Poet and author Seán Hewitt has been awarded the 2022 Rooney Prize for Irish Literature.
The €10,000 Rooney Prize, awarded annually since 1976, celebrates an outstanding body of work by an emerging Irish writer under 40 years of age. It is administered by the Trinity Oscar Wilde Centre for Creative Writing in the School of English, Trinity College.
The poet and author, who is from Warrington, UK and lives in Dublin, is a Teaching Fellow in Twentieth-Century British & Irish Literature in Trinity's School of English, and Poetry Critic for The Irish Times.
Hewitt published his debut collection of poetry, Tongues of Fire, in 2020, winning The Laurel Prize in 2021, and making the shortlist for The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, the John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize and the Dalkey Emerging Writer Award. His acclaimed memoir, All Down Darkness Wide, was published earlier this year.
"I'm so delighted to be the 2022 recipient of the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature," said Seán Hewitt. "Publishing any book is always an exposing and quite terrifying thing, so this has arrived like a supreme reassurance. To be given such a prestigious award for a body of work is galvanising, and I’m very grateful to the judging committee for their close and kind attention, and to Peter Rooney and the Rooney family for their generosity. To look at the previous winners of the award and to see my name amongst theirs is a true honour."
The Rooney Prize is the longest-established literary prize in Ireland. Previous winners include Kate Cruise O'Brien (1979), Neil Jordan (1981), Frank McGuinness (1985), Anne Enright (1991), Mike McCormack (1996), Claire Keegan (2000), Kevin Barry (2007), Lucy Caldwell (2011) and Doireann Ní Ghríofa (2016).
