Festivals and Events | SiarScéal Festival and the Hanna Greally Literary Awards

Hanna Greally Literary Awards 2023 Now Open for Entries

– part of SiarScéal Festival 2023 celebrations –

Entries are now being accepted for the Hanna Greally Literary Awards 2023, which takes place as part of the annual SiarScéal Festival. Cash prizes totalling €400 are up for grabs but better be quick: the closing date for entries is this coming Friday, 22 September, to be received no later than 5pm (Irish time).

Entry is free but limited to one per participant. Entries may be in the style of poetry (maximum of 100 lines) or prose/short story (maximum of 2000 words). A cash prize of €200 will be awarded to each of the overall winners in the Poetry and Prose/Short Story categories. Detail of how to enter (including competition rules, etc) are available from the website of SiarScéal (see Competition page).

Winners will be announced and prizes presented at SiarScéal Festival 2023, to take place on Saturday, 21 October at Roscommon Co. Library, Abbey Street, Roscommon Town. Also featuring in this year's festival programme of events is a symposium of young authors, who will read from their work contained within their own handmade book, produced with the help of artist, Vanya Ward

SiarScéal is an annual arts and literary festival that has run every year since 2007 and takes place in Roscommon, drawing inspiration from unique culture and heritage of the Roscommon environs, together with the regional counties of Leitrim and Sligo.

SiarScéal – annual arts and literary festival that takes place in Roscommon

No Spare Life by Rosaleen Glennon: a journey through cancer

No Spare Life: one woman's journey through cancer by Rosaleen Glennon was launched over the weekend at the Irish Writers Centre in Dublin. As would be evident from the title, it is a book that charts the author's personal battles and the progression, from diagnosis, through treatment with chemotherapy, recovery and the renewed appreciation for life that comes with it all.

In his Introduction, author Dermot Bolger says, "The overriding emotion which resonates from these pages is a resilient, hard earned sense of hope and a starkly fresh new way of seeing things by an author who was aware that, at times, she did not know if she would live to see certain things again."

Born in Dublin, now residing in Co. Roscommon, Rosaleen had been living in Germany when she was diagnosed with breast cancer in September 2010.

On gleaning the news after a biopsy, I went into a spin. I don't remember leaving the doctor's office on the third floor of the hospital and getting into the lift. I began to think again when the lift doors opened and I stepped out on the ground floor. I turned round three times on the spot and thought. "What am I going to do now? Does he mean I should get my affairs in order?" I almost laughed at my own thinking. I realised that we have absolutely no control. We might think we have, but we don't.

Before Rosaleen was ever a cancer survivor, "she was so many other things, including a gifted writer," says Dermot Bolger and it was through writing about the experience of what she was going through and keeping a record of her life that she was able 'to honour it – the cancer'.

I realise everybody's experience of cancer is different but I want to publish what I have written ... to share what happened to me, so that it might help other people who have had such a diagnosis as well as their families and friends. I hope it helps.

No Spare Life by Rosaleen Glennon is a collection of poetry and short prose pieces that is also very tastefully illustrated throughout, in full colour. It is on sale now. RRP €12. For more information, see the author's website.