The Irish Cultural Society announces its annual writing contest for students in the 9^th through 12^th grades in the Nassau County high schools.  The materials describing the contest have been mailed to the English Departments of the Nassau schools, public and private, and they have been posted on the Society’s web site, www.Irish-Society.org also located here.

The challenge in the contest is centered upon the story “A Painful Case,” one of the stories in Dubliners by James Joyce.  The students are asked to write the dialogue for a scene in the story for which Joyce did not write dialogue.  The scene is a pivotal scene of the last meeting of the main characters.  Although the characters meet for three hours, Joyce did not provide his readers with the characters’conversation.  Student entrants into the writing contest will write this dialogue.    

The Society’s web site also contains “Helpful Hints,” suggestions to the contestants about how to approach the writing task.  The project itself is a task promoted by the new Common Core Curriculum.  Entries are due by March 17, 2014.

The Society has been sponsoring a writing contest for thirty years.  This year thirty-six prizes will be awarded from $250 to $40 at the Society’s May 7 Awards Ceremony at the Garden City Library.  Every entrant will receive a Certificate of Merit mailed to the student’s sponsoring teacher.  The library of the schools which have an entry into the contest will receive books on an Irish subject in appreciation of the role libraries play in promoting literacy.

Any interested student can get copies of the material for the contest in the English Department of the student’s school and on the web site, www.Irish-Society.org.