This week on writing.ie

The Home of Irish Writing Online!   Writing short stories? Win a place at Anam Cara Writer and Artist's Retreat on their fabulous short story workshop in June. See below for details!   Y Books are looking for three new authors, fiction, non fiction and poetry for the New Big Book of Hope eBook. Find out how your work can be published with a host of international bestsellers!   The Irish are renowned for being a nation of story tellers.  Find out what the story is, starting right here.....

This week on writing.ie With Waterford Writers Weekend starting on Friday, we bring you another story for Mining Memories from  Waterford local, Joe Palmer, a fabulous memory of his boyhood in Sligo. For RTE Radio 1 John Murray listeners who heard Paddy Reid discussing his father and grandfather's wartime experiences, read his story Deserted here. Come and hear our storytellers 'Tell Your Own Story' at the Central Library in Waterford at 11am and 2pm and hear more memory stories. If you have a story to share with us and the National Folklore Archive, helping to build a first hand picture of Ireland's history, please send it in! Check out our Tell Your Own Story for how. US author Corban Addison's story of Tsunami and human trafficking explores the dark side of humanity in a gripping drama that brings his own experience of the legal world to readers worldwide. Eleanor Fitzsimmons met Corban for writing.ie when he visited Dublin and got to the heart ofWalk Across The Sun.         98fm's Head of News Teena Gates reveals her ultimate challenge in One Foot In Front of The Other - climbing Mount Everest and her battle to lose weight - and writing about it afterwards. You might expect a journalist to find a publisher easily, but Teena's approach was just the same as every other writer...     Annemarie Neary's fabulous book A Parachute in the Lime Tree is the second release from The History Press Ireland, and Annemarie reveals exactly how to recreate the past, and take your readers with you. Even after 133 rejections, Laurence O'Bryan didn't give up his dream of becoming an author - reading 'how-to' books showed him exactly what was needed to make The Istanbul Puzzle a winner. Here he shows you the seven books on writing fiction that he found most useful. This week Children's Books Ireland announced the shortlist for the CBI Book of the Year Awards. Now in their 22nd year, the award identifies, honours and promotes excellence in books for young people by Irish authors and illustrators. The most prestigious in Ireland they give one of the few opportunities for national and international recognition of Irish authors and illustrators. Are your favourite authors on the shortlist? Take a look! It's competition time! You've only a week left to check out our fantastic 250 word short story competition run in association with Anam Cara Writer's and Artist's Retreat. Award winning author and guest facilitator at Anam Cara Vanessa Gebbie reveals how to bring your fiction to life using the five senses. If you'd like to win a place on Vanessa's 9-15 June workshop "Short Fiction:  So Much More Than It Seems..." find out more at our competitions page. As covered in The Sunday Times, The New Big Book of Hope is about to be launched as an eBook and Y Books are looking for three new authors to join celebrity authors including Dragons Den's Nora Casey, Bill Cullen and economist Jim Power plus international best sellers Monica McInerney, Claudia Carroll and Sinead Moriarty to name just a few. If you write fiction, non-fiction or poetry, this competition is for you! All royalties from the book and forty per cent of the entry fee go directly to The HOPE Foundation to assist in their vital work with the street childen of Kolcata, India. If you watched Slumdog Millionaire, you'll agree with Vikas Swarup that "this inspiring collection is a song of hope for the street children supported by the HOPE Foundation. It deserves every success." And in our Guest Blogs... Louise Phillips talks to Amazon best seller Mel Sherratt in Crime Scene and finds out how she is Tauting the Dead.             Tony Devlin is writer and performer of the new play '1981' looking at the deaths of those on Hunger Strike at the Maze Prison. He talks to Barry Houlihan about his new play, growing up in West Belfast and his award-winning company, Brassneck Theatre in Centre Stage. In Random Acts of Optimism Alison Wells talks to author A.J. Ashworth about her short story collection Somewhere Else, or Even Here and winning the Scott Prize.       In SongBook, Derek Flynn launches his debut CD at Waterford Writers' Weekend, but this week he looks at plot vs charactisation - it's a must read. Hazel Gaynor is also speaking at Waterford Writers Weekend about The Girl Who Came Home, A Titanic Story on Sunday this week - she joins international bestselling author and journalist Martina Devlin Taling Titanic. Find out more on Carry on Writing!  On From the Front Row, Editor Declan Flynn reports from The History Press launch of A Parachute In The Lime Tree Tell Us Your Story We looking for your submissions of personal essays in the Monday Miscellany, Mining Memories and Writing & Me sections! See what we have there now and check here for full submission guidelines: http://writing.ie/meet-the-authors/tell-your-own-story.html   We are working with the National Folklore Collection in UCD to preserve selected submissions to these sections to add to their rich archive.

About   Writing.ie has been developed by Vanessa O'Loughlin with vital support from the Arts Council.           Vanessa is a publishing consultant and runs Inkwell Writers Workshops, one of Ireland's leading publishing consultancies. She is PRO for Irish PEN and a member of Publishing Ireland.

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