We're delighted that Victoria Kennefick has been awarded the Emerging Writer Award at the Dalkey Literary Awards for her collection Eat or We Both Starve! 

Commenting on Victoria Kennefick's collection, the judges said: “This is a slim volume with an impact that's heavy-hitting. It delivers everything one looks for in a piece of writing: emotional heft, story, nuance, hope, memorability; and because it's also quirky, it has the element of surprise. Victoria Kennefick is a poet who can hold her own on the international stage.”

Sally Rooney’s Beautiful World, Where Are You was awarded Novel of the Year at the awards, which took place at the festival on June 18th.

Congratulations to Victoria on this achievement! Find out more about the awards on the festival website.

Victoria Kennefick's daring first book, Eat or We Both Starve, draws readers into seemingly recognisable set-pieces - the family home, the shared meal, the rituals of historical occasions, desire - but Kennefick forges this material into new shapes, making them viable again for exploring what it is to live with the past - and not to be consumed by it.

Rebecca Goss writes: 'Victoria Kennefick writes with a fresh urgency, giving us poems that are honest and fearless. She once said: "Poetry has saved my life, made my life. Reading and writing it have taught me bravery and discipline." Kennefick is unafraid to explore bereavement, sex and the female body in her poetry. She writes with a visceral originality. Her poems are rich with physical sensations. She is able to find beauty in the big subjects like sorrow and desire, offering us the finest, most startling details. Her identity as a young Irish woman is hugely important to her, something she explores with intelligence and candour. I have always felt there is nothing Victoria could not tackle. The scope in her work is exhilarating.'