Jaki McCarrick wins The Plaza Literary: First Chapters Prize

DPhil student Jaki McCarrick has won the Plaza Prizes Literary Award for the first chapter of her debut novel, The Bright, Bright World.

Set on the Irish border, the novel examines the lives of a community impacted by The Troubles. Jaki is currently revising her first draft.

Here’s what judge and US National Book Award-winner Jason Mott said of Jaki’s prose:

 A taut, gripping opening crafted with precision and movement. The characters—as deplorable as they are—grab the reader’s attention and promise to provide both fascination and intrigue. This chapter does what an opening chapter should do: it provides a glimpse into something fascinating and yet, somehow, familiar.

Jaki is studying at Kellogg for a DPhil in the Poetry of Irish poet, Patrick Kavanagh, and has thoroughly enjoyed her research. Apart from fiction, Jaki also writes plays and poetry. She won the 2010 Papatango Prize for New Writing for her play Leopoldville, and her play Belfast Girls was developed at the National Theatre Studio, London and has been staged many times internationally. Shortlisted for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and the BBC Tony Doyle Award, Belfast Girls made its New York premiere at the Irish Repertory Theatre in 2022, and was staged again in New York in 2023 by the Irish Classical Theatre Company. In 2024 the play toured Ireland and premiered in Germany.

Jaki’s debut short story collection The Scattering, published by Seren Books, was shortlisted for the 2014 Edge Hill Prize and includes the Wasafiri Prize-winning story, ‘The Visit’. In 2020 Jaki was shortlisted for the An Post Book Awards Short Story of the Year Award (Ireland) for her short story ‘The Emperor of Russia’.

Jaki’s debut poetry collection Sweeney as a Girl is published in 2025 by Dedalus Press.