Navan student seeks votes in writing competition

The shortlist for Hot Press’ Write Here, Write Now competition, in association with the One City One Book Festival, has been announced and Meath is represented in the third-level category by J Finbar Lynch.

A 20 year-old English student from Navan, currently living and studying in Dublin, Lynch hopes to write for film or television in the future and “avoid the real world for as long as humanly possible. ”As for the competition, he says he’s “just happy to be here.'

J Finbar will now go on to battle it out for one of the four overall prizes: an internship with Hot Press during the spring or summer of 2015. The overall winners will also receive a €250 cash prize, a Certificate of Achievement from WRITE HERE, WRITE NOW and a Toshiba Click Mini and Microsoft Sculpt Comfort Mouse. They’ll also have their winning entry published in a special issue of Hot Press, a significant achievement that will greatly enhance the CV of any young writer.

Each of the 22 winners will receive a one-year subscription to Microsoft Office 365, an invaluable tool for students and creative types.

The overall winners will be decided upon after much further deliberation from the judging panel,however, the public can now also get involved by telling Hot Press which entries really caught their eye!

Go to www.hotpress.com/writeherewritenow and press the ‘TELL US YOU LIKE THIS’ this button to also put J Finbar in the running for the special Write Here Write Now Readers' Award.

All the shortlisted entries can be read at www.hotpress.com/writeherewritenow, where you can show your support for your county in The Readers’ Award.

Write Here, Write Now is run by Hot Press in association with Dublin City Libraries and the One City One Book Festival. The competition is supported by Eason, Office 365 and the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, under the Arts in Education heading.

Over the years, Hot Press has nurtured some of Ireland’s finest creative talent in music, literature, writing and journalism. Now, as part of a celebration of one of the great modern Irish sagas – The Barrytown Trilogy by Roddy Doyle – Hot Press, in association with the One City, One Book Festival, has uncovered the very best new, student writing talent in the country. The competition is supported by the Dublin City Libraries, the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Eason and Microsoft Office 365.

The judging panel consists of Man Booker Prize winner Roddy Doyle, IMPAC Award winner Kevin Barry, Rooney Prize winner Claire Kilroy, Hot Press editor Niall Stokes and composer / songwriter Julie Feeney.

The prize for the overall winners includes an internship at Hot Press, a magazine famed for nurturing young talent.

“There was a huge level of interest in the competition, with thousands of entries pouring in,” Hot Press editor and chairman of the judging panel, Niall Stokes said. “It was really tough narrowing this tsunami down to a shortlist, but that’s what you have to do. In the final analysis, all of the judges were in agreement that the quality of the shortlisted entries was extraordinarily high, and that we have uncovered some remarkable young Irish writing talent. Everyone who is on the shortlist has good reason to feel very proud, as indeed do the schools and colleges in Meath. In that sense they are all winners.'

Roddy Doyle himself has commented that some of those shortlisted are 'frighteningly good – surprising, sharp, sometimes chilling, confident.”

On the evidence of the shortlisted entries, Ireland is teeming with young people with real writing talent.

For his three novels, Roddy Doyle invented a suburb on the north side of Dublin and called it Barrytown. The challenge for students, in this unique writing competition, was to create, in a similar way, an imaginary new place, as the location for a piece of creative writing; to set the scene; describe the surroundings; create a sense of the environment and its people; to capture the language they use; to tell enough of a story to draw readers in and to evoke the special qualities, or atmosphere, of the students' imaginatively constructed local area. They did just that – and with aplomb!

You can show their support for your local finalist by voting in the special Write Here Write Now Readers' Award at: www.hotpress.com/writeherewritenow