First Fortnight festival, Costa winners and Listowel workshops

First Fortnight festival

Events have been taking place across the country for the First Fortnight festival, which aims to challenge mental health prejudice through the creative arts. Literary events to watch out for include a poetry reading of Austin Clarke's Mnemosyne Lay in Dust in St Patrick's Hospital this evening. Poets Peter Sirr, Doireann Ní Ghríofa and Gerard Smyth will read Clarke's poem in full in the lecture theatre of the Swift Centre. Stephen Bean's short film Mnemosyne Lay in Dust: Memories of Austin Clarke will run before the reading, with a post-show discussion facilitated by John Saunders, director of Shine and author of two collections of poems. Tickets cost €5 and can be purchased here.

Mixing home-baked treats with home-spun yarns, Milk and Cookies Stories bring their storytelling and baking magic to First Fortnight for the second year running on January 13th. The theme of this year's show is inspired by the Beatles, With a Little Help from My Friends, with the night open to anyone who has a tale to tell, or wants to hear one. The spoken word artist Stephen James Smith will be the night's featured storyteller. The free event takes place at the Irish Writers Centre in Dublin from 6pm. More information on this and other events at firstfortnight.ie.

2014 Costa Awards winners

The five category winners of the 2014 Costa Book Awards were announced on Monday, with Scottish writer Ali Smith tipped to take the £30,000 overall prize later this month. Smith's novel How to Be Both, a stylistic triumph about the versatility of art, won Costa's 2014 novel award. The book has already won the 2014 Goldsmiths Prize and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

Emma Healey received the First Novel Award for her debut Elizabeth is Missing, which tells the story of Maud, an octogenarian struggling to piece together the past in the face of progressive dementia. The Biography category was won by the Cambridge historian Helen Macdonald for H is for Hawk, a "unique and beautiful book" detailing the author's attempts to train a goshawk while grieving for her father.

The Children's Literature award went to Kate Saunders for Five Children on the Western Front, her sequel to E Nesbit's Five Children and It. Set nine years after Nesbit's novel, the almost adult children are faced with the horrors of the first World War. A Welsh teacher, Jonathan Edwards, won the Poetry category for his first collection. The judges praised My Family and Other Superheroes as "joyous, brilliant and moving." The winner of the overall 2014 Costa Book Award will be announced on January 27th.

Listowel Writers Week programme

One of the stalwarts of the literary calendar, Listowel Writers Week has announced its programme of workshops for 2015. Headlining this year's three-day programme is the British author and journalist Alex Preston, who will teach Advanced Novel Writing. The Northern Irish playwright Lucy Caldwell will explore themes of love, sex and death in Creative Writing Advanced. Nuala Ní Chonchúir will direct the Short Fiction workshop. Ní Chonchúir is the current featured author in the Irish Times Book Club for her novel The Closet of Savage Mementoes. Read more about the Book Club here.

Other courses include Creative Writing – Getting Started by historical fiction writer and journalist Martina Devlin; William Wall, Novel – Getting Started; Irish Times poetry critic John McAuliffe, Poetry Getting Started; Peter Fallon, Poetry Advanced; Dr Eibhear Walshe, Non-Fiction & Memoir; Mary Russell, Travel Writing; and Jimmy Murphy, Writing for Theatre. Workshops take place from May 28th to 30th.

Speaking about this year’s programme, festival chairman Seán Lyons said: “One request we have regularly received is to provide a shorter, more intense workshop for those who do not have sufficient time to commit to three full days. This year we’re also offering two-day workshops. We have short fiction by Patricia O’Reilly, screenwriting by Shane Connaughton and songwriting by Declan O’Rourke. These will take place on May 30th and 31st.”

Places on workshops are limited to 15 and can be booked online through writersweek.ie.

Contact sarah.gilmartin@gmail.com with your literary listings