Roberta Gray Feature Award presentation
Monday 31 July

Brian Trench, Head of the School of Communications, Sarah Traynor, a student of the Masters in Communication and Cultural Studies and Nóirín Hegarty, editor of the Sunday Tribune

Sarah Traynor, a student of the Masters in Communication and Cultural Studies, received the first Roberta Gray Feature Award at a presentation in DCU on 26 July. The award was established in memory of Roberta Gray, a DCU journalism graudate, who died in January. It is supported by DCU's School of Communications, the Sunday Tribune, where Roberta was a columnist and feature writer, and by Roberta's former DCU classmates and her family.

The competition was open to students of the School of Communications, who were invited to submit features written in a personally engaged style (as Roberta wrote), and suitable for publication in the Sunday Tribune. The entries received covered a wide range of topics, including some - as the judges noted - that steered a difficult line between being too intimate, or invasive, and being insightful.

Brian Trench, Head of the School of Communications, Sarah Traynor, a student of the Masters in Communication and Cultural Studies and Nóirín Hegarty, editor of the Sunday Tribune pictured with members of Roberta Gray's family

Brian Trench, Head of the School of Communications, speaking for the judges at the award presentation commended the entrants for rising to these challenges, and for the imagination they had invested in their features. The other judges were Helen Rogers, of the Sunday Tribune, and Dearbhal McDonald, of the Sunday Times, a DCU classmate of Roberta Gray from 2001-2002.

The award was presented by Nóirín Hegarty, editor of the Sunday Tribune, which was due to publish Sarah Traynor's feature on 30 July. Sarah's piece described the pain of her brother's death and the joy of her son's birth.