This year's judges, chaired by Ciaran Carty, are the West Indian poet EA (Archie) Markham, who was shortlisted for the TS Eliot poetry award in 2002, and Glenn Patterson, the Northern Ireland novelist whose 1988 debut novel Burning Your Own won the Rooney Prize. The winner of each category will receive a trophy and Euro1,500, and an overall New Irish Writer of the Year, chosen from the three winners, will receive a further Euro2,500. The New Irish Writing page appears in the Sunday Tribune on the first Sunday of each month.

Majella Cullinane was born in Limerick in 1975. In 2005, she received a Sean Dunne Young Writer's Award for poetry, and also an Irish Arts Council Award to study for an MLitt in Creative Writing at St Andrew's University, where she graduated in 2006.

Poems have appeared in Forward Press, Crann�g, The Black Mountain Review, The Stinging Fly and in The Sunday Tribune's New Writing section. She has also published short stories in Acorn and Xmagazine, UK. She is currently Writing Fellow at Oldmachar Academy in Aberdeen.

Tony Higgins was born in Clondalkin, Dublin, and lives there with his partner Eileen and daughter Lucy. He has written stories, songs and poems. His work has been published in Ireland, England and Holland.

This is his first nomination for the Hennessy Awards.

Colm Keegan lived in Ballymun and Tallaght before moving to Clondalkin, where he now lives with his partner and three daughters. He has participated in the Fused Festival and also South Dublin Libraries Readers' Day. His story 'The Slaughterhouse Rat' was shortlisted in the First Fiction category in the 2005 Hennessy Awards.

Ann Leahy's poems have won many prizes in Ireland and the UK, amongst which is the Patrick Kavanagh Award (2001) for her first collection (as yet unpublished). She is a contributor to several anthologies including Something Beginning with P: New Poems from Irish Poets (O'Brien Press, 2004). She was twice commended in the British National Poetry Competition. Her poems have been published in magazines and anthologies in Ireland and the UK, broadcast on Lyric FM and translated into Russian and Dutch. She grew up in north Tipperary and lives in Dublin.

Brenda Murphy was born and lives in Belfast. Most of her earlier writing was for the theatre and includes Forced Upon Us, Working Class Heroes and Hold On, which won a 4Front award in London in 2006. Brenda also won a Nesta award in 2003. She has completed her first collection of poetry and is presently working on her first novel. She is also shortlisted in the Emerging Fiction category for this year's Hennessy Awards.

Eabhan N� Shuileabh�in is originally from Dublin but has lived for a number of years in New York. She now divides her time between Dublin and Gwynedd, North Wales. She was a member of the Dublin Writers' Workshop for a number of years. She is married and has one son. Her work has appeared in various publications in Ireland, Britain, and America, including Orbis, Staple, The Shop, Poetry Ireland, Anon, Agenda, Envoi, The Frogmore Papers, Borderlines, The Ginkgo Tree Review and Van Gogh's Ear.