IF YOU'RE an Irish speaker and involved in politics the chances are that without knowing it you're already familiar with the writing of Dundalk-born Katherine Duffy, who received the 2006 Hennessy Cognac New Irish Writer Award at Dublin's Four Seasons Hotel last Tuesday. She works in the Houses of the Oireachtas, translating acts of parliament into Irish.

"You have to be very careful in case someone comes along and finds a loophole, there could be a constitutional crisis, " she laughs.

"It's the kind of job that could drive most people mad, but I like it. It leaves my imagination free to write poetry and fiction." She has already published a poetry collection, The Erratic Behaviour of Tides, and won Oireachtas literary awards for short stories in Irish and for Splanctha! , a novel for teenagers.

Katherine's short story 'MustSee' also won the award for Emerging Fiction Award, while 29-year-old Ronan Doyle won the First Fiction Award for 'Story Of Loss'. Majella Cullinane, originally from Limerick but now living in Aberdeen, received the Emerging Poetry Award for her three poems 'Nora and Jim', 'Night Porter' and 'A January Evening'.

Playwright Frank McGuinness, whose first published work appeared in New Irish Writing in 1974, was presented with the prestigious Hall of Fame accolade which was set up in 2002 and each year acknowledges the achievement of a Hennessy writer who has gone on to major literary success.

Previous winners are Dermot Bolger, Colum McCann, Patrick McCabe and Joseph O'Connor, whose latest novel Redemption Falls will be published later this month.

The New Irish Writing Page, established by David Marcus in the Irish Press in 1969, found a new home in the Sunday Tribune when the Press went tabloid in 1988. Only works first published in the New Irish Writing Page, which is edited by Ciaran Carty and appears on the first Sunday of each month, are eligible for Hennessy Awards. This year's judges were the West Indian writer Archie Markham and the Belfast novelist Glenn Patterson.

Ronan Doyle won the winning First Fiction Award with his first shot at publication, although he has been writing seriously for three years. A second story has since appeared which was in the Stinging Fly's collection These Are Our Lives, and was winner of its inaugural fiction award. "I've a backlog of work that . . . with this wonderful encouragement . . . I'll start sending out as well, " says Ronan, a native of Loughrea, Galway who has a BA in English Literature and Philosophy and an MA in Journalism. "I'm doing an H.Dip at Trinity at the moment, so my Hennessy cheque is going to help pay a few bills. It would be great to be able to write fulltime."

Emerging Poetry winner Majella Cullinane has been writing poetry since she was 14.

"I kind of gave it up becuse it's not very practical, but when I was 29 I thought this is what I want to do. If I'm not going to do it now, I'm never going to do it."

She received the Sean Dunne Young Writer's Award for poetry in 2005 and also an Arts Council Award to study for a M.Litt in Creative Writing at St Andrew's University, where she graduated in 2006. "I've been working in Aberdeen for the past year teaching 11-year-olds creative writing, which is fantastic fun.

But I'm unemployed again in July. It's hard to find publishers for poetry, but I'm a realist. I write fiction as well."

Archie Markham and Glenn Patterson see the particularly high standard and wide range of the work they judged as an indication of a revival in short story-writing. "Katherine Duffy's winning story, about a gradual shift in the relationship of two couples on holidays in Greece, is nuanced, truthful, delicate and understated, " says Markham.

"The symbols of emotional complexity . . . a crash, bandaging . . . all serve to evoke, without obvious manipulation, a sense of poignancy." He was also won over by the "good, disciplined and effective writing" in Ronan Doyle's story of the aftermath of a young man's suicide.

Marc Boissonnet flew in from Cognac in France to host the Awards, which were cosponsored by the Four Seasons, represented by general manager John Brennan, and the Sunday Tribune, represented by 'Tribune Review' editor Helen Rogers.

Each of the category winners received a silver Hennessy dog and a cheque for 1,500, and the overall winner Katherine Duffy received an additional 2,500 and a bottle of Hennessy cognac Paradis with an engraved collar.

The attendance included 15 of the 17 short-listed writers. The other two, who were unable to travel from the US, were represented by their families, as well as publishers, previous winners and former judges, among whom were Mary O'Donnell, Geraldine Mills, Micheal O'Siadhail, Dermot Bolger, Anthony Glavin, Patricia O'Reilly and Declan Meade.

The winners

FIRST FICTION Shortlist: Michael Donohue, Ronan Doyle, Brenda Murphy, John Murphy, Sarah Purcell, Mark Ryan.

Winner: Ronan Doyle

EMERGING FICTION Shortlist: Katherine Duffy, Georgina Eddison, Brendan Granahan, Anne Kelly, Thomas Martin, Aran Rafferty.

Winner: Katherine Duffy

EMERGING POETRY Shortlist: Majella Cullinane, Tony Higgins, Colm Keegan, Anne Leahy, Brenda Murphy, Eabhan Ni Shuileabhain.

Winner: Majella Cullinane