Deadline Extended: Fiction and Poetry Sept. 17th

The deadline for the Allingham Festival Flash Fiction and Poetry competitions has been extended to September 17th! It's time to upload or post your entry. There's a €300 prize in each category. To be in with a chance of winning, simply visit www.allinghamfestival.com/online-entry to upload your entry, or post it to Allingham Fiction/Poetry, A Novel Idea, Ballyshannon, Co. Donegal with your entry fee. Winners will receive a €300 prize and be invited to read at our Literary Lunch event on Saturday Nov. 11th in Ballyshannon. 

Moya Cannon and Paul Lynch to judge Fiction & Poetry

The judges for this year's Allingham Fiction and Poetry competitions are poet Moya Cannon and novelist Paul Lynch. There is still time to enter both competitions as the deadline is September 9th for postal entries and midnight September 11th for online entries. The prize in each category is €300. For more information, visit www.allinghamfestival.com/fiction-poetry-competitions.

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.

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.

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.