Childhood memories write stuff for Christina

Date Published: 31-May-2012

BY KATIE FINNEGAN

GALWAY woman Cristina Galvin has scooped the €10,000 prize in the Irish Times Powers Short Story competition – a reward of over €20 per word.

“I’m delighted, I’m completely shocked. It’s like a blessing, I feel really lucky,” said Cristina when she discovered she had won the competition.

The story, entitled “Après-Match” focuses around a young child and her father eating chips in the car after the county final “looking out the windscreen at the rain pinging the puddles, wipers going swish, swish, thwack, swish, swish, thwack.”

The story is based on Cristina’s own childhood experience with her mother. “Myself and mum used to go to see the ballet in Cork Opera House. It was the only time we got together. We used to get chips afterwards and I loved eating them in the back of the car. I decided to write the story based on those experiences and it seems to have resonated with people,” she said.

Over 4,000 entries were received from writers all over the country and Cristina, originally from Moycullen but now living in Salthill, was named the overall winner last Saturday when her story was published in The Irish Times Saturday Magazine.

Cristina, a Yoga teacher worked in research into HIV in Russia and the USA and returned to Ireland in 2007 to carry out research on gerontology in NUIG where she was welcomed with 80 days of rain.

“I’ve been writing since before I could speak. I’m always scribbling bits. I’d love to be able to give it all my time.”

She is currently between jobs and has decided to spend the prize money on something special. “I nearly had to move out of my place, and then my car died. I don’t want to just use the money to pay boring bills. I’d love to use it for something to do with writing. I could go to a cottage in Donegal and write for a couple of weeks – someone else suggested that I go and get a proper computer.”

Cristina says that she couldn’t have gotten this far if it hadn’t been for Susan Millar du Mars and her husband Kevin Higgins who run creative writing workshops around the city.

“She was great. She really is an inspiration. She gives you lovely constructive feedback and is so encouraging and creative. She planted the seed in my head to undertake the MA in Writing at NUIG and even after I completed the course, I would go back to her for classes.”

Cristina completed the MA in writing at NUI Galway three years ago and has been longlisted in the New Writer of the Year competition on the Over the Edge writers’ blog(overtheedgeliteraryevents.blogspot.com). Over The Edge is a professional literary organisation based in Galway. They organise the Over The Edge: Open Reading series in Galway City Library as well as the popular Friday evening Writers’ Gatherings.

Gerbrand Bakker and Willy Vlautin’s Lean on Pete have been 2 authors who have inspired Cristina and she also admires her father, Gerry Galvin, a chef and former restaurateur, and the author of two cookbooks, The Drimcong Food Affair and Everyday Gourmet. No Recipe, his debut collection of poetry, was published in 2010.

For Après-Match, she says she used short story writer Raymond Carver’s style as a inspiration.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.