Hennessy X.O New Irish Writer of 2008

Nominees: Eimear Ryan, David Mohan, Kevin Power

Winner: David Mohan

Emerging Fiction

Nominees: Kevin Power, Susan Lanigan, Aiden O'Reilly, Colm Keegan, Sharon Irwin, Stephen Wade, Seamus Scanlon.

Winner: Kevin Power

Excerpt from 'The American Girl'

By Kevin Power

I didn't go to a private school. I evaded by default the neat taxonomies, the roles and rivalrous partnerships that defined and stimulated the social lives of my college friends. Nor did I grow up in a six-bedroom southside semi with a hundred metre lawn. During my first few weeks at university, I would study these houses as I passed them on the bus – these houses with their sculptured gardens and their broad front doors – and wonder what kind of people could possibly live in them, what kind of boy or girl could possibly be produced by all this luxury and space. Eventually I found out, of course. By the time I entered my second year, the people who lived in those enormous houses had become my friends.

They disliked the girls I chose, these new friends of mine. They found them "shallow" or "immature" or "annoying". They took me aside at parties to ask, "So, when are you breaking up with what's-her-face?" It came easily to them, this pragmatism about my life. They had this trait in common: they could treat their own romantic lives like works of art, objects in need of pruning or revision. It disconcerted me that they should see my life in terms like these.

But I liked my friends. I liked their self-assurance and their polished jocularity. I experienced their acceptance of me as an improbable boon, undeserved and longed-for, like grace. In less than a year, I had come to depend on them.

First Fiction

Nominees: Tom Clarke, Selina Guinness, Eimear Ryan, Barry McKinley, Donald Mahoney.

Winner: Eimear Ryan

Excerpt from 'Caterpillar'

By Eimear Ryan

Aidan is sitting on the floor of his bedroom, juggling three tennis balls. He can hear Ciara's socked feet pass as she paces the hall, dark blurry shapes in the inch of space beneath the door.

"The parents won't be back till tomorrow," he thinks he hears her say. "Yeah, bring whoever wants to comes."

A few more squealed girl pleasantries, then the beep of the phone as she hangs up. She puts her head round his door unasked, like always.

"I'll kill you if you say anything," she says, like she's rehearsed it. Then: "Why are you on the floor?"

"I was just workin' out," he says breezily. "Y'know – push-ups, sit-ups, jumping jacks, the usual."

He allows himself to be difficult sometimes. It's one of the few things he finds fun in his new state. 'New state' – that's his dad's phrase. His way of making it seem like everything's perfectly natural and fine. Like the accident was a chrysalis, creating Aidan anew. A reverse chrysalis, maybe, Aidan thinks – you go in a dancing carefree butterfly, you come out as something people avoid looking at, or tread into the pavement for fun.

"Fuck, did you fall?" Ciara asks, rushing to his side.

"Nah, I'm fine. Dude, I'm not completely helpless."

She sighs, puffing air in his face. "I swear to God, take care tonight. I won't have time to monitor you. I'm the hostess."

With that she sweeps out of the room. The force of the door slamming makes the hanging calendar swing back and forth violently. It's still stuck on April. He'd been ticking the days off until the Leinster championship, until it became pointless.

Emerging Poetry

Nominees: Stephen Kennedy, Celeste Augé, Louise Mahaffy, Kevin Power, Connie Roberts, Melissa Diem, David Mohan.

Winner: David Mohan

Excerpt from 'The Prodigy'

By David Mohan

Years later, commissions running thin,

and debt collecting like ash in a grate,

he writes in humbler candlelight,

waltzing his eyes around the sad eyes

of the Queen of the Night, or watching

enrapt, the Russic winter breeze,

compose wild crystals on his window.

He wonders at those long ago recitals,

that miraculous child, his assurance

amongst crowds, the carnival clothes,

and catches in the glass a glimpse,

– Behind his used-up smile –

– Of what follows on from the fake

pastoral of youth; not rest or peace,

but just the deep, deep silence

that follows loud applause.