The Edgeworth Literary Society will present prizes worth £2,500 at the annual Maria Edgeworth Literary Weekend which will be held from March 31st to April 2nd in the Co Longford town.
This year the society, has decided to run a special confined competition for poetry and short stories for national and primary schools.
Explaining that the competition for adults remains the same, Carmel Noone, secretary of the society, based at the Edgeworthstown Community Co-operative Society, Ballymahon Road, said the committee had noticed a huge growth in the number of children taking part.
"This is our fifth weekend and over the last years we noticed that more and more children were coming to the events, so this year we have decided to cater for them.
"We decided to extend our literary competition and have a confined section for all national and secondary school children in the country," she said.
"We are hoping this will stimulate interest in writing both prose and poetry and that a large number of schools will take part in the competition."
She said the winning entries would be published in the Edgeworth Papers Volume V, which will be officially launched on the opening night of the literary weekend.
"It has been traditional that the winners of the competition have their works published in the Edgeworth Papers, which has a limited print run and is very collectable," she said.
This year, she said, the collection would be launched by Dr Philip Brady, a native son, who is in practice in Edenderry, Co Offaly and is a writer.
The publication will also carry a contribution from another previous winner of the award, Brenda Sullivan, from Streete, Co Westmeath, who has a considerable reputation as a writer.
The event will be opened by the Minister for Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands, Ms Sile de Valera, who will present the prizes to the winners. The adjudicators will be Micheal Coady, the Tipperary-born writer and broadcaster, Katie Donovan, poet and Irish Times writer, and Marita Conlon McKenna, a best-selling children's author.
The events will include workshops on short story writing, poetry workshops and a children's entertainment workshop which will be presented by Tony Maude, the London-based musician and actor who worked with the Monty Python team at Oxford University.
One of the highlights of the weekend will be the Edgeworth Lecture, delivered by Dr Margaret Kelleher of the National University of Ireland, a Maynooth-based lecturer.
The theme of her lecture will be Public and Private Worlds; the later life of Maria Edge worth.
The closing date for all entries for the literary competitions is February 11th.
The society can be contacted at 043-71801, Old Schoolhouse, Ballymahon Road, Edgeworthstown, Co Longford.