Fr Gaughan scoops Kerry Association Arts prize
LISTOWEL author and historian Fr Anthony Gaughan has become just the second winner of the Kerry Association in Dublin Arts Award, keeping the prize in north Kerry following Brendan Kennelly’s win last year.
Fr Gaughan received a piece of Dingle Crystal to mark the occasion at a special ceremony in the National Library in Dublin. He was joined by a crowd made up of Kerry Association members, friends, and representatives of Listowel Writers’ Week and the Kerry Archaeological and Historical Society.
A founding member of Listowel Writers’ Week, Fr Gaughan boasts an extensive list of publications, such as Austin Stack: Portrait of a Separatist; Alfred O’Rahilly: Controversialist; and Listowel and its Vicinity, an exhaustive work on the town he was born in.
He served as Chaplain and taught at Presentation College Bray between 1957 and 1960, and has been in the Dublin and Wicklow region for some 60 years. He has been Parish Priest at the Parish of Guardian Angels, Blackrock, since 1988.
He was chairman of Irish Pen from 1981 to 2005, and is chairman of the National Library of Ireland since 2000. He became a member of Kerry Archaeological and Historical Society in 1968 and served on its committee for almost 15 years in the ‘70s and ‘80s.
Kerry Association President Christy McCarthy and chairperson Keelin Kissane congratulated Fr Gaughan on his win, describing him as one of Ireland’s most prolific historians, and praising him on his contribution to Kerry’s historical archive.