It can be challenging for writers, especially from a financial perspective. Recognising this, Dalkey Book Festival and Zurich established the Dalkey Literary Awards to reward creativity and support writers financially. See the authors shortlisted for the 2021 Emerging Writer award.

In the Emerging Writer category, the award is for writers resident in or born in Ireland and published in Ireland or the UK in 2020. An emerging writer is widely-defined and includes (but is not limited to) writers of fiction, non-fiction, literary history, biography, memoir, collections of poetry, essays and short stories. Emerging writers may include writers of more than one published book and emerging writers may be of all ages. Authors need not be of Irish nationality, but if not then they must have been resident in Ireland for at least six months in each of the previous three years.

The winner of the Emerging Writer Award category will be announced on 19^th June and the winner will receive €10,000 in prize money. The shortlist for the 2021 Novel of the Year will be announced soon.

Further information on the awards criteria is available here.