A Limerick writer has won a New York literary prize worth $40,000 (€32,000) just months after winning America's most lucrative short story prize.
Patrick O'Keeffe (42), from Kilteely in east Limerick, was one of 10 writers who were each awarded a Whiting Writers' Award for emerging authors at a ceremony in New York.
The awards are given to writers who show exceptional ability early in their careers.
O'Keeffe won the prize for The Hill Road, a collection of four novellas about life in a fictional Limerick village.
The Hill Road's use of death imagery led the Baltimore Sun to compare it to James Joyce's The Dead. Others have compared O'Keeffe's writing to Edna O'Brien's and John McGahern's.
