Each year, the Museum of Literature, Ireland (MoLI) holds a contest for promising young Irish voices—the Edna O’Brien Young Writer’s Bursary. Named for the world-renowned Irish writer and author of such touchstones of Irish literature as The Country Girls, House of Splendid Isolation and Saints and Sinners, the awardees, this year, were mentored by leading Irish writer, Jessica Traynor, an award-winning poet, essayist, librettist, and poetry editor at Banshee. They also got a chance to meet with publishers, writers and literary scholars and N4 took part too, offering an online workshop and an in-person Story Exchange.

N4 was proud to help instil in these young writers the empathy and compassion needed to tell stories of all kinds because, as O’Brien herself writes, “…Language lives longer than people…it moves from one generation to the next. It’s immortal.”