Lacuna & Jack Harte Bursary Awardees 2022

We are delighted to announce the winners of the Jack Harte and Lacuna Bursary 2022. The awards were presented by Jack Harte and Dr Eimear O’Connor, Director of The Tyrone Guthrie Centre, at our Members’ Christmas Party on Wednesday 7th December. You can read more about the winning writers and awards below.

Lacuna Bursary 2022

The Lacuna Bursary is a new bursary specifically designed to support an emerging writer from an underrepresented group to develop their writing. It is created and funded by the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in partnership with the Irish Writers Centre. The awardee will be presented with a one-week fully resourced Writer-in-Residence Bursary to take place in 2023 by arrangement with the TGC.

Photo courtesy of Bloom Artist Management

Mahito Indi Henderson is this year’s awardee. He is a Canadian American writer and actor based in Dublin. He is a graduate of University College Cork’s MA in creative writing and his work has been published in The Moth, The Echo and the Foundationalist, among others. He is a recipient of an Arts Council Agility Award and was a finalist for the Iowa Review Awards 2021. He is featured in Breaking Ground Ireland and was selected for the pilot Foundation Programme through the Irish Writers Centre and Cúirt International Festival of Literature.

Jack Harte Bursary 2022

The Jack Harte Bursary is created and funded by the Irish Writers Centre in partnership with the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, it offers a professional writer a one-week fully resourced Writer-in-Residence Bursary to take place in 2023 by arrangement with the TGC. The award is named in honour of Jack Harte, founder of the Irish Writers Centre, in celebration and acknowledgement of his contribution to Irish literature. Previous awardees include Micheál Ó Conghaile, Jan Carson, Neil Hegarty, Henrietta McKervey, Sarah Moore Fitzgerald and Liz Nugent.

Louise Phillips is this year’s awardee. She won the Best Irish Crime Fiction Novel of the Year in the Irish Book Awards for The Doll’s House, her second novel. Each of her other bestselling novels, Red Ribbons, Last Kiss, The Game Changer and The Hiding Game were shortlisted for Irish Crime Novel of the Year in the prestigious Irish Book Awards. Amongst other literary awards, in 2016, Louise was longlisted for the CWA Dagger in the Library Award in the U.K., and her first two novels were published in the U.S. Her fifth novel The Hiding Game is currently under option with a major U.S. film company, and They All Lied her sixth novel, was published to critical acclaim in March 2022. In September of this year, she was awarded an Arts Council Bursary for Literature from the Arts Council of Ireland for her seventh novel and current work in progress In all the Unexpected Places. Louise teaches creative writing at the Irish Writers Centre, South Dublin Libraries and other venues throughout Ireland.