The Moth Short Story Prize

‘I’m beyond thrilled and completely shocked to win this prize. I started writing fiction about six years ago; my husband and a handful of friends have been my readers and supporters. I’d hoped as a writer my words would connect with someone, somewhere. That my story has resonated with Evie Wyld, a writer who I’ve long admired, is both surreal and immensely validating. Thank you to The Moth and to the Irish Times!’ Clare Roche

‘It took me right back to the loneliness of having a small baby, the specific physical horror of it ‒ a really beautiful rendering of how solitary you feel in that moment, and how open to the morbid you are.’ Evie Wyld

Clare Roche, who lives in Sydney, Australia, on Gadigal land, has been shortlisted for several literary prizes, including The Australian Prize for Fiction, and her poetry has been published in online journals at home, in Germany, the UK and the US.

Roche will be awarded €3,000 and her story is published as part of the summer fiction series in the Irish Times.

Read (Un)Tethered

2^ND PRIZE Bee Box by Martha Sprackland

‘I loved the cleverness of this story, unsettling and folkloric in the best way.’ Evie Wyld

Martha Sprackland is an editor, writer and translator. Her debut collection of poems, Citadel (Pavilion, 2020), was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and the Costa Poetry Award. Her fiction has been shortlisted for both the London Magazine's and Brick Lane Bookshop's short story prizes, and she is currently at work on a novel. Sprackland’s new translation of the poems and prose of sixteenth-century Spanish mystic St John of the Cross is forthcoming from Penguin Classics in the spring of 2026

Sprackland will spend a week at the luxury writing retreat, Circle of Misse, in France.

Read 'Bee Box'

3^rd PRIZE Small Bad Things by Shelley Hastings

‘I felt cold reading this, the fantastic expectation of violent horror. Loved it, and am still in the window with the protagonist.’ Evie Wyld

Shelley Hastings is a writer, artist and creative producer. Her stories have been published by Chroma Editions, Dear Damsels, Galley Beggar Press, Mechanics Institute Review, Southword and Thi Wurd. She recently won the European Writers Salon Prize and was shortlisted for the 2025 Desperate Literature Prize. She was the winner of the Seán O'Faoláin Short Story Prize and The Aurora Short Fiction Prize 2021. She was a finalist in the Manchester Short Fiction Prize and has been longlisted for The BBC Short Story Award. She is the co-recipient of UCL’s 2025 Trellis Arbor artist/researcher commission and works as a producer/arts facilitator at dementia charity Resonate Arts. She lives in London.

For her story, she will be awarded €1,000.

Read 'Small Bad Things'

COMMENDED STORIES

The Shack by Sally Bothroyd

Sally Bothroyd lives in Darwin, Australia. She’s entered around a hundred short story competitions over the past eight years, appearing on the occasional shortlist, and winning the Australasian Horror Writers’ Association’s short story competition in 2024. Her first novel, Brunswick Street Blues, was published by HQAustralia in 2022.

Stay by Finn Brown

Finn Brown’s (they/ them) writing lives in publications including Queer Life, Queer Love 2 (Muswell Press), The Raven Review, Booth Journal, Annie Journal, Meniscus Journal, The Bombay Review, The Bittersweet Review, Penumbra Literary, Obscene Pomegranate, Snowflake Magazine, Tension Literary and Texlandia Magazine. They are the editor at queer press t’ART.

Better Land by Aoife Inman

Aoife Inman is a writer from West Penwith, a peninsula at the furthest end of Cornwall. Her short fiction has been published in The London Magazine, shortlisted for the V.S. Pritchett Award and won the Brick Lane Short Story Prize 2021. She has a Masters from the University of Manchester, where her research focused on the relationship between memory and landscape in post-conflict communities. By day she works in publishing.

Offerings by Sophie James

Sophie James is a writer from Devon. Originally an actor, she trained at RADA and also teaches acting internationally. She has recently completed an MA in Creative and Life Writing at Goldsmiths and is working on a collection of semi-autobiographical short stories exploring the child self, connection and loneliness.

Basking Shark by J. G. Lynas

J. G. Lynas writes weird and speculative fiction. His work has been published in Strange Horizons, Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, Kaleidotrope, and the North American Review. His first chapbook, ‘Topsoil’, was published in November 2024 by Nightjar Press. He currently teaches Creative Writing at the University of

Mayflies by Susan Wigmore (UK)

Susan Wigmore has work published in various places including Fractured Lit, Reflex Fiction, Retreat West and National Flash Fiction. She won the Globe Soup Short Memoir 2022 and the Fish Flash Fiction Prize 2023. Her Oxford Prize winning piece appears in the 2024 Oxford Flash Fiction Anthology Transformations. She was shortlisted for the Bridport Short Story Prize 2024.

ABOUT THE PRIZE

Every year, a single author is asked to anonymously judge The Moth Short Story Prize, choosing three winning stories from entries submitted worldwide.

The winner receives €3,000, with the runners-up receiving a week-long stay at the wonderful Circle of Misse, and €1,000 respectively.

Previous judges include Martina Evans, John Boyne, Donal Ryan, Belinda McKeon, Mike McCormack, Kevin Barry, Ali Smith, Mark Haddon, Sarah Hall, Ottessa Moshfegh and Louise Kennedy.

The winning story is printed as part of the summer fiction series in the Irish Times, while the 2^nd and 3^rd-prize-winning stories are published in the Irish Times online.

Call 00 353 87 2657251 or email enquiries@themothmagazine.com for more details