We’d like to announce that The Lonely Voice: Short Story Introductions is no longer running. It will be replaced by an exciting new initiative: The James Plunkett Short Story Award. Keep an eye on the Irish Writers’ Centre Facebook page for further details to follow soon.

A big thank you to our Lonely Voice reading panel, judges, and audience members who have contributed over the past three years. A special thank you to all of our featured readers who have shared their stories with us. It has been wonderful.

Thanks, everyone. Onwards and upwards!

The Lonely Voice: Short Story Introductions is on hiatus for the summer. We’d like to take this opportunity to thank the staff at the Irish Writers’ Centre, all of our featured readers, guest judges, and everyone who attended our events so far this year.

We’ll be back for our next reading on Thursday, September 27th at 7pm. (All short story submissions received between now and August 31st will be considered for this September event.) See you in September. Until then, happy reading and writing!   

Bloomsday – Call for Readers

Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown writer-in-residence, Chris Binchy, is organising a filmed relay reading of Ulysses this Bloomsday, June 16^th.  While the novel remained in copyright, public performances of Ulysses were significantly restricted, so this is the first year that it can be approached with  freedom.Ulysses is deeply rooted in the character and voices of Dublin, and this is a fitting and personal way for people to engage with Joyce’s work level in the place where the book begins.

Filming will move location on the day from Sandycove to Dalkey to Dún Laoghaire. Members of the public will be filmed reading short allocated sections from the novel, and these will be immediately uploaded to a website, building into a unique document of the day. If you’d like to take part in this event, please contact Chris at DLRWriter@gmail.com.

Writers Abroad is accepting submissions of short stories, non-fiction, and poetry on the general theme of “relationships around the world” for their third Anthology entitled Foreign Encounters. The anthology will be print published and later available as an e-book. All of the profits will be donated to Books Abroad, a charity that helps to educate school children worldwide by providing free, carefully chosen school books. Books Abroad is currently working in 84 countries and serving 977 educational establishments including Africa, Asia, Central & Southern America, the Middle East and Eastern Europe.

Author, Julia Gregson, whose best-selling novel East of the Sun won the prestigious Prince Maurice Prize, will be writing the foreword.

Word Count: Fiction – up to 1700 words (flash fiction is welcome) Non-Fiction – up to 1000 words. Maximum of 30 lines for poetry.

Deadline: July 31st, 2012.

Full entry details here.

We are delighted to announce our Lonely Voice: Short Story Introductions winners for May. They are:

“The Whale” by Hugo Kelly
“Boats” by Michael Lawlor
“Euthymia” by Cathy Sweeney
“Drenched” by Trisha Mc Kinney

Thanks to our guest judge this month, Emer Martin (Breakfast in Babylon, More Bread Or I’ll Appear, Baby Zero) for choosing these stories. Emer had the following to say about her selection:

“I loved the metaphor of the whale in Hugo’s story. It was beautifully written and mysterious.
In Michael’s it was the child’s voice and their insular world that really struck me. He captured how self obsessed children are while they have an uncanny ability to pick up what’s going on.
“Euthymia” was strange and disturbing and powerfully terse.
“Drenched” had such tenderness that the violent end took me completely by surprise and was a great twist.”

 

Congratulations to our four winners! Don’t forget to join us on Thursday, May 31st at 7pm at the Irish Writers’ Centre to hear them read their stories. It’s a free event and everyone is welcome.

The Doneraile Literary & Arts Festival takes place in scenic County Cork from the 30th of July to the 5th of August. Now in its second year, the festival has been expanded to include writing competitions and a week of workshops. Entry details for the Edmund Spenser Poetry Competition and the Canon Sheehan Short Story Competition are below and further information on the festival can be found HERE.

Edmund Spenser Poetry Competition

Conditions of Entry

• The competition is open to people aged 18 or over
• Poems must not be more than 30 lines. The poems may be on any subject
• Entries to be submitted with a fee of 10 Euros. Cheques/postal orders to be made out to Doneraile Literary & Arts Society
• Poems must be typed on A4 paper. No handwritten entries will be accepted
• Entrants may submit only one poem for the competition. Poems must be the original work of the author. Poems must not have been previously published or accepted for future publication elsewhere.
• Copyright of each poem will remain with the author but Doneraile Literary & Arts Festival Committee reserve the right to publish the poem on their website to highlight the poets work
• All entries must be accompanied by an entry form. The name of the entrant must not appear on the poem itself.
• The Judges decision is final.
• Closing date for receipt of applications is July 1st 2012
• The winning prize will be 500 Euro and presentation by one of our guests of the Edward Spencer Perpetual Poetry Award
• Submission of a poem automatically deems acceptance of each of the above conditions

Please post entries FAO Diarmuid Hudner, The Doneraile Literary & Arts Festival, Edmund Spenser Poetry Competition, Creagh Castle, Doneraile, Co. Cork. For further information please contact Diarmuid Hudner, Festival Committee Chairman on 087 – 167 -5809 or email hudnerdiarmuid@gmail.com

Canon Sheehan Short Story Competition

Prize E1000

Conditions of Entry

• The competition is open to people aged 18 or over
• Stories must not be more than 2000 words. The stories may be on any subject
• The story must be fictional
• Entries to be submitted with a fee of 10 Euros. Please do not send cash. Cheques/postal orders to be made out to Doneraile Literary & Arts Society
• Stories must be typed on A4 paper. No handwritten entries will be accepted
• Entrants may submit only one short story for the competition. Stories must be the original work of the author. Stories must not have been previously published or accepted for future publication elsewhere.
• Copyright of each story will remain with the author but Doneraile Literary & Arts Festival Committee reserve the right to publish the story on their website to highlight the authors work
• All entries must be accompanied by an entry form. The name of the entrant must not appear on the story itself.
• The Judges decision is final.
• Closing date for receipt of applications is July 1st 2012
• The winning prize will be 1000 Euro and presentation by one of our guests of the Canon Sheehan Perpetual Literary Award.
• Submission of a story automatically deems acceptance of each of the above conditions

Please forward your entries FAO Diarmuid Hudner, Doneraile Literary & Arts Festival, Canon Sheehan Short Story Competition, Creagh Castle, Doneraile Co. Cork. For further information please contact Diarmuid Hudner, Festival Committee Chairman on 087 – 167 -5809 or email hudnerdiarmuid@gmail.com

The Boyne Writers Group publish ‘Boyne Berries‘, a journal of poetry and prose, twice a year in March and September. Submissions of poetry and fiction are now being sought for issue 12.

Submission Details:

Poetry: Send no more than three poems. Each poem should be 60 lines or under.
Prose: Stories etc should be under 1000 words. Send no more than two prose pieces.

Poems and prose should be original, previously unpublished and not currently
submitted or accepted for publication elsewhere. Send copies, not originals as submissions will not be returned.

Ensure each poem begins on a new page. If a poem takes more than one page then please number each page.

You must include a brief biography (two or three lines) as you would like it to appear in the magazine. This should be in the third person e.g. John Smith is a native of XXX and has published poetry in XXX, XXX and AAA.

You must also include a postal address for contributors copy.

Contributors will not receive any payment for their work but will receive a copy of the issue in which their work appears. Contributors may be invited to read their work at the launch of the magazine.

Some of the items published in the magazine may be included on the magazine website.

How to submit your work: By email to: editor@boynewriters.com This is our preferred method. However we will accept submissions by post to: Boyne Writers , 33 Avondale Drive, Trim, Co. Meath, Ireland

When sending by email include text both in body of email and as a single Word attachment (this is to ensure correct layout. We may, however, change your layout to suit our publication)

When sending by post: Submissions should be typed, with the author’s name on each sheet. No hand written texts. Ensure your text is proof read and laid out as intended. (We may, however, change your layout to suit our publication.) Include an email address where possible.

The copyright of each work remains with the author.

The South Circular, a quarterly e-journal, is currently seeking short story submissions for its second issue. Full details are available HERE.

For further information you can also read an interview with editor and publisher of The South Circular, Aoife Walsh, HERE.

We are delighted to announce our four winners for April, as chosen by acclaimed short story writer and novelist Kevin Barry, whose eagerly anticipated second short story collection Dark Lies the Island is released next month by Jonathan Cape. They are:

Braille of Brocade, by Mary Healy

The Long-Lost Father, by Cathy Sweeney

I’m Sorry, It’s Bad News, by Madeline Parsons

The Dispossessed, by Emma Purcell

Kevin had the following to say about his selection:

“Again this year I was struck by the high quality of the eight longlisted stories, and by the true notes that were struck in each and every one of them. It was as always terribly difficult to make a shortlist of four from the eight, but here are the stories I have opted for …

The Long-Lost Father … This was odd, and very funny, and knowing, and somehow or other – I have no idea how the writer achieved this effect – there was a kind of a strange domestic sweetness about it. It’s a very unusual contraption, which shows that a short story does not have to adhere to the established templates for the form. I think it’s a very successful piece, and I loved it.

The Dispossessed … Even lives that are half-glimpsed can be fully known, and what makes this story work is as much the information that’s withheld as the information that’s given. There’s a kind of compelling hauntedness about this quiet and sad piece set in a shared house in the faded Victorian suburbs of Dublin. Somehow the atmosphere of the house seeps into the story, and this is what makes the story.

Braille Of Brocade … This is a story that works on the accumulation of small, tightly-observed details,and the details are always aptly and cannily chosen, and as the details pile up, the story’s subtle and difficult emotions are sprung. Again, this is a story that thrives on its atmosphere, and here it’s a sombre and aching one that’s entirely in keeping with the story’s themes.

I’m Sorry, It’s Bad News … The darkest matter of all is weighed and dealt with in this very fine fiction. It never strays into sentiment, it is delivered in a strong and lucid prose, and underpinning all of its everyday tragedy there is a delicious, bleak humour. The character is perfectly realised, she lives and breathes on the page – I thought that was a first-rate short story. Wonderful.”

Don’t forget to join us on Thursday, April 26th at 7pm for a drinks reception and special reading of these stories at the Irish Writers’ Centre. It’s a free event and open to everyone. See you there!

In 2012 Over The Edge is continuing its exciting annual creative writing competition. The competition is open to both poets and fiction writers. The total prize money is €1,000. The best fiction entry will win €300. The best poetry entry will win €300. One of these will then be chosen as the overall winner and will receive an additional €400, giving the overall winner total prize money of €700 and the title Over The Edge New Writer of The Year 2012. The 2012 Over The Edge New Writer of The Year will be a Featured Reader at an Over The Edge: Open Reading to be scheduled in Galway City Library in Winter 2012/13. Salmon Poetry will read, without commitment to publish, a manuscript submitted to them by the winner in the poetry category. Doire Press will read, without commitment to publish, a manuscript of short stories submitted to them by the winner in the fiction category. The winning poems and the winning story will both be published in a special Over The Edge Tenth Birthday anthology which will be published during 2013.

Entries should be sent to Over The Edge, New Writer of the Year competition, 3 Carbry Road, Newcastle, Galway, Ireland with an accompanying SAE. Entries will be judged anonymously, so do not put your name on your poem(s) or story. Put your contact details on a separate sheet.

Full details HERE.