TIPPERARY-born Gerry Beirne is the Hennessy New Irish Writer of 1996. He was presented with the overall Hennessy New Irish Writing Award yesterday evening at a ceremony in the Dublin Writers' Museum.
The prize of £2,000 included two trophies.
Mr Beirne was the winner in the Emerging Fiction category as well as overall winner. Iggy McGovern, who comes from Coleraine, Co Derry, won the Poetry Award; and Martina Devlin, from Omagh, Co Tyrone, won the First Fiction prize. Mr McGovern and Ms Devlin each received £1,000.
The Hennessy Awards have been running for 26 years. Previous winners include Dermot Bolger, Colum McCann and Joe O'Connor. The awards are based on work published in the Sunday Tribune in the past year. This year's judges were novelist Deirdre Madden, from Co Antrim, and South African-born Justin Cartwright, who lives in London.
Gerry Beirne was shortlisted for last year's Hennessy Awards. He completed an MA in Fine Arts at Eastern Washington University in 1993 and was a runner up for the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award in 1994. His first collection of poetry will be published shortly by Dedalus Press.
Iggy McGovern is a lecturer in physics at TCD and Martina Devlin is a freelance journalist.