Congratulations Alva – Hot Press No One!

ALVA IS OVERALL WINNER! One of our Leinster Senior College fifth year students, Alva White, is the 2018 overall winner of the Hot Press ‘Write Here, Write Now’ competition. Alva is pictured at the award ceremony with President Higgins. Well done Alva. We are so proud of you!

The panel of judges in 2018 included some of the most eminent writers living in Ireland, incuding the Booker Prize winner DBC Pierre, award-winning poet Rita Anne Higgins, crime writer extraordinaire Tana French and recent winner of the Goldsmiths Prize, Mike McCormack, as well as Hot Press’ own senior editorial figures, Niall Stokes, Stuart Clark and Máirín Sheehy.

Run in conjunction with the Creative Ireland Programme, and supported by Canon and PayPal, Write Here, Write Now 2018 has as its theme Social Media: A Writer’s Tale. Entrants were invited to explore the many ways in which social media can make us laugh, cry, shudder or throw our hands in the air – whether that be via an unexpected “like” on Facebook, a tweet that cuts deep, an Instagram that reduces us to tears or a WhatsApp message gone wrong.

One of the key objectives of the Creative Ireland Programme is to nurture new creative talent.

You can read Alva’s modern take on a classic Shakespearean soliloquy here!