

Roisín O’Donnell For On Cosmology 

"I didn't intend to write about a crisis pregnancy," says O'Donnell. "I was walking through a forest at Glendalough one cold January day when the narrator of On Cosmology stepped into my mind. Guided by her voice, it became a story about searching for answers and about things left unsaid." O'Donnell lives in Dublin, with family roots in Derry; she is a recipient of a literature bursary from the Arts Council of Ireland. Her debut collection, Wild Quiet, will be published by New Island Books this spring.

Natalie Ryan For The Lodger

"My mother mentioned in passing that she had taken a lodger once, before I was born," says Ryan. "The idea of a relationship between a married woman and a hunchbacked stranger evolved from there." Ryan was born in Ireland but spent her childhood in Ghana, in west Africa. After completing an MA in creative writing at UCD she won the Bryan MacMahon Short Story Competition. Her first novel, White Lies, will be published later this year.

Ruth McKee For Fixing Things

"I wanted to capture tangible moments of childhood, to linger in the honey of memory, and to show my character as the sum of those – now broken – parts," says McKee, who was joint winner of the Irish Novel Fair 2015 with her book, The Jealous Wall, and has been shortlistedfor the Francis MacManus Short Story prize. Her work has appeared in the Incubator and the Bohemyth, and she is editor ofspontaneity.org.

John Murphy For In the trees. In the Rain. All around

"In my story a woman calls to a house for a glass of milk and helps a couple to confront a grief which they can't speak about or rationalise," says Murphy. His first poetry collection, The Book of Water, was published in 2012, and a second collection, The Language Hospital, is forthcoming in September. Previously shortlisted for Hennessy awards in prose and poetry, he is a finalist in this year's UK National Poetry Competition.

Chris Connolly For Right or Good

“What initially interested me were the possible motivations of an individual who fabricates the death of a child,” says Connolly, “but I soon became fascinated by the other end of things, by how someone genuinely bereaved might reach to such a person and, more generally, by how far humans will sometimes go simply to avoid being alone.” This is Connolly’s second story to be shortlisted for a Hennessy award. His fiction has been broadcast on RTÉ. In 2015 he won the Roberts Short Story Competition and the Lascaux Review Prize, and was highly commended in the Manchester Fiction Prize.

Niall McArdle For 19 Ways to Say ‘I Love You’

"The title came first," says McArdle. "I didn't plan on writing about a marriage breaking down, and I didn't know it would be from a woman's perspective until I started. I was listening to Leonard Cohen's The Story of Isaac a lot, and the biblical tale worked its way into the story." McArdle is from Dublin but now lives in Toronto, in Canada, in a house with too many cats. He is chief entertainment correspondent for 2paragraphs.com and blogs at The Fluff Is Raging. His work has been published in Phoenix Irish Short Stories, the Collagist, Canadian Literature and the Malahat Review.