Loreto student Maeve has the write stuff

Maeve McCarthy, a transition year student at St Michael's Loreto Convent, Navan, was named winner of the Rotary Club of Navan's Young Writer Competition (WYC), run for the first time this year.

This was an ideal Youth Services project for a pandemic as it was carried out online, in the absence of the usual annual Youth Leadership Competition due to the pandemic.

The aim of the Young Writer Competition is to encourage writing skills with imagination and creativity. The task was to write a story or poetry, titled 'My Happiest Day' in prose or poetry, either fiction or non-fiction.

Transition Year students from St Michael’s Loreto Navan and St Joseph’s Mercy Navan under the guidance of their TY co-ordinators took part.

The judges were Katie McDermott, a writer and English teacher at Dunshaughlin Community College, and Navan's Richard Ball, retired English teacher and playwright, Navan, who generously gave invaluable time to read the student’s compositions.

The YWC Committee says it was very impressed by the literary talent and imagination of all the students.

"It was a delight to read the beautiful prose and poetry sent by the students into the competition," it says. "The stories of happiness through the appreciation of nature around them; the perception of the world from the mind of beloved pets; the assessment of happiness at different stages of growing up; recognising happiness in those most close to us; through helping others; Happiness is found when looking at the bright side of things. The standard was remarkable which led to an enormous challenge to choose the winners."

Maeve McCarthy wrote a narrative from the perspective of Happy a beloved dog who had an interesting view on a new word, “Lockdown”. Joint first runners up were Lauren Reid from Mercy and Enya Gleeson from Loreto. Julianne Moloney of Loreto was second-placed runner-up. An inaugural awards centre took place outdoors in the garden at the Alzheimer’s Day Care Centre, kindly offered for the occasion by Dorothy Slattery. All students received WYC Certificates, and book tokens from the Navan Bookshop, sponsored by Credit Union Plus Navan. Each student also received Tipperary Crystal pens sponsored by Premier Jewellers Navan.