Aaron is top Irish writer
DROGHEDA man Aaron Finnegan has been acclaimed as one of the country’s top writers.
Aaron (20), in his second year of Drama and Theatre studies at Trinity College Dublin, won the coveted First Fiction prize at the 47th annual Hennessy Literary Awards held in the historic surrounds of The Honourable Society of King’s Inns Dublin.
He is a writer and director with a keen interest in literature and film and ‘Just This’ is his first published work of fiction. Aaron commented: “The things that grip us in stories are the things we eventually end up writing about. For me, it’s the details. It’s the music you can find in language. It’s the genuine need to connect. I tried to capture the sense that everything is bigger than us, and things always have a way of slipping by you.”
Other Hennessy Literary Award winners on the night included Manus Boyle Tobin from Dublin as the winner of the Emerging Fiction category and Louise G. Cole based in Roscommon won the Emerging Poetry category. Manus Boyle Tobin was also named as the overall Hennessy New Irish Writer of the Year. The winners were chosen by esteemed authors Marina Carr, Niall Griffiths and The Irish Times New Irish Writing page editor, Ciaran Carty.
There was another local link to the awards - celebrated novelist Bernard MacLaverty was inducted into the Hennessy Literary Awards Hall of Fame.
His 1983 novel Cal, made into a film which starred Helen Mirren and was shot in Drogheda.