Davy Byrnes Stories

The six prize-winning stories from the 2009 Davy Byrnes Irish Writing Award as selected by Richard Ford.

Davy Byrnes Stories will be launched at the Irish Writers' Centre
(19 Parnell Square) on Wednesday November 25 th at 7 p.m. All are welcome.

To my American ear, narrators and characters in these stories seemed to enjoy expressing themselves, seemed to like the feel of words in their virtual mouths, seemed to think that important life was largely lived in language-in what we say to each other, about each other, remember of each other, in how we love, detest, ignore, demean and relish
- Richard Ford, Judge's report

'Foster' by Claire Keegan
'Living in Unknown' by Mary Leland
'This Isn't Heaven' by Molly McCloskey
'The Road Wife' by Eoin McNamee
'Storm Glass' by Kathleen Murray
'The Rescue' by Susan Stairs

The Davy Byrnes Irish Writing Award is sponsored by Davy Byrnes of Duke Street, Dublin 2. It is Ireland's biggest competition for a single short story and it aims to honour the great tradition of short story writing in Ireland and to encourage and reward excellence among current practitioners of the form. The competition was first held in 2004 as part of the Bloomsday Centenary celebrations organised by the James Joyce Centre.

The 2009 Award was organised by The Stinging Fly in association with The Irish Times. More than eight hundred entries were received by the February 2nd deadline. All of the stories were first read anonymously by a panel of readers with a final selection of thirty going on to be read by Richard Ford.

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