People's College Short Story Competition

The People's College Short Story Competition is open for submissions and I'm delighted to be judging the entries. Here's what they have to say......

'Stories can be on any topic topic up to a limit of 2,500 words, typed 1.5 or double spaced on A4 paper, single-sided, with numbered pages securely fastened. There is no limit to the number of entries submitted.

1st prize €1,000, 2nd prize €750, 3rd prize €500

Closing date February 28 2015

Judge: award-winning author Niamh Boyce

A short list will be published on the People’s College website in April 2015 and the winners will be announced at an event in the Teachers’ Club, Parnell Square, in May/June 2015. Winning stories will be published on the website and the first prize winner will also be published in our 2015 newsletter. Please submit your stories to info@peoplescollege.ie

Entry fee per story €10

Stories will be judged anonymously. Entrant’s name should not appear anywhere on the story. Contact details should only appear on a separate entry form, available online or from the competition flyer.

Stories can be emailed to info@peoplescollege.ie under subject heading ‘Short Story competition’ or can be sent by post to The People’s College, 31 Parnell Square, Dublin 1.'

For more details, or to enter clickity click HERE

Short Story Award

 

Got a story? The international Sean O Faolain Short Story Prize is open for entries - first prize is €2,000 (approx $2760/£1640) , publication in Southword and a week in Anam Cara Writers centre. Deadline is July 31st, you can find out more Here

Battle of the Books!

I'm very excited to be judging this new competition from the organiser's of the infamously fabulous Swift Festival! The Battle of the Books is a new international writing competition (open to poetry and prose) and is organised by the Swift Festival in Trim, Co Meath, Ireland. And, unusually, previously published work is accepted! The deadline is July 1st, so get sending!

Theme:‘Travel is the theme of the competition, but the interpretation of ‘travel’ will be very wide indeed... In other words, anything goes – as long as it has some mention/whiff/suggestion of travel. It can be pure fiction or memoir or any other genre of writing. Humour is not essential but it certainly won’t do an entry any harm. Entertainment is highly desirable.’

Deadline: Tuesday 1^st July, 2014.

Poems: minimum 40 lines, maximum 60 lines.

Prose: minimum 800 words, maximum 1,000 words.

Entry fee: €5 per entry or €10 for three entries.

Prize: €500

For further details and to enter - click the Festival Website *HERE*

The Davy Byrne Award

 

Anne Enright, previous winner & one of this years judges

A note for your diaries short story writers…

The Davy Byrnes Award is Ireland’s biggest short story competition - the winner will walk away with €15,000, and there are five runner-up prizes of €1,000. It’s organised by The Stinging Fly and the judges are Anne Enright, Yiyun Li and Jon McGregor.  The competition is not open for entries untill December, but it’s never too soon to get writing.

They’re looking for previously unpublished stories, the maximum word count is 15,000 words, and there’s no minimum word count.  (Which I presume means they are open to receiving short short stories.) There’s only one story per entrant & a €10 entry fee. Deadline is Monday Feb 3rd 2014. 

Judges Comments...
 

It’s interesting to read what the judges like in a story…. These are extracts; you can read the full statements and further details about the competition on the Stinging Fly website – here.

…The short story yields truth more easily than any other form, and these truths abide in changing times. As a writer turned judge, I am looking for a story that could not have been written any other way; that is as good as it wants to be; that is the just the right size for itself.
—Anne Enright

…As for what I look for in a short story, to borrow from Tolstoy: 'Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.' There are stories written like happy families, which one reads and forgets the moment one puts them down. But the stories that belong to the category of unhappy families, they can do all kinds of things: they touch a reader, or leave a wound that never heals; they challenge a reader's view, or even infuriate a reader; they lead to a desire in the reader's heart to be more eloquent in his ways of responding to the story yet leave the reader more speechless than before. A good story is like someone one does not want to miss in life.
—Yiyun Li

…What I look for in a short story is a kind of intensity of purpose and clarity of expression; something which holds my attention and rings clearly in my reading mind. For me, this is mostly something in the voice on the page; something in the control of the syntax, which immediately puts me in the world of that story. If it's there, it usually kicks in within the first few lines; after that, it's just a matter of seeing whether the writer can really keep it up.
—Jon McGregor

WOW!

And from the makers of Crannog... the WOW Awards are back!

There is €2100 in prize money plus publication.
For: Stories up to 3000 words.
 Poems up to 100 lines.

Entries open July 1st 2013 and close November 1st 2013.
Results, prize-giving and Anthology launch Friday February 28th 2014.

For more information click HERE

Story?

Niamh Boyce 2009

Do you have some stories ready to go out into the world? Here are some of the many competitions you could take a chance on -

The Francis MacManus Award
21st Jan/ 1,800 -2,000 word limit


The Elizabeth Bowen/William Trevor
deadline: 5th April / 3,000 word limit


The Molly Keane Award
31st March /2,000 word limit

The Moth Short Story Award
31st March/ no word limit


And for Tania Hershmans extensive list of magazines that publish short stories click - Here

Fish Short Story Prize 2012

Fish Short Story Prize 2012/13 (€3,000) 

Philip O'Ceallaigh  will select the best ten stories for publication in the 2013 Fish Anthology. He is the author of Notes From a Turkish Whorehouse, and The Pleasant Light of Day.  Closing Date: 30 November 2012.

Word limit is 5,000. There is no restriction on theme or style, and the prize is open to writers from all countries who are writing in English.

 

Entry fee is  (a hefty!) €20 for online entry. Once you register and enter online, you can login and check your entry(ies) at any time.

Results will be announced on 17 March on the Fish website, and sent out in the newsletter.

For more info - clickity click - Fish Publishing  

As you can see (big badge on the right!) Words A Day has been shortlisted for Blog Awards Ireland! I've been blogging for nearly three years now, so far thats 36,954 views, 320 posts and 193 followers. 

Blogging has changed quiet a bit over that time, I gush blog less than I did in the beginning and comment less as well, with Facebook taking over in that respect, and writing time being too valuable (sorry!) to post as obsessively frequently. 

But seriously, one of the best aspects of blogging is linking up with writers from all over the world and keeping up to date with their writing journeys without even leaving the house, so many thanks to everyone who follows this blog, to those that I've met through this blog, and to those who nominated it:)

Plotting

I never outline or plan in the early stages because I love that sense of discovery that comes when writing a first draft. Although this does mean that later drafts involve a lot of rewriting (and cutting) as I try to figure out the plot, once the basics of what happened, and then what happened... are in place- it gets juicy again. I used to dread plotting but shaping a story, identifying its twists and turns can be really enjoyable, this quote from Rikki Ducornet, sums it up for me -

'Plot is not secondary but essential, the heart of the matter, the bright web that connects all of the elements and causes them to throb and shudder.'

Delighted to say that my short story, 'Since I became a Monster,' will be in the next issue of Crannog, (to be launched in The Crane Bar at 6.30 on the 24th February), and also, a poem of mine, 'Sleeping Beauty's Take' will be in the spring edition of The Moth Magazine. The Moth is currently running a short story competition (deadline 31st March) which is open to anyone, living anywhere. Happy Writing. Happy Wednesday:)

100 Word Story Competition

Run by Reader's Digest - the deadline is Jan 31st,
the prize is £1,000 and its FREE to enter.
For more information click HERE

MacManus Short Stories

A me, me post !

The stories shortlisted for RTE Radio Ones 2011 Francis MacManus Awards are now available to listen to HERE. (They last approx ten minutes. My story's called The Everyday Woman...)

Writing Spirit Award 2011

This competition has a longer max word count than most - 4,000.

Writing4all is an Irish writing website that runs an Annual Writing Spirit Short Story Competition. This year the judge is Christine Dwyer-Hickey. The contest is open to all nationalities and all genres. The prize-winning stories, along with merited stories will be published in an anthology at the end of the competition.

First Prize: €1000, Second Prize: €200, Third Prize: €100

The contest runs for four rounds throughout the year. The next submission deadline is - 30th September. At the end of each round, the best stories, as chosen by a panel of judges will be shortlisted for the award. €7 per story

Entries may be submitted by post to:

The Writing Spirit Award 2011

Spade Enterprise Centre

North King Street

Smithfield

Dublin 7

Republic of Ireland

Alternatively, you can submit your work by e-mail to info@writing4all.ie

Entries must be pasted into the body of the email; attachments will not be opened. Entries must also clearly have the words "The Writing Spirit Award 2011” in their subject lines to prevent being treated as spam.

For more details click here

Other Short Story Competition Deadlines coming up include The Dromineer on the 19th August & on the 3rd of August, there's Over The Edge

Good luck and have a good weekend:)

The Francis Mac Manus Short Story Season

The season continues... and my story “The Every Day Woman*” by will be read on RTE Radio 1 tomorrow, Tuesday 14th at 11.10pm in The Book On One slot!
* a salacious and deadly romp!

I won't mention the snow...

I won't mention the snow, except perhaps to say that my toes are ice cubes waiting on a dash of vodka and my car has crystallized. No, I won't mention the snow, except perhaps to add that the schools are shut and my teenager has a new song about our house being minus five degrees... Any way back to writing, I've finally edited my latest story down to 2,000 words so it will qualify for the RTE Short Story Competition, it meant I lost an orgy scene but in this weather I can't say I regret it...