The brand new Stinging Fly arrived today in my letterbox. I have a piece in it about First Drafts, as have Colette Bryce, Mia Gallagher, Dermot Healy, Philip Ó Ceallaigh and Peter Sirr.
Monica Corish is the featured poet and there is plenty of new fiction and poetry from the likes of Alan McMonagle, Máiríde Woods, Gerry Murphy, Michael O'Loughlin, Matthew Sweeney and Paula Meehan.
Dubliner Orlaith O'Sullivan is named as the recipient of this year's Stinging Fly Prize and, in her report, judge Sinéad Morrissey had plenty of good general and specific things to say about writing, including the following:
"In the end, I had to place the question of genre to one side, as much as it was possible to do so, and establish, or re-establish, basic, fundamental characteristics of excellent writing. Surprise became the defining factor. I wanted to find work which took me by surprise, which deepened upon subsequent readings, and which was deft enough in the deployment of its own rules that they had been internalised, rendered invisible by the creative momentum they allowed."
Read her full report on Orlaith's achievement HERE.
