Over The Edge New Writer of The Year

This year’s Over The Edge New Writer of The Year competition attracted 320 entries. The competition is open to both poets and fiction writers. The best fiction entry will win €300. The best poetry entry will win €300. One of these will then be chosen as the overall winner and will receive an additional €400, giving the author total prize money of €700 and the title Over The Edge New Writer of The Year 2009.

The competition is sponsored by Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop, Kelly Office Supplies, Mary Higgins & "a generous individual donor who wishes to remain anonymous"

The long-list of sixty for this year’s Over The Edge New Writer of The Year competition will be announced in Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop on next Tuesday August 18th at 6.30pm. All welcome. Presumably the list will be put on the website soon after that. I think it was put up the same evening last year.

This year's competition judge this year was Patrick Chapman.

I was longlisted for this competition last year and this year I decided to send in a long poem or poetic sequence which is too long for most competitions. The rules stated: three poems of up to forty lines, or one poem of up to one hundred lines. Just now I had a good look at the judge's picture (above) and have come to the conclusion that he'll not be interested in a rambling poem which wanders from Leixlip to Collooney and from 1932 to the present day by way of the Eucharistic Congress. Ah well, there's always next year.