WINNERS OF THE MOTH SHORT STORY PRIZE 2023 Judged by Ottessa Moshfegh
1st prize The Brain Named Itself by Jude Whiley ‘Wow. I've never seen a story that credits adolescents with the actual depth they deserve. This story reaches far and wide as much as it turns intimately towards its tenderly dogmatic characters. And it is so wonderfully fluid in its swerves and the vacillating scope of its attentions, from war to drugs to toxic algae to moral principles. I was seduced by the writing and its colours and acuity, and moved by the story's sincerity and wisdom. What a feat, and what a joy to read!’
Jude, who lives near London, recently completed an MA in Creative Writing, and works as a freelance writer and makes music in his spare time. He has worked as a water-skiing instructor (which inspired him to write about toxic algae), a model (which inspired him to write about ketamine) and a journalist (which inspired him to write about nuclear bombs). His non-fiction has been published in WIRED, and his fiction was first published in The Moth last year. He was also commended in last year’s Moth Short Story Prize, judged by Sarah Hall. ‘To win this prize at the start of my career is a serious honour. I don’t have an agent or editor. My only readers are my grandpa and my girlfriend. To get this encouragement from Ottessa, whose work I admire, and The Moth, is special. Like lots of young writers, my art has been shaped by Irish writing – that of Yeats and Joyce especially, but also Beckett, Heaney and Wilde. To be published by the Irish Times feels awesome. I love being a writer.’ Jude Whiley
‘This story about a man getting pinned under his wife's car really snuck up on me in its absurdity. I admire both the writer's courage to delay the fulfilment of that which we expect of live-action dramatic fiction and the careful and precisely metred secretion of backstory and character psychology. It's a story of an accident that builds up our anxiety and then drives it away, leaving an empty, panicked feeling. And it's a very funny portrait of a marriage.’
Paul is based in the UK and works as a consultant to humanitarian organisations. He previously worked on coordination of humanitarian responses in countries as diverse as Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Georgia, Iraq and Liberia. Until 2020 he was Chief Operating Officer of the financial technology startup company Disberse, and he is currently working on leveraging artificial intelligence to improve public access to humanitarian expertise. His short fiction has been published by The White Review, Ambit, 3am Magazine and Litro, his non-fiction by Granta, Aeon, The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph. He has also presented sound installations – at TransEuropa Belgrade, Berlin Soundout! and the Vienna Biennale.
3rd prize The Body by Natalie Bevilacqua ‘Sometimes great writing charms you despite its horrors. This story is an excellent examination of young sexuality and friendship in the age of online sex chatrooms, but what impressed me most were the effortless and unexpected depictions of the characters' gestures and attitudes, and the descriptions of their bodies as they rise up out of childhood.’
Natalie graduated from Columbia University's MFA program last year and has a particular interest in feminism and technoparanoia. She recently moved to Spain, where she teaches English and befriends any and all stray cats. In her free time, she enjoys pastries, the colour orange and taking luxurious midday naps. Her work explores themes of girlhood, abjection and human connection in an increasingly virtual world. This is her first publication.
WINNERS OF THE MOTH SHORT STORY PRIZE 2022Judged by Sarah Hall
1st prize Cock's Eye Moon by Lara Saunders ‘This is a clear winner and a wonderful story ‒ tight, atmospheric, dramatic ‒ and it was really compelling to read from beginning to end. The narrative voice completely inhabits the character and filters the whole proceedings. The author really understands how to enclose and frame a short story, how to use character dynamics and development to increase tension and intrigue, and how to draw the reader into a disquieting world without losing authenticity and credibility. The prose is natural and evocative, descriptive but not overdone, with some absolutely beautiful phrasing. As with all great short stories it has its own torque, that subversive un-guessable feeling, a satisfying, and in this case tragic, payoff at the end.’
Lara Saunders is a creative writing graduate and social worker living and writing on Peramangk land in South Australia. Her work has been twice shortlisted for the Victoria University Short Story Prize and twice longlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize. She was a recipient of the 2021 SA Emerging Writers Fellowship and is currently working on a novel-length story.
‘I am so proud that it found a home within the beautifully crafted pages of The Moth.’ Lara Saunders
2nd prize Double Happiness by Louise Miller ‘I just love the strangeness and compression of this story, its tight focus and address, and the unpredictable quality. The details and observations are astute and the tone is very unsettling. The information withheld by the protagonist is interpretable by the reader and allows a greater sense of understanding and disquiet, as we know more than she... It’s a complete little gothic tale, domestically occult, surprising, but still emotionally moving and human. It pulls no punches, and chooses a careful narrative frame but the reader still has a (horrifying!) sense of what lies beyond its borders.’
Louise Miller was born in Glasgow, has lived in Sydney, Bahrain and Bali and now lives in London. She graduated from the MFA Writing programme at the University of Nebraska in Omaha in 2013. Her food-themed stories are a result of a curiosity for the surreal and relief from the demands of standing for long hours as a professional chef. Committed to writing, despite a day job with the NHS now, she is passionate about the short story form. 3rd prize If Ye Love Me by Joe Richards ‘A striding story that covers so much ground with really evocative detail and momentum. To begin with it seems like a memory piece but takes on a plot-life of its own, to become a complete narrative rather than just a reflection. The dynamics between boys, parents and overseers ‒ both neglectful and pastoral ‒ are so well portrayed, with heart-rending moments, humour and wit, and a real understanding of psychology.’
Joe Richards was born in Worcestershire in 1946 and studied Theatre at Dartington College of Arts at Hull University. He worked as an actor and director for many years and taught Theatre at Dartington and at Plymouth University. He has written plays for radio (BBC Radio 3) and for stage, including ‘Big Book for Girls’, a ‘glorious piss-take of 1930s girls’ boarding school adventure stories, described as ‘gleefully perverse’ by the Financial Times and ‘blissful’ by The Observer.
The judge also commended stories by David Hanson, Madeleine Rebbechi, Bernard Steeds and Jude Whiley
WINNERS OF THE MOTH SHORT STORY PRIZE 2021
Judged by Ali Smith
1st prize Lost City by Janice Deal ‘Janice Deal’s “Lost City” is such a good story, dimensional, far-reaching, with a strangeness that feels true. It anatomises narrative, and also the hows and wheres of how and where we imagine we live, and do live, and the inevitable deteriorations, physical and mental, of hope and spirit and promise. It holds these things very lightly so the effect is even more haunting, as haunting as that lost place in the forest or in the self that you can’t ever really map though you keep tripping over the kerb of it all your life. Its revelation of inevitable disaffection is so quiet and true it’s near-cataclysmic, and very everyday.’American Janice Deal signed up for a fiction-writing class at Northwestern University while working as a magazine editor in Chicago in the 1990s. That experience proved to be transformative, sparking within her a love of storytelling. Since then, her work has won the Cagibi Macaron Prize for fiction and has appeared in magazines including Fiction, The Sun and the Harvard Review Online. Her first story collection, The Decline of Pigeons, was a finalist in the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, and her debut novel, The Sound of Rabbits, is forthcoming from Regal House Publishing in the US.
2nd prize From Among the Dead With Go by Kathy Stevens
‘I loved this. It’s dry as f*ck, there’s not a sentence wasted, it’s funny and mordant and piercing and dark and well judged, and it’s a total delight. May this writer flourish.’
Kathy Stevens, who currently works as a butcher in Stratford-upon-Avon, studied English at Bath Spa University. She later earned a Master's in creative writing at UEA, winning the inaugural Kowitz Scholarship for a writer of limited financial means. Her fiction has appeared in The Moth, Litro, MIR and elsewhere, and she won the Bath Short Story Award in 2017.
3rd prize Miss Pauanui by Cait Kneller
‘It is funny and brutal. Its brutality is necessary and nourishing. You might say this story’s – a beauty.’ Cait Kneller lives in Auckland, New Zealand, where she works as a bookseller. Her writing has also appeared in Strong Words: The Best of the Landfall Essay Competition. She is working on a novel-in-stories, of which Miss Pauanui is a part.
The judge also commended stories by Evan Brookes and Barry Sheils
WINNERS OF THE MOTH SHORT STORY PRIZE 2020
Judged by Mark Haddon
1st prize Frankenstein’s Monster is Drunk, and the Sheep Have All Jumped the
Fences by Owen Booth
‘This felt like a winner from the very first sentence – “They’d dug him out of the glacier in 1946, pulled him out of the crevasse where he’d crawled after his Hollywood career had given up the ghost.” The language is confident. The idea is unexpected, eccentric and entertaining. And I could sense, already, the generosity which would underpin the whole story.’ Booth has had stories published in The White Review (he won the 2015 White Review Short Story Prize), The Moth, Gorse, Hotel Magazine, 3AM
Magazine and Best British
Short Stories 2018, among others. His first book, What We’re Teaching Our Sons, described by the Guardian as a ‘comic oddity with bite’ was shortlisted for the 2019
McKitterick Prize. His debut novel, The
All-True Adventures (And Rare Education) of The Daredevil Daniel Bones, has
just been published by 4th Estate. The book, which tells the story of
a young man’s miseducation on a wild-swimming journey around 1880s Europe, was
inspired by the career and character of the County Kildare-born aquatic
adventurer, showman and magnificent self-publicist ‘Captain’ Paul Boyton. 2nd prize Year of the Pig by Gabriel Smith ‘Many writers of short stories, knowing that they have only a
few pages at their disposal, try too hard: too much emotion; too many events;
too many words. They paint in all the colours for fear that the reader will not
get the picture. This story does exactly the opposite. It trusts the reader,
which in turn makes the writer – and the writing – seem confident. I still don’t know precisely what is happening in the story
– or beyond the edges of the story – but the fact that I’m still wondering is a
sign of its quality.’ Gabriel Smith's fiction
has previously appeared in The Moth, New York Tyrant Magazine, The Barely South Review and Thought Catalog. He writes about boxing
for Hobart too. His agent is
currently shopping around his first novel, ‘Dead Parents’. 3rd prize Going Places by Natalie Southworth ‘This story deftly handles a subject – two teenage girls,
Dale and Yvette, bored with small town life and coming to terms with their
sexuality – which could go very wrong in less skilful hands,’ says Haddon.
‘After Dale’s mother dies, Dale’s father slowly falls to pieces and the house
is gradually taken over by Dale, Yvette and the boys Dale invites round. Dale
understands how much power they have over these boys but not the dangers of using
it. There is violence but it is neither manipulative nor sensational and the
characters are as messy and conflicted as actual human beings, which is
something all realism should aim for.’ Natalie Southworth
was born in the UK and now lives in Montreal. Her short stories have won the
Brighton Short Story Prize and have been shortlisted for The New
Quarterly’s Peter
Hinchcliffe short fiction award, the
Federation of BC Writer’s short fiction contest, and Prairie Fire’s short fiction prize in Canada. She has an MFA from
the University of British Columbia, where she was a member of the editorial
board for Prism International. ‘Going
Places’ is part of a collection of short stories that is close to completion.
WINNERS OF THE MOTH SHORT STORY PRIZE 2019 Judged by Kit de Waal
1st prize Journeys by Conor Crummey ‘At
no time was I aware of the words on the page. I was on a journey, I was in a
taxi, I was frightened for my life … The story is every bit as clever as it is
emotional, with the cleverness hidden in its simplicity. No easy task.
Well done. More please.’
Conor
Crummey who was born and grew up in Belfast and now lives in London, where he
is a lecturer in Public Law at Queen Mary University of London, and is
completing a PhD at University College London in legal philosophy and
constitutional law. ‘To
have drawn praise from a writer of Kit de Waal’s talent and standing, and to
see my story in a publication that has done as much for Irish writers as The
Moth, is the most astounding and unexpected affirmation I could have
imagined. Thank you to Kit, to The Moth, and to anyone who might
read this. I have stewed with the idea of sending stories out into the world
before, but never quite had the courage. If anyone has contemplated doing the
same, go for it! You never know what might happen.’ 2nd prize Roots by B. S. Cummings ‘An original
story in an entirely convincing world. Some beautiful touches and a
strong sense of place. The restraint in the telling is beautiful,
heightening the sense of tragedy and loss. Entirely believable. I
loved it.’
Cummings is a short story writer
born in the UK and now living in South Australia. She has had stories
published in both the UK and Australia, including the Big Issue and
the Bath Short Story Anthology. She has also been shortlisted in
the Overland Story Wine Prize and received three special commendations from the
Scarlett Stiletto Crime and Mystery Short Story Awards. She is currently
working on a longer work of fiction – a supernatural thriller set in a remote
Australian school.
3rd prize The Egg by Patricia Traxler ‘Very
well balanced and well crafted. A story that you want to read again as
soon as it’s over. The story brings the reader right up close to passion and
its loss, loneliness and despair. A very unusual take on a subject we all
think we know but this is fresh and exciting.’
Traxler,
a two-time Bunting Poetry Fellow at Radcliffe, is the author of four poetry
collections and a novel, Blood. Her writing has appeared widely,
including in The Nation, The Boston Review, Agni, Ploughshares, Glimmer
Train, the LA Times and Best American Poetry.
She has read or served as resident poet at many universities, including Ohio
State, Harvard University, the University of Montana, Utah State and the
University of California San Diego. Traxler received the 2019 Kansas Book Award
in Poetry for her fourth volume, Naming the Fires. ‘The Egg’ is
part of her forthcoming short story collection, I'll Always Love You (unless
you love me, too) which will be published later this year. This is her
first publication in an Irish magazine.
‘My Irish grandmother, Honora (Nora) Barry Dunne, was a poet from Whitegate,
County Cork who immigrated to the US in her twenties. She lived with us during
a lot of my childhood, and she and I became very close. And of course it was
she who gave me poetry … I think Gran would have
been absolutely thrilled to see her granddaughter published in an Irish
literary magazine.’ Stories by the following writers were also commended: Catherine Chidgey, Chris Edwards-Pritchard and Andrea Watts
WINNERS OF THE MOTH SHORT STORY PRIZE 2018 Judged by Kevin Barry
1st prize Psychobabble by Caoilinn Hughes ‘Psychobabble is a story that walks a difficult road in terms of its tone or note – it’s a dark situation dealt with not lightly but with an effervescence in the line, in the sentence-making, and it’s this vivacity that elevates the piece above the rest. It’s both poignant and very funny, emotional yet sardonic. The writer has great control.’ Caoilinn Hughes is an Irish writer whose novel Orchid & the Wasp (Oneworld/Hogarth Press) was described by John Banville as ‘an ambitious, richly inventive and highly entertaining account of the way we live now’, by Elle as ‘a gem of a novel’, and by the Sunday Times as a ‘highly ambitious fiction debut containing multitudes.’ Her poetry collection Gathering Evidence (Carcanet, 2014) won the Irish Times Shine/Strong Award. A fellow of the James Merrill Foundation, the Bogliasco Foundation, Art Omi, the Centre Culturel Irlandais and the Tin House Workshop, Hughes has received a Literature Bursary Award and Travel & Training Awards from the Arts Council of Ireland, and Ireland Funds Monaco Award. Her work has appeared in Tin House, Granta, POETRY, Best British Poetry, Best NZ Poems, BBC Radio 3 and elsewhere. She has a PhD from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, and recently held a 3-year Visiting Writer position at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. ‘The Moth magazine is a thing of beauty. And Kevin Barry is a singular storyteller and stylist I’ve long admired. Publishing a debut novel is an emotionally-blustery, sanity-testing endeavour. This seal of approval is superglue for the sanity! I am mighty grateful. Neither of these stories is easygoing or biddable and it takes just the right reader and opportunity to allow such stories to come to life. Thank you, Kevin Barry, thank you, The Moth, thank you, dear reader!’
‘Postcards are a Thing of the Past is a narrative that shows the boundless possibilities of the short story as a form – it could be described almost as a kind of erotic travelogue, but the important movement is internal, or within. It’s about the heart, essentially, and there is real intensity in the writing, and some astonishing jolts in the language.’
Tracey Slaughter is a fiction writer and poet from New Zealand. Her stories and poems have received many awards, including the Bridport Prize (2014), two Katherine Mansfield Awards, and shortlistings for both the Manchester Fiction Prize and Manchester Poetry Prize (2015). Her most recent work is the collection of short stories deleted scenes for lovers (Victoria University Press, 2016), and a volume of poetry entitled conventional weapons is due for publication in 2019. She teaches creative writing at the University of Waikato, where she edits the literary journal Mayhem.3rd prize Standard Deviation by Caoilinn Hughes ‘Standard Deviation is the story of an odd encounter, and it feels very close-in for the reader but it’s kind of mysterious, too. Line by line, it’s very carefully arranged, and it follows its own tune or music, and the contemporary dressing of the story’s world is beautifully done and never feels forced.’ READ THE 2018 WINNING STORY HERE
WINNERS OF THE MOTH SHORT STORY PRIZE 2017 Judged by Belinda McKeon
1st prize Nightjar
by Georgina Aboud
‘This story of a woman dealing with
the aftermath of her sister’s murder on a tiny, often stranded island is
immensely powerful because of the author’s instinct for form. An assured
narrative spine – the unfinished composition of the lost sister – runs through
the story, but with such subtlety and grace that many other elements are
allowed to develop with richness and depth: the islanders’ isolation and what
it does to them; the difficult reality of the protagonist’s relationship with
her damaged parents; the deliciously slow and wary progress of a love affair. A
shimmering, unnerving creation which surfaces in the mind over and over, long
after reading.’
Much of Aboud’s working life has been
spent in international development, focusing on gender, climate change and food
security. She observed elections in Kosovo, Macedonia and Ukraine during the
Orange Revolution, collaborated with forest and mountain communities in India
and Colombia, worked on briefing papers in Bangladesh and pulled pints in Peru.
She now lives in Brighton, where she is working on a novel and a screenplay.
‘This is seriously the best news I’ve
had all year,’ says Aboud. ‘I am completely made up.’ 2nd prize In the Orchard by Faith Merino
‘The nieces of Saint
Miguel Ponce de Leon – not yet officially canonised, but surely soon – live
with his useless legacy and with the two small boys whose existence it is their
job to safeguard. This is a story of ripely unfurling menace and of the clashing
desires of two women, living together in a parched, indifferent place. The
mystery and terror of childhood, and of children as incomprehensible beings, is
darkly evoked in writing which draws its strength from the strangeness and
unlikeliness it is not afraid to entertain.’
The winner of The Jabberwock Review’s Nancy D. Hargrove Editors’ Prize
for Fiction and the recipient of a Writing By Writers fellowship, Faith’s short
stories have appeared or are forthcoming in The Jabberwock Review, Calliope,
and Open Windows III. She lives in Sacramento, California with her
husband, two young sons and two unscrupulous dogs.
3rd prize The Giantess
Batsheba by Owen Booth
‘Audacious as a fairytale,
boundless as a myth, this story somehow manages to charm through all its
savagery and darkness. The giantess of the title is a strongwoman - a very,
very strong woman - paraded around the country by her obnoxiously god-fearing owner;
her job is to make him money by winning fights with the men who insist on
pitting themselves against her. A teenage girl travels with them, as unfree as
the giantess and just as strong in her own way. Much happens in this tale and
nothing happens; the inevitable comes pounding through. But the muscular
inventiveness and the clear-headedness of the writing keep the reader gripped
in unexpected and compelling ways.’ Owen Booth’s short stories
have appeared in The White Review, Gorse, Hotel, Spur
and 3AM Magazine, among others. He won the 2015 White Review Short
Story Prize. He is currently finishing a comic/experimental novel but doesn’t
want to jinx it.
Stories by the following
writers were also commended:
READ THE 2017 WINNING STORIES HERE
WINNERS OF THE MOTH SHORT STORY PRIZE 2016 Judged by John Boyne
1st prize Yellow Belly by Nikki McWatters ‘This story, set in Australia, is compelling for its careful juxtaposition of childhood innocence with the darker sides of family life. The language and descriptive powers of the author suggest a great talent.’
Nikki McWatters, who is from Australia, has worked in television acting and drama teaching, and also holds a law degree, but her writing career took off when her memoir, One Way Or Another: The Girl Who Loved Rock Stars, was shortlisted for a Queensland Premier’s Literary Award. Her new young adult novel set in Europe during the witch hunts, is being released in November, and she’s currently writing a novel set in Ireland.
‘It came as a very welcome surprise to learn that I’d won The Moth Short Story Prize,’ says McWatters. ‘I have a deep respect for John Boyne’s work so it was an extra honour to have had my story chosen by him.’ 2nd prize Puddles by Sheila Armstrong ‘There’s an intensity to this story that is brilliantly controlled. Written with almost no dialogue, the sense of pain that lingers over a single street is highly effective in moving the reader.’
Sheila Armstrong is a writer and editor. She grew up in the west of Ireland and is now based in Dublin. She has been published in The South Circular, Literary Orphans, The Irish Independent, Litro magazine and gorse. In 2015, she was nominated for a Hennessy Award in the First Fiction category, and she contributed to Young Irelanders, a short story collection published by New Island Books. She is currently working on her first collection of short fiction. 3rd prize The Hummingbirds by Kelly McCaughrain ‘After a brilliant opening sentence, The Hummingbirds achieves a lightness of touch that is a delight to read. The author’s skill with dialogue is also on display throughout.’
Kelly McCaughrain is 38 and lives in Belfast. She was shortlisted for the Times/Chickenhouse Children’s Fiction Prize 2013 and her first YA novel, Flying Tips for Flightless Birds, will be published by Walker Books next year. When she’s not writing, she works as a student note taker, volunteers with the Fighting Words Belfast creative writing project, and takes long holidays in her 1967 classic campervan, Gerda, with her 1977 classic husband, Michael. She recently completed an English and Creative Writing Degree at Queens University Belfast. This is her first publication. READ THE 2016 WINNING STORIES HERE
WINNERS OF THE MOTH SHORT STORY PRIZE 2015 Judged by Donal Ryan
1st prize Pyjama
Squid by Marc Phillips
‘Pyjama Squid is a gorgeous story. I
love the perfectly real, conversational narrative voice, the blend of
confession and elegy, and Jacob’s boyish wonder, even in his manhood ... This
is vibrant, tough, fearless, virtuosic writing. This story is heartbreakingly
sad and very beautiful and it blew me away.’
Marc Phillips won the Fish Short Story Prize in 2004. His first novel, The
Legend of Sander Grant (Telegram Books 2009), seemed to please some people.
He walked away from writing to make the mistakes necessary for new stories.
He’s back now.
2nd prize December Swimmers by Paul Lenehan
‘Elegiac in nature, poetically
rendered, and heartbreakingly sad. Here’s a life gone askew and slowly
surrendered, a drawn-out testing of the darkest waters, witnessed by a loving,
helpless father. Language used to devastating effect.’
Paul Lenehan, from Dublin, was twice shortlisted for the Hennessy/Sunday
Tribune short story award, and received an MA in Creative Writing from the
University of Glamorgan (now University of South Wales). December Swimmers was
shortlisted for the Irish Short Story of the Year 2015.
3rd
prize Pride Goes by Richard
Newton
A buoyant tale, its narrator’s
world-weariness notwithstanding. The black comedy of Piet Cronje’s fate and the
narrative wound around it allow a wider meditation; deeper questions are drawn
from the bloke-ish musings of our hero, on the nature of society, the ways we
organise ourselves into stratum, the seeming pointlessness of our march towards
our own extinction and the things we do to distract ourselves from the nearness
of the void. A fantastically, fiendishly clever story.’
Richard Newton was born in the UK in 1967 and grew up in Africa. He became a
full-time travel writer in 1989, contributing to The Daily Telegraph, The
Times, The Sunday Times, and The Guardian, and broadcasting for BBC
Radio 4. Since 2003, he has been a columnist and feature writer for the
American magazine Global Traveler.
His short stories have won prizes in both the United States and the UK.
Stories by the following writers were
also commended: Wendy Riley, Gerard McKeown, Laura Morgan and Sean Lusk.
READ THE 2015 WINNING STORIES HERE
WINNERS OF THE MOTH SHORT STORY PRIZE 2014
1st prize Emily by Mandy Beaumont ‘For its brutal power, its physical presence and overall execution
... This is the work of a genuine short story writer, someone who understands
the internal balances and geometry of the form.’
Mandy Beaumont is an Australian-based writer who has a Research Masters in
Creative Writing and teaches creative writing at Griffith University. She was
the poet in residence at the State Library of Queensland and has been published
widely. She has just finished writing her first novel and hopes to publish this
soon.
2nd prize Clemence and Constance Go West by Charlotte Bondy ‘Genuine originality and a life-affirming sweetness cinched to a
wonderful ending.’
Charlotte Bondy
is 24 years old and from Toronto. She has spent the last year living in Dublin,
completing an M. Phil in Creative Writing at Trinity College and has just
returned to Canada.
3rd prize Upcycle by June Caldwell ‘Charged
language and a ferocious imagination; mad as a bag of spiders and genuine
talent.’
June worked as a journalist in
Ireland and the UK for many years. She was shortlisted twice for the RTÉ
Guide/Penguin Short Story Competition and is an award-winning blogger. Her work
has been published in The Moth, The Stinging Fly, Literary Orphans, RTÉ
Ten and Popshot as well as a non-fiction biography
of a Trouble’s moll with Gill and MacMillan in 2006.
Stories by the following writers were
also commended: Sharon Boyle, Tim Harding and Hilary Fannin. WINNERS OF THE MOTH SHORT STORY PRIZE 2013
judged by Martina Evans
1st prize Ghosties by Meadhbh Ní Eadhra ‘This pitch-perfect child’s voice
poetically reveals the darker adult world without losing a beat. As funny as it
is sad and utterly authentic.’
Meadhbh is from Galway. She is 24 years old and the author of two award-winning
Irish language books for young people, Rua and Fáinne Fí Fífí. She is
currently enrolled on the MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, and is
working on a short story collection based in Belfast, giving voice to those who
are marginalised.
2nd prize The Mighty Gary by Rob Perry ‘The Mighty Gary opened one world to the reader and then the main
character took us to another one, effortlessly surprising us with a true
storyteller’s skill so that it felt like the story couldn’t possibly have
happened any other way. Subtle heartbreaking humour.’
Rob is 25 and from Norwich. He is a recent graduate of the UEA creative
writing programme and has been shortlisted for the Bristol Short Story Prize.
Last year he won first prize in the Nottingham Short Story competition. He is
currently working on a novel.
Stories by the following writers were also commended: |
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