2024 has seen another successful year for the Cathedral Quarter Literary Festival. One of the highlights this year was the Flash Fiction Competition. This was the second year of the competition and once again it was teamwork all the way!
Pictured: Top row (L-R) Patricia Lehmann(Highly Commended), Mary Ethna Black (Winner) Averil Meehan (Competition Judge), Fiona McKay (Highly Commended), Alina Anderson (Joint Runner Up), Theresa Ryder (Competition Co-ordinator)
Bottom Row (L-R) Andy McGovern (Donegal ETB), Graeme Shimmin (Highly Commended), Lee Sheridan (Joint Runner Up), Mary Turley McGrath (Festival Director), Donnan Harvey (Festival Organiser)
Continuing her role of last year, the Competition Co-ordinator was Theresa Ryder. She published the competition guidelines in July on many online platforms including The Irish Writers’ Centre and Writing.ie. The festival webpage, designed by Pauric Havlin, also showcased the Competition. From the outset entries arrived in with a surge of applications towards the deadline closing date on 30th September.
Submissions came from all parts of the country, Antrim to Cork, Sligo to Dublin. There was no set theme this year and the response was impressive and the interest very gratifying for judge Averil Meehan, who had the special task of choosing the winning writers. ‘The high standard of so many of the entries impressed me. Flash fiction is an art form. The finalists all submitted flash fiction that contained aspects of poetry as well as story. All of them touched my heart with characters that felt real, making them worthy winners.’
The winning flash fiction piece was the work of Mary Ethna Black from Co. Antrim who flew in from England especially for the event. The joint runners up were Alina Anderson from Co. Dublin and Lee Sheridan from Co. Kildare. There were three highly commended pieces from Patricia Lehmann (Co. Dublin), Fiona McKay (Co. Dublin), and Graeme Shimmin (Co. Donegal). The winning stories were read on the Prize giving evening Saturday 19th October which was a great event for readers and audience alike. The prizes were presented by Andy McGovern from Donegal ETB, one of the main sponsors.
In the New Voices section of the evening we heard work from new poets Paul Williams from Sligo and Julian Cunningham from Milford. The New Voices series proved highly popular last year and we continued to give poets the opportunity to read their new unpublished poems as part of the festival.
“We hope this will encourage more new comers to participate,” said Donnan Harvey, Festival Organiser, who is already planning for next year.
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