TIGH LITRÍOCHTA
Welcome to the Munster Literature Centre Founded in 1993, the Munster Literature Centre (Tigh Litríochta) is a non-profit arts organisation dedicated to the promotion and celebration of literature, especially that of Munster. To this end, we organise festivals, workshops, readings and competitions. Our publishing section, Southword Editions, publishes a biannual journal, poetry collections and short stories. We actively seek to support new and emerging writers and are assisted in our efforts through funding from Cork City Council, Cork County Council and the Arts Council of Ireland. Originally located in Sullivan's Quay, the centre moved to its current premises in the Frank O'Connor House (the author's birthplace) at 84 Douglas Street, in 2003. In 2000, the Munster Literature Centre organised the first Frank O'Connor International Short Story Festival, an event dedicated to the celebration of the short story and named for one of Cork's most beloved authors. The festival showcases readings, literary forums and workshops. Following continued growth and additional funding, the Cork City - Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award was introduced in 2005, coinciding with Cork's designation as that year's European Capital of Culture. The award is now recognised as the single biggest prize for a short story collection in the world and is presented at the end of the festival. In 2002, the Munster Literature Centre introduced the Seán Ó Faoláin Short Story Prize, an annual short story competition dedicated to one of Ireland's most accomplished story writers and theorists. This too is presented during the FOC festival. The centre also hosts the Cork Spring Literary Festival each year. Workshops are held by featured authors in both autumn and spring, allowing the general public to receive creative guidance in an intimate setting for a minimal fee. In addition, the centre sponsors a Writer in Residence each year. We invite you to browse our website for further information regarding our events, Munster literature, and other literary information. Should you have any queries, we would be happy to hear from you.
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Visit the Seán Ó Faoláin Prize page to view the newly announced shortlist.
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Click here to visit our dedicated Frank O'Connor International Short Story Festival website.
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Southword Journal issue 18 is now online!
Poetry from Paddy Bushe, Grace Wells, Dave Lordan, Barbara Smith (& more), fiction selection from Tania Hershman, as well as work in translation from Chinese writer Wang Zhousheng, plus reviews of Theo Dorgan, Landing Places, John Sexton, Eileen Sheehan & more!
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Provisional programme for September's Frank O'Connor International Short Story Festival posted HERE.
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Shortlist for the 2010 Cork City - Frank O'Connor Short Story Award Announced
The Munster Literature Centre is pleased to unveil the shortlist for the 2010 Cork City – Frank O’Connor Short Story Award. At €35,000 it remains the world’s richest prize for the form. It is awarded to what is judged to be the best, original collection of stories published in English in the 12 months preceding its award in September. This year we have the usual mix of veteran and debutante authors, although unusually, five of the six places this year have been taken by authors of one country: the USA. Another unusual feature is that as many as three of the books have been published by small presses. All of the shortlistees have agreed to come to Cork next September to attend the awards ceremony and to read from their books at the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Festival.
Further information can be obtained from: Patrick Cotter, Director, The Munster Literature Centre, ++353 214312955
The shortlisted books are as follows (in alphabetical order):
1. If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This (Picador UK, 2010) by Robin Black
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Robin Black holds a BA from Sarah Lawrence College and an MFA from Warren Wilson College. If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This (Random House, 2010) is her first story collection. The book has also been brought out by six foreign publishers and translated into four languages. Robin Black’s stories and essays have appeared in numerous publications including The Southern Review, One Story, The Georgia Review, Colorado Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Indiana Review, and The Best Creative Nonfiction, Vol. I (Norton, 2007). She is the recipient of grants from the Leeway Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, the Sirenland Conference and is also the winner of the 2005 Pirate’s Alley Faulkner-Wisdom Writing Competition in the short story category. Her work has been noticed for Special Mention by the Pushcart Prizes on four occasions and also deemed Notable in The Best American Essays 2008 and The Best Nonrequired Reading 2009. She is currently at work on a novel, also to be published by Random House and overseas. Since receiving her MFA, she has taught Advanced Fiction Writing at Arcadia University and worked extensively with individual students. In 2010, she will be teaching at Bryn Mawr College. Click here to visit Robin Black's homepage.
2. Mattaponi Queen (Graywolf Press, 2010) by Belle Boggs
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Belle Boggs grew up in Virginia and currently lives in North Carolina, USA with her husband Richard Allen. She holds an MFA in fiction from the University of California at Irvine and is a writer and teacher. Mattaponi Queen (Graywolf Press, 2010) is her first book. Stories from the collection have appeared in The Paris Review, Glimmer Train, At Length, storySouth and Five Chapters. Boggs is also the winner of the 2009 Katharine Bakeless Nason Prize for fiction, selected by Percival Everett and awarded by the Middlebury College Bread Loaf Writers’ conference. Click here to visit Belle Boggs's homepage.
3.Wild Child (Bloomsbury, 2010) by TC Boyle n
T. Coraghessan Boyle is the author of twenty books of fiction, including, most recently, After the Plague (2001), Drop City (2003), The Inner Circle (2004), Tooth and Claw (2005), The Human Fly (2005), Talk Talk (2006), The Women (2009), Wild Child (2010) and When the Killing's Done (2011). He received a Ph.D. degree in Nineteenth Century British Literature from the University of Iowa in 1977, his M.F.A. from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1974, and his B.A. in English and History from SUNY Potsdam in 1968. He has been a member of the English Department at the University of Southern California since 1978. His work has been translated into more than two dozen foreign languages, including German, French, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, Russian, Hebrew, Korean, Japanese, Danish, Swedish, Lithuanian, Latvian, Polish, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Finnish, Farsi, Turkish, Albanian and Slovene. His stories have appeared in most of the major American magazines, including The New Yorker, Harper's, Esquire, The Atlantic Monthly, Playboy, The Paris Review, GQ, Antaeus, Granta and McSweeney's, and he has been the recipient of a number of literary awards. He currently lives near Santa Barbara with his wife and three children. Click here to visit TC Boyle's homepage.
4.The Shieling (Comma Press, 2009) by David Constantine n
David Constantine is an award-winning poet and translator. His collections of poetry include Madder, Watching for Dolphins, Caspar Hauser, The Pelt of Wasps, Something for the Ghosts (shortlisted for the Whitbread Poetry Prize), Collected Poems and most recently Nine Fathom Deep (all Bloodaxe). He is a translator of Hölderlin, Brecht, Goethe, Kleist, Michaux and Jaccottet. In 2003 his translation of Hans Magnus Enzensberger's Lighter than Air (Bloodaxe) won the Corneliu M Popescu Prize for European Poetry Translation. He is also author of one novel, Davies (Bloodaxe) and Fields of Fire: A Life of Sir William Hamilton (Weidenfeld). The Shieling (Comma, 2009) is his third collection of short stories, following Back at the Spike (Ryburn), and the highly acclaimed Under the Dam (Comma). He lives in Oxford, where he edits Modern Poetry in Translation with his wife Helen. Click here for more about Constantine at Comma Press.
5.Burning Bright (HarperCollins, 2010) by Ron Rash n
Ron Rash was born in South Carolina, USA, grew up in North Carolina, and is a graduate of Gardner-Webb University and Clemson University. He is the author of prize-winning novels: One Foot in Eden, Saints at the River, The World Made Straight; and the New York Times bestseller, Serena, which was a 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award Finalist. His poems have appeared in over 100 magazines and journals, and he has published several collections. Burning Bright (HarperCollins, 2010) is the most recent of short story collections. Twice a recipient of the O. Henry Prize, he holds the John Parris Chair in Appalachian Studies at Western Carolina University. Click here to read more about Rash at HaperCollins.
6. What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us (Dzanc Books, 2009) by Laura van den Berg
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Laura van den Berg was raised in Florida and earned her MFA at Emerson College. She is the recipient of scholarships from the Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers' Conferences, the 2009 Julia Peterkin Award, and the 2009-2010 Emerging Writer Lectureship at Gettysburg College. Formerly an assistant editor at Ploughshares, Laura is currently a fiction editor at West Branch and the assistant editor of Memorious, an online journal of new verse and fiction. She has taught writing at Emerson College, Grub Street, and in PEN/New England's Freedom to Write Program. Her fiction has or will soon appear in One Story, Boston Review, Epoch, The Literary Review, American Short Fiction, StoryQuarterly, Best American Nonrequired Reading 2008, Best New American Voices 2010, and The Pushcart Prize XXIV: Best of the Small Presses, among other publications. The winner of the Dzanc Prize, Laura's first collection of stories, What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us, was published by Dzanc Books in October 2009 and was a Holiday Pick for the Barnes & Noble "Discover Great New Writers" Program. She is currently at work on new stories and a novel. Click here to visit Laura van den Berg's homepage.
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The 2010 Frank O'Connor Award shortlist has been decided and all shortlistees have now been contacted individually. The results will be posted on our website by the weekend.
Click here to view the 2010 longlist.
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The 2010 Seán Ó Faoláin Short Story Competition now open!
First Prize: €1,500 (approx US $2000) and publication in the literary journal Southword. Second Prize: €500 (approx US $650) and publication in Southword. Four other shortlisted entries will be selected for publication in Southword and receive a fee of €120 (approx USD $150).
The Seán Ó Faoláin Short Story Competition is an annual short story competition dedicated to one of Ireland’s most accomplished story writers and theorists, sponsored by the Munster Literature Centre. If the winner comes to Cork to collect their prize, we will lavish them with hotel accommodation, meals, drinks and VIP access to the literary stars at the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Festival (15-19 September 2010).
2010 Judge: Tania Hershman (Founder and editor of The Short Review)
Click here for more information at our competition page.
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The 2010 Cork City-Frank O'Connor Short Story Competition Judges
Nadine O'Regan is The Sunday Business Post’s Books and Arts Editor, an occasional telly pundit with The View on RTE 1 and the presenter and producer of The Kiosk, the weekend arts show on Dublin station Phantom 105.2. Originally from Skibbereen, Co. Cork, she lives in Dublin. She is an English and Philosophy graduate of UCC and has an Mphil in Creative Writing from Trinity College.http://nadineoregan.wordpress.com/
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Previous articles and information available on the Archives page.
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Read Southword Journal Online
Issue 18 now online.
Sean Ó Faoláin Short Story Competition
now closed. Thanks to everyone who contributed.
Best Irish Poetry in English 2010
Visit our bookstore here.
Poetry International.org
The Munster Literature Centre produces the Irish section of this prestigious poetry site. Current featured poets are from Landing Places, the new Dedalus anthology of immigrant poets. For further information, please visit the site at www.poetryinternational.org.
Festivals
The Munster Literature Centre hosts two annual festivals. The larger Cork City - Frank O'Connor International Short Story Festival takes place each September, while the Cork Spring Literary Festival, with varying themes, is presented each spring. Further information is available on our drop down menus.
Workshops
Workshops in poetry and fiction run in Spring and Winter at MLC. Contact Jennifer for more information.
Munster Literature Centre
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Frank O'Connor House, 84 Douglas Street, Cork, Ireland. Tel. (353) 021 4312955 Email munsterlit@eircom.net |
Irish Registered Charity No.12374 |
Mary Morrissy is the author of two novels, Mother of Pearl and The Pretender, and a collection of short stories, A Lazy Eye. She has recently completed a third novel called The Family Silver, based on the life of Sean O’Casey sister’s Bella and is at work on a second collection of linked short stories, tentatively titled Diaspora. She works as a journalist and teacher of creative writing, most recently as the Jenny McKean Moore Writer in Washington at George Washington University.
