BBC Sports Producer Jo Mc Cusker for Allingham 2017

BBC Producer Jo Mc Cusker is the next guest we can confirm for Allingham 2017. Jo, from Letterkenny, was only the second female editor in the BBC Sports department when she joined in 1991, and has gone on to make a name for herself as a ground-breaking editor and producer. She is currently the lead editor in the Documentary unit. 

Jo spent many years editing golf, rugby, horse-racing, Football Focus, Rugby Special, and been to 5 Olympic Games, 4 Commonwealths, two Football World Cup events and 5 World Athletics championships. She is also highly regarded as a documentary film maker, having produced films on Muhammed Ali, Seve Ballesteros, Andy Murray, Bill Mc Claren, Bobby Robson and Jimmy Hill, amongst many others. 

We're very much looking forward to Jo's talk at Allingham 2017. 

Songwriting Contest: €1000 Grand Prize

Calling all songwriters and musicians! The Allingham Songwriting Contest is open, with a grand prize of €1000. We've had some brilliant entries over the last few years, and the Live Final in Dicey Reilly's is always a highlight of the weekend. Don't miss out on your chance to enter. Please share with all your musically-inclined contacts!

Mike McCormack confirmed for Allingham Festival 2017

Mike McCormack, author of award-winning 'Solar Bones', will be joining us at the Allingham Festival this November. Mike McCormack is an award-winning novelist and short story writer from Mayo. His previous work includes Getting it in the Head (1995), Crowe’s Requiem (1998), Notes from a Coma (2005), which was shortlisted for the Irish Book of the Year Award, and Forensic Songs (2012). In 1996 he was awarded the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature and in 2007 he was awarded a Civitella Ranieri Fellowship. In 2016 he won the Goldsmiths Prize and the Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Award for best novel for Solar Bones. The novel was longlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize, and in March 2017 it was shortlisted for the Kerry Group Irish Novel Award. He lives in Galway.

The Henry Girls to headline Allingham Concert

We are over the moon (and 'Far Beyond the Stars'!) to announce that The Henry Girls will be performing in the Allingham Festival 2017! Karen, Lorna and Joleen are three sisters from Inishowen who have been performing around Ireland and beyond for well over ten years now. Audiences everywhere instantly fall for their gorgeous harmonies, brilliant musicianship (they're all multi-instrumentalists) and their infectious enthusiasm for music and a bit of craic!
They've recently released a new album entitled 'Far Beyond the Stars' which has received rave reviews, a great deal of airplay, and was named RTÉ's album of the week earlier in the year. We're delighted they've agreed to headline the Allingham Concert on Saturday Nov. 11th!
Here's a video of the trio performing live on The Late Late Show. 
 

Allingham 2017 Fiction & Poetry Competitions Now Open!

The Allingham Festival 2017 Flash Fiction and Poetry Competitions are now open! We have received some fantastic entries over the years (you can read some of the more recent winning entries on our website), and we expect the same again this year.

Our competitions are designed to recognise and reward talented writers who, following in the footsteps of William Allingham, seek to launch or further their careers. The Allingham Festival includes competitions for adult writers of poetry and flash fiction, and also for children. The festival also offers readings and workshops led by nationally-recognised literary figures where aspiring authors can meet, share ideas, and discuss the emerging trends in the world of writing and publishing.

This year are judges are Paul Lynch, Moya Cannon and Monica Corish.

The deadline is Friday the 9th of September 2017 for postal entries and midnight on Sunday the 11th of September 2017 for online entries. 

The top prize in both Flash Fiction and Poetry is €300. Winners are invited to read their winning entries at a special awards ceremony at the Literary Lunch on Saturday November 11th. 

For more information on the competition and how to enter, click on the button below:

THE COMPETITION JUDGES

This year's judges are Moya Cannon, Paul Lynch and Monica Corish. 

Paul Lynch is this year's Allingham Flash Fiction Competition judge. Paul is the prize-winning author of GRACE, THE BLACK SNOW and RED SKY IN MORNING. He won the French booksellers’ prize Prix Libr’à Nous for Best Foreign Novel and was a finalist for the Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger (Best Foreign Book Prize). He won the Prix des Lecteurs Privat, and was nominated for France’s Prix Femina, the Prix du Premier Roman (First Novel Prize) and the Prix du Roman Fnac (Fnac Novel Prize), as well as being shortlisted at Ireland’s Bord Gais Irish Books of the Year. In the US, both his novels were Amazon.com books of the month and he was selected by Barnes and Noble for the Discover Great New Writers series. Paul was born in Limerick in 1977, grew up in Co. Donegal, and lives in Dublin with his wife and daughter. He was the chief film critic of Ireland’s Sunday Tribune newspaper from 2007 to 2011, when the newspaper folded. He has written for many Irish newspapers and has written regularly for The Sunday Times on film.

Moya Cannon will judge this year's Allingham Poetry Competition. Moya is the author of five collections of poems, the most recent being  Keats Lives (2015, Carcanet Press, Manchester). She was born in Dunfanaghy, County Donegal, spent most of her adult life in Galway and now lives in Dublin. She studied History and Politics at University College, Dublin, and International Relations at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.  Her work sings of deep connections— the impulse to ritual and pattern that, across centuries, defines us a human, a web of interdependences that sustain the ‘gratuitous beauty’ of the planet. A winner of the Brendan Behan and Lawrence O Shaughnessy awards, she has edited Poetry Ireland Review and was 2011 Heimbold Professor of Irish Studies at Villanova University.  Her Collected Poems will be published by Carcanet Press in 2018.

Monica Corish, filter judge for the Allingham Poetry and Flash Fiction Competitions, is a Kinlough-based poet. She won the 2013 North-West Words Poetry Prize and has been awarded literature bursaries by the Arts Council, Leitrim Arts Office and ADAI. Her short story Sepia is included in the Hennessy Book of Irish Fiction 2005-2015. Her first collection of poetry, Slow Mysteries, was published by Doghouse Books; her second collection, Gleanings, by the Leitrim Arts Office in June 2015. Her third collection, A Dying Language (2016), was published by the Irish Hospice Association.