First Prize

Christine Donovan: Jump Derry This is a contemporary novel set in Derry, Northern Ireland.  It is an honest, moving exploration of teenage love, the legacy of the Troubles and freerunning.  The voice is totally absorbing, succeeding in making fiction out of ordinary events.  The girls’ self-doubting thoughts, and her relationships with parents, boyfriend and friends are beautifully realised and Christine Donovan’s ear for dialect is faultless.  The judges did feel that there were some inconsistencies, and the use of bad language was unnecessarily prominent, but they decided that these were outweighed by its originality and sense of reality.

Second Prize

Lindsay Stanberry–Flynn: Unravelling  A well-written novel, spanning three generations, that deals with family life and the destructive force of love.  The judges were impressed by the striking cover and many of them found the novel to be enjoyable and entertaining.  The author’s grasp of the complexity of relationships between mothers and daughters make the novel a worthwhile read.

Third Prize

Sarah James: Into the Yell A very professionally presented poetry collection.  The poems have wonderfully enticing titles, like “The Inuit Who Couldn’t Give Up Her Heels,” and “The Bridesmaids of Port-au-Prince” and they hold up a mirror to twenty-first century life, surprising and delighting the reader with unexpected turns, mingling the ordinary with the extraordinary.

The Judges' Special Award

Johnny McKeagney: In the Ould Ago     An astonishingly detailed study of old Irish folklore, clearly a labour of love that must have taken many years to complete.  It is a beautifully presented coffee-table book with an array of fascinating details and meticulous, hand-drawn illustrations.   It is a unique look at the history of everyday rural life, a world that needs to be captured before it vanishes completely from our memories.