SWERVE, a literary journal based in Skibbereen, has received a Literature Project Award from the Arts Council of Ireland. 

SWERVE publishes new and emerging Irish writers and artists, and commissions work from more established names, both local and international. 

The Arts Council of Ireland Project Award supports specific projects across various artforms, and focuses on enabling individual artists and organisations to bring their ideas to fruition and create artistic work of excellence.

Mich Maroney, the creative director of SWERVE, told The Southern Star that the award ‘came at exactly the right time for SWERVE. 

‘Receiving this completely changes the landscape for us: it means we can pay our contributors and editors, print in larger quantities, and distribute more widely,’ she said in acknowledgement of Dan Fraser, Catherine Ronan, Anne Mullen, Harrison Dutton, Donal Hayes, Janet Heeran and Sue O’Connor, all of whom have worked on a voluntary basis from the very first issue. Mich praised the array of creative talent and said the win is not just about the money.

‘It is a very competitive process and receiving an Arts Council award feels as if SWERVE is being taken seriously.’

The literary journal’s creative director thanked the Arts Council for the Project Award, and Cork County Arts, which has supported their endeavours from the beginning.

WERVE is published biannually, summer and winter, in both print and digital formats.

There is also a SWERVE Residency Programme that is available to international artists and writers to come to Skibbereen throughout the year.

It is free, but by invitation only.

SWERVE’s Lit Lounge hosts literature readings in an intimate, dedicated reading space at their base at Cork Road in Skibbereen; and the SWERVE Project Space shows interesting, non-mainstream visual art.

As part of its remit to encourage new art, SWERVE awards a solo exhibition prize, and residency prize, to two graduating students from the Crawford College of Art, Cork City. 

And it has created a writer’s residency for a graduating Creative Writing MA from University College Cork.