ICA news: Maeve’s inner city tale wows judges in creative writing final

A scene from childhood, glimpsed as she was driven past Dublin’s tenements aged eight, inspired Maeve Edwards’s winning short story in this year’s ICA national creative writing competition.

All stories entered had to be about 1916 and they had to include the phrase ‘I was there’.

Maeve’s story, titled ‘A Terrible Beauty is Born’, is about two children who — on route to their grandmother with a jug of stew— witness Patrick Pearse reading the Proclamation on the steps of the GPO.