Former teacher scoops Listowel short story award

A former Cork city teacher who quit the profession to pursue a writing career has been awarded the 2015 Bryan McMahon Short Story Award from Listowel Writers Week.

Joseph Sweeney, who lives in Blarney, Co Cork, took the honours with Bad Grapes, a satirical tale centred on a violent incident in a fictitious middleclass Dublin housing estate.

It is the writer’s third Listowel Writers’ accolade since 2007, the year he stepped down from Cork’s North Monastery Secondary School.

Previously, the Dubliner had twice won the humorous short story category at Listowel, including last year’s award.

He will be reading from Bad Grapes during World Book Night at Waterstones, Patrick Street, Cork on April 23, at 6pm.

Mr Sweeney has also been published in the Irish Press’s New Irish Writing, Orbis, The Cork Yule Book and Cork City Library’s From the Well short story anthology. A Cross National Short Story Competition winner, he had been nominated for a Hennessy Award and had his work broadcast on RTÉ Radio.

The award came four months after Mr Sweeney released his first book — a collection of humorous essays entitled Tilting at Windmills.

He said Bad Grapes could be described as an exaggeration of a real-life violent incident, though the writer says he “didn’t set out with that incident in mind but, as happens, it sort of became part of the story”.

“Bad Grapes is about class warfare, economic warfare and, almost literally, pure warfare in modern Ireland, after a local, established estate is asked to accommodate a family that have been placed in their midst by the council,” he said. “It is both a comedy and a tragedy.”

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