Loose Leaves:Having your short story read and judged by doyen of the form, William Trevor, is probably the most exciting - or the most terrifying - part of making the shortlist of the William Trevor International Short Story Competition.
Entries are currently being accepted for the competition, now in its second year. Last year stories came from Australia, England, India, Italy, Scotland, Singapore and the US, as well as from nearly every county in Ireland. Liam Cusack of the organising committee isn't exaggerating when he says, "I suppose competition, in any facet of life, is the act of testing oneself against - or being judged by - the best . . . and in this competition that tenet certainly holds true."
The maximum word count is 3,000 and stories should be submitted, by post only, before Friday. There's an entry fee of €20 and each story must have an entry form attached. The winner gets €2,500 and a laptop computer, the five runners-up€€200 each. Details from www.williamtrevorshortstory.com
A tasty little gathering
Anne Enright has had a busy, busy life since her Man Booker win, but two chances to see her on home ground are coming up. She'll be in Eason of O'Connell Street, Dublin on Wednesday at 7pm as part of a recently launched series of literary evenings. Enright will be reading and signing her award-winning novel The Gathering at the event, for which free tickets are available in advance. Then, on Saturday, December 8th at 12.30pm, the book chain Hughes & Hughes will have Enright as part of a lunchtime event in Dún Laoghaire's Royal Marine Hotel. Modelled on the famous Foyle's of London bookshop lunches in the 1960s and 1970s, the event offers guests lunch as well as a chance to listen to authors discussing their new books and signing them. Enright will be appearing with economist and author David McWilliams and Paul Howard aka Ross O'Carroll Kelly. Tickets at €50 are available from Hughes & Hughes Dún Laoghaire. Tel: 01-2020010.
Mexican messiah wins it
The €1,000 2007 Stinging Fly Prize has been won by Sarah Purcell for her short story Jesus on the Boulevard. Purcell, who grew up in Co Monaghan, now lives in California where she is finishing a novel. She was shortlisted for the 2006 Hennessy Literary Awards. Jesus on the Boulevard was published in the winter 2007-08 edition of The Stinging Fly. This year's judge, novelist Emer Martin, said the story was an intense, highly controlled study of a small moment that expands within itself. "It is aptly set in the forgotten wasteland of the very western point of our western world - a known transvestite pick-up corner by a Los Angeles freeway. A group of people at a bus stop become, for a splinter of time, the entire world. The woman is a foreigner who is reluctant to accept her true place among the outsiders. She'd rather consider herself a voyeur in their world. But in the end, Jesus (a Mexican immigrant in a chicken suit) is crucified by a van on the freeway, and she becomes part of them all - laying her newly bought cushions under his bloody head. The play on Christian myth is complex, witty, and fiercely moving."
The Stinging Fly Prize is run in association with the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Co Monaghan. It goes each year to a writer, yet to publish a book, who has published work in one of the three issues of the magazine. The winner also gets a two-week residency at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre. The prize will be presented at Fly By Night, a winter gathering of readings, dance, and music for Stinging Fly writers and readers at the Voodoo Lounge (Arran Quay, Dublin 7) at 8pm on Wednesday, December 5th. Readers include poets Helena Nolan and Keith Payne and fiction writers Kevin Barry and Sean O'Reilly. Tickets €10 at door, or in advance through www.stingingfly.org
Paddy helps living poets
To mark the 40th anniversary of the death of Patrick Kavanagh, the trustees of the estate of Katherine Kavanagh has awarded three Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowships of €8,000 each to three Irish poets, Rita Kelly, Geraldine Mills and John W Sexton. Patrick Kavanagh's widow, Katherine (born Katherine Barry Moloney), in her will left all rights in her husband's works and all royalties from them to trustees who were directed to apply the income to help Irish poets, in their middle years, who are in need of assistance.
Meanwhile, first place in this year's Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Awards, at last night's opening of the Patrick Kavanagh Weekend in Inniskeen, Co Monaghan, went to Conor Carville. Second place went to Connie Roberts and third to Grace Wells.