By Rachel Lutz, Assistant Editorial Editorial

Connie Roberts, a Hofstra University adjunct English professor, has been awarded the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award for her work Not the Delft House, a memoir in verse about growing up in an orphanage in Ireland.

To accept the award, Roberts traveled to County Monaghan, Ireland for the Patrick Kavanagh Weekend, a four-day festival. She also gave a reading from her work at the event. Second prize winners were Jim Maguire, Clonard, Wexford town and Helena Nolan, Shankhill, County Dublin.

The judge was the poet, novelist, screenwriter and publisher of the Duras Press, Brian Lynch. He described Roberts’ work as “emotional but objective, measured, true to experience and full of life and energy”.

Roberts immigrated to the United States in 1983. She received her Master of Arts degree in English Literature and Creative Writing from Hofstra University. Her work as appeared in journals in the United States and Ireland, and it also gained notoriety. Recently, she was a nominee for the Hennessy X.O Literary Award. She was a finalist both in the Strokestown International Poetry Competition (2001) and the Dana Awards (2003). Twice, she was a semifinalist in the “Discovery”/The Nation Contest in 2000 and 2002. 

Roberts has become even more decorated with literary awards in recent months. She was awarded a place in the Poetry Ireland Introductions Series 2010 and read her work at the Irish Writers’ Centre, Dublin, this past May.

In June, the Swift Satire Competition in Ireland shortlisted her.

Roberts was given a prestigious award in the iYeats Poetry Competition, also in Ireland, this past July.

In October, she won first prize at the 2010 Dromineer Literary Festival Poetry Competition. She also attended the Lough Derg Yacht Club in Ireland.

Also this fall, Roberts’ work appeared in the Long Island anthology Toward Forgiveness and in the Irish literary journal Boyne Berries.

At The University, Roberts teaches in the Creative Writing Program within the English Department. She will be teaching the newly announced M.F.A. program, which starts in the fall of 2011.

Roberts also teaches within the Irish Studies Program, which is a new minor offered by the college of liberal arts and sciences. It focuses on events in Ireland’s past and present.

(Photo Courtesy of Maria Roberts)