At the weekend, the short list was announced for the Kerry Group Fiction Award, with Peter Murphy's John The Revelator being nominated on a shortlist of five. 

The competition for the Award, which carries a prize fund of €15,000, is particularly tough this year.

Others on the short list are: Sebastian Barry's The Secret Scripture – the winner already of the Costa Book Award; Joseph O'Neill's Netherlands, which was nominated for the Booker Prize; Deirdre Madden's Molly Fox's Birthday; and Hugo Hamilton's Disguise. The winner is announced on the opening night of Listowel Writers' Week, which this year starts of May 27.

The judges for the Kerry Group Fiction Award are teacher, antholigist and critic Niall McMonagle and novelist Giles Foden.

Meanwhile, long-standing Hot Press contributor Helena Mulkerns has been nominated on the shortlist for the Francis MacManus Prize. The shortlist of 22 is chosen from over 700 entries, with the winner due to be announced on April 29. All of the stories by the shortlisted entrants will be broadcast by RTÉ over the coming months.

The judges for the Prize are Julie Parsons – novelist and former radio and television producer with RTÉ; Maurice Harmon – former Professor of English at University College Dublin, poet, academic and scholar; Claire Kilroy – novelist who won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature in 2004; and Seamus Hosey - Senior Producer in Arts and Features Department in RTÉ Radio 1 and Chairman of the adjudication panel.

For the full list of shortlisted stories, click here.