December 7, 2019, 9.30am to 5pm
Dublin city centre
A unique opportunity to have your work read and critiqued by Claire Keegan, as well as to learn more about the writing process.
Tuition is 300 Euro with the submission of a 3,000 words manuscript, or 150 Euro without a manuscript.
There is only one place remaining!
To book, email ckfictionclinic@yahoo.com
Read reviews on Claire’s workshops and courses.
Subject: KEEGAN Claire – Copyright: Philippe MATSAS/Opale – Date: 20121017-
Just over a week to go now for this great competition for a great cause. So get finalising those poems, flash fictions and short stories. Closing date is next Friday 20th July at 17.00hrs.
Just over 3 weeks to go on this one so get the biros, pencils and laptops working. Closes 5 pm on 20th July
Michael Mullan (26) is battling cancer for third time and needs funds to continue availing of life saving treatment in Boston that is not available in Ireland.
Pay: PayPal.Me/mmcancerfund or by clicking here. Donations in excess of the stipulated entry fee would be most welcome for this deserving cause.
Competition is open in Ireland and internationally.
Longlist of top 20 authors will be published on www.michaelmullancancerfund.com in mid-August 2018.
Shortlist of top 6 authors will be published in early September.
Winners will be announced and prizes will be awarded at Kildare Readers Festival on 3rd October 2018.
Please read the Terms & Conditions before entering: Terms & Conditions 
It may have taken me a while but Number Eleven is back!! Issue Nine of Number Eleven is live, ready and waiting for you. Featuring the work of 10 authors from around the world, I invite you to pull up your favourite chair, turn on your reading light and slip into the wonderful worlds created for you by our carefully selected authors.
As a little aside, we are currently preparing Issue Ten and we would love to read YOUR work!! If you have a piece of short or flash fiction burning a hole in your digital pocket then please do send it our way, we’d love to step into your world and get lost, quite possibly! You can submit to numbereleveneditor@gmail.com, we look forward to hearing from you!
Until next time, close your eyes and hope for the best!
Graham
Photo by Eva Stoyanov
San Francisco-based Irish writer, Ethel Rohan, with teach a “Brilliance of Brevity” writing workshop in both fiction and non-fiction as part of the upcoming Abroad Writers’ Conference. Three afternoons, December 14-16, 2015, at Butler’s Townhouse, Ballsbridge, Dublin. All levels welcome.
Conference participants also include luminaries John Banville, Kevin Barry, John Boyne, Mary Costello, Medbh McGuckian, and many more. Jeff Kleinman, literary agent, Folio Literary Management, Declan Meade, Founder, The Stinging Fly Magazine and Press, and Leah Maines, Director, Finishing Line Press, will also be in attendance.
To register for Ethel Rohan’s workshop please contact Conference Director, Nancy Gerbault: nancygerbault at gmail.com or contact Ethel directly: ethelrohan at gmail.com.
Last month, Liberties Festival Dublin held its very first flash fiction competition. Writers were called on to submit their best 50-300 words on the theme ‘Liberties’ – either the general theme of liberties or The Liberties area of Dublin, Ireland.
We were bowled over by the entries and decided the only decent thing to do would be to let the world read some of the best pieces we received. And so our collection “Liberties: Flash Fiction from Ireland” was born.
You can download it from iTunes here. Or download in many different formats from Smashwords here.
Congratulations to all our authors, we hope to see much much more of your writing!
We’re delighted to announce 2015’s Moth Short Story Prize, judged by Donal Ryan, with prizes of €3,000, a week-long writing retreat at Circle of Misse in France (including €250 travel expenses) and €1,000.
The prize is open to anyone, as long as the work is their own and previously unpublished. Word limit 6,000.
The closing date is 30 June 2015.
The winning stories will appear in the autumn issue of The Moth.
See http://www.themothmagazine.com for more details
HeadStuff.org is a new website. And oh! it’s a wonderful place. We are interested in everything that we think is interesting. We love literature like this and we are always open to submissions. We accept basically everything with two stipulations.
1: It has to be interesting and
2: it has to be good.
We have stories, poems, criticism, reviews, essays… basically, anything literary is in our literature section.
We also have great Science like this and lovely Art like this and sometimes we merge the two. We find History very interesting and it can be funny, but maybe not quite as funny as the stuff in our Humour section. We love Music and Film and we’re also into what’s going on in the world.
Every month we have a new Legend of the Month which has proven very popular, and we even leave a clue at the bottom of each new Legend post so that readers can try to guess the next legend, and win a legend-related prize.
If you are interested in contributing to any of these sections, or even multiple sections like a lot of our contributors do, then please feel free to send an email to Editor@HeadStuff.org and you can see each of our contributors here.
Hey, even if you have an idea or a suggestion, maybe you’re uncertain about a topic, or you have an idea for a serialized or recurring piece, get in touch and we’ll talk.
We’re very happy to be involved with ShortStops, and very delighted that you read this all the way to the end. Go you. You get an A.
The Stinging Fly are delighted to announce the return of the Davy Byrnes Short Story Award — Ireland’s biggest short story competition.
Prize fund: €15,000 for the best short story, plus five runner-up prizes of €1,000
Competition Judges: Anne Enright, Yiyun Li and Jon McGregor
—The competition is open to Irish citizens and to writers who are resident or were born in the thirty-two counties.
—Entries must consist of a previously unpublished short story written in English. The maximum word count is 15,000 words, no minimum. Only one story per entrant.
—We will be accepting entries from December 1st 2013. No online entries. Entries must be posted/delivered to Davy Byrnes Short Story Award, c/o Dublin UNESCO City of Literature, Dublin City Libraries, 138-144 Pearse Street, Dublin 2, Ireland.
—The deadline for receipt of entries is Monday, Feb 3rd 2014. There is a €10 entry fee, payable online or by cheque/postal order.
—The six short-listed writers will be announced in late May/early June 2014 and the overall winner announced in June 2014.
The competition is sponsored by Davy Byrnes and organised by The Stinging Fly in association with Dublin UNESCO City of Literature
For further information about the award — and to enter your story! — please visit our website.
What the judges say:
The Davy Byrnes Award is given to a story that has the writer’s name removed, the judges of the prize have been more international than local and the prize money is substantial. These three things meant the world to me when I won in 2004, a time when I felt washed up on the shores of the Irish boom. 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
I am a staunch advocate for short stories, and respect any organisation/effort that supports stories and story writers. I am thrilled to be serving as a judge for the Davy Byrnes Award. 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
I’m both thrilled and slightly daunted to be taking part in judging the Davy Byrnes Award this year. Thrilled, because it’s a prize with an astounding track record of unearthing great talent and excellent stories; the previous judges have clearly had a very sharp reading eye. Daunted, for pretty much the same reasons. There’s a lot to live up to.
What I look for in a short story is a kind of intensity of purpose and a 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
ShortStops 