Tag Archives: writing

CLARE’S young people are being urged to show they have the write stuff by getting involved in a new county-wide competition. Clare County Library have launched a creative writing competition for children and teenagers. “With schools currently closed and students working remotely on assignments set by teachers Clare County Library would like to offer a different type of exercise to children and teenagers aged between 7 and 15 who like to write stories,” explained a spokesperson. To enter, all you have to do is write a story up to 700 words based on ‘County Clare 2020: A Day in My Life’. Entries must be in before 12 noon on May 12. All entrants are asked to type their name and age at the end of their story and email their entry to library_mailbox@clarecoco.ie When sending entries include the words Creative Writing Competition as the email subject. The shortlisted and winning entries will be posted on www.clarelibrary.ie on June 3 and …

HAVING learned to read in his 50s, Sixmilebridge-based Joe McDonagh will give a talk in Shannon Library next Tuesday at 11am about his journey as an adult learner. Originally from Fedamore, he left school at the age of 13 and admits that he had almost no understanding of the written word. “I could just write my own name. I used landmarks to get places. If you showed me a place once, I could get back there but if I saw a sign, I wouldn’t know what it meant.” A painter and decorator by trade, he spent years in England, originally working with his uncles and sending money home to his parents in Limerick. “I’d paint rooms, pass bricks; you didn’t need to read or write to do that,” he reflects. In the early 2000s he was back in Ireland when his working life came to an abrupt halt. “I got scoliosis in the spine and got vertigo. The doctor told …