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LONGLIST Flash Fiction Prize 2015

200 flash stories longlisted
(1285 flash stories submitted in total)

Jeffery Abbie Tingstad
Miracle Adam Tamashasky
Third Course Alan Cole
WHEN YOU WISH UPON A STAR Alex Reece Abbott
A FREE LUNCH Alex Reece Abbott
SOMETHING SWEET TO FINISH Alex Reece Abbott
The Gentleman Alistair Daniel
Shooting Season Allison Browning
Escape Angela Hickey
The Hungry Goddess Anita Lehmann
#Teaching Moment Ann-Marie Jerman
Late-Night Takeaway Anna McGrail
Penelope Anna McGrail
The Man in her Bed Anne Crosse
Shadows and Dreams Annette Bower
through slipstreams AYDIN MEHMET ALI
The Little Girl Inside Me Beata Anna Fijalkowska
Ivy Bernadette Gallagher
Tipping Point Bernie McQuillan
The loves of Efraim Cotter Beth Evans
Daughter Beth Grosart
GOTCHA Breda Nathan
The Button at the End of the World Brian Quat
Fruit Vines Bridget Helwig
Doubling Down Bruce Christiansen
THE RIDE Brynn Carroll
The Bird Kitchen bryony doran
Why? C Pringle
You Should Have Known Calysta Sylvester
I might go to Spain Carol Jones
The Transformation Caroline McCartney
First Time Carrie Beckwith
Not so Flash Carrie Beckwith
New Years Eve Celine Mescall
The Final Celine West
The soul is symphonic
(Little Red Riding Hood in midlife)
Ceridwen Buckmaster
Too good to be true Charles Knightley
Comrades Charlie Weaver Rolfe
Trash Fish chloe wilson
Gravity Christian Cook
Full Circle Christina Eagles
Pierrot Christina Eagles
How to Survive christina Sanders
Making a Man christina Sanders
My Hewo CJ Hribal
Witness clare proctor
Banana Squash clare proctor
Promises clare proctor
Men in Elk Country Coleman Pape
Horny Toad Colin Houghton
Winter Crystal Huynh
Suburban Spy Cynthia Buck
HOLIDAY CONVERSATIONS IN
MARRIED LIFE
damien donnelly
She Nose Dave Joy
The Comedy David Armstrong
A Small Price David Steward
Life in Lost Canyon Dawn Lowe
Why Dawn Lowe
Falling Short of a Lou Reed Song Deirdre Daly
Rapunzel Deirdre Daly
A Small Inconvenience Denise Drespling
50 Years Derek Keane
When Lorca Broke My Heart Devon Ronner
Too Close for Comfort E.L Norry
Noise Eamon Mc Guinness
The Muse Emily Devane
Life Sentence Emma Rea
A Taste for Rednecks Ericka Olsen Stefano
The Flute Evelyn Walsh
Billy Filipa (aka ‘Kaori’) Komuro (aka ‘Crawford’)
Family Holidays Gillian Walker
Only you’re not Gina Headden
The Proposal Hannah Shepard
Wasted Iain Napier
Dmitri my friend Iain Napier
Jackpot Iain Napier
Flash Ian Duckworth
A Prodigal Prays For
Harlem in Winter
Isabella David McCaffrey
Forwards, backwards, sideways Jackie Burgoyne
Wait Jackie Davis
Love Post GFC James Balian
Misconception James Murtha
Her First Steps Jamie Stacey
The Love I Don’t Tell Jamie Stacey
The Plastic Banana Jane Avery
The wish list Jane Fraser
When the power goes off Jane Fraser
There you go Jane Fraser
Burying the Truth Jane Rogers
Tea time Janet Duignan
The games people play Janet Duignan
Butterfly Buns Jason Akehurst
Song Jason Jackson
Girl, Bridge Jason Jackson
Paper Chain Dolls Jennifer Cairns
The Professor Jerome McFaden
The marriage of Lennie and Mike John Mulligan
Shadow or Shade John O’Connor
Our Billy John Stockdill
Cheesecloth John Wheway
Exclusive Control Jon Nixon
THE POWER OF FRIGHT JONATHAN FRANK
The Switch Jude Higgins
Upstairs Downstairs Jude Higgins
White Matter Julianna Holland
The Age of Progress Karen Baker
Regrets Kate Mahony
Camp B Katerina protopsaltis
The World of Modern Ballet Katerina protopsaltis
TV VS WALKING Katerina protopsaltis
Lana’s Day as a Poet Katherine West
The Dog Will Be Fine Katherine West
The Golden Toilet Kenneth Francis
The Re-gifting of Sisterly Love Kerrin O’Sullivan
Before the Tsunami Kirsty Seymour-Ure
Jill Kyle Macdowell
68th street Larry Fondation
Beyond Inside Laurence Davies
Lost at sea Lee Farnsworth
Broken Lee Farnsworth
Cafe de Paris
(Geneva, Switzerland)
Linda Nemec Foster
The Life and Times of
Mary Margaret McBride
Linda Rathburn
Shopping List Lisa Derrick
The Presage Lisa Fransson
SERIAL DATER Loraine Felce
CARE (taking) Lynn Blair
The Task List Maire Ryan
Not thirty yet Margaret Callaghan
Falling Margo Barnes
Epilogue to a Cutter’s Handbook Maria Kaplun
Home Marie Boland
Tick-tock Marie Parkins
The Talent Marjorie K. Kennedy
Land Of Stones Mark Smith
Robots Mark Sutz
Wreck Mark Sutz
Com Marked
Macaroon Bar martin shiel
Three little words maureen flynn
The Great Wheel Turns Maureen Gallagher
The Shortest Distance
Between Two Places
Melissa Ostrom
SOMETIME AHEAD Michael Kirby
BLAST FROM THE PAST Michael Kirby
DARKROOM Michelle Allford
Nephew Michelle Coyne
Twig Michelle Wright
Rare Expectations Monica Goldberg
Earth Excavation Summary Monica Hileman
Regret Nancy Ludmerer
Tiffy Nancy Ludmerer
Transformation Nicholas Ruddock
Short back and sides. Noel Wills
Animals Pamela Banayoti
Fifty Knots Pat Murphy
Candy patria hatami
A Full House Patricia Demery
Oranges are not the only fruit Patricia Kyne
Thank You For Holding Paul Bassett Davies
Pigs for Breakfast Paul Rankin
His Journey Paul Stabell
Ice Pauline Murphy
An equal opportunities employer PJ Stephenson
The Other Lucy Jordan Polly Hall
A Fine Goodbye Ren Watson
The Bridge Richard Weems
Edacious Riona Judge McCormack
MACKEREL Robert Barrett
BOY Robert Barrett
The Owl and the Pussy-Cat Roger Vickery
Soul-Surfing Ron Jones
Maud Yearns to Conform Rose Servitova
Fishing With Frank Sinatra Ruby Speechley
The Ride Rucha Modak
Road Kill Russell Reader
When Your Babies are Dried… Ruth Tamiatto
Storm Sara Roberts
Not a Party Girl Sarah Bianchi
Happy Birthday Victor seamus scanlon
The Parking Angel seamus scanlon
The Wardrobe Sharon Bennett
Appropriation Artist Sheila Mannix
Erika Dent has the Last Word Sheila Mannix
Compensation Simon Kensdale
Cancer Siobhan Devoy
Accidents Stella MacAleese
Dark Eyes Stephanie Shields
Trade-Off Sultana Banulescu
Boxing Day Susan McCreery
Bullet Points Susan Zatland
Missing Tony O’Prey
When Philippa Met Ava Tony Tysoe
What You Wish For Tom Scruton
MEET ME IN BELFAST trish leake
Falling Una Mannion
My father’s dog Veronica Bright
Buy One Get One Free Wallace Barnes
Barbs West Foster
Some Enchanted Evening Will Ingrams
A gap in the curtains William Konarzewski
Explanations Xanthi Barker

Fish Books

Fish Anthology 2024

Fish Anthology 2024

Vivid, astute, gripping, evocative. These stories utterly transported me. – Sarah Hall (Short Story)

In the landscape of emotion and folly, Flash writers are a fearless lot – these stories prove it. – Michelle Elvy (Flash Fiction)

… combining the personal and particular with the universal, each touching in surprising ways … experiences that burn deep, that need to be told. – Sean Lusk (Memoir)

Strong poems. First place is a poem I wish I’d written! – Billy Collins (Poetry)


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Fish Anthology 2023

Fish Anthology 2023

… a showcase of disquiet, tension, subversion and surprise …
so many skilled pieces … gem-like, compressed and glinting, little worlds in entirety that refracted life and ideas … What a joy!
– Sarah Hall

… memoirs pinpointing precise
feelings of loss and longing and desire.
– Sean Lusk

What a pleasure to watch these poets’ minds at work, guiding us this way and that.
– Billy Collins


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Fish Anthology 2022

‘… delightful, lively send-up … A vivid imagination is at play here, and a fine frenzy is the result.’ – Billy Collins
‘… laying frames of scenic detail to compose a lyric collage … enticing … resonates compellingly. … explosive off-screen drama arises through subtly-selected detail. Sharp, clever, economical, tongue-in-cheek.’ – Tracey Slaughter


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Fish Anthology 2021

Fish Anthology 2021

Brave stories of danger and heart and sincerity.
Some risk everything outright, some are desperately quiet, but their intensity lies in what is unsaid and off the page.
These are brilliant pieces from bright, new voices.
A thrill to read.
~ Emily Ruskovich


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Fish Anthology 2020

Fish Anthology 2020

I could see great stretches of imagination. I saw experimentation. I saw novelty with voice and style. I saw sentences that embraced both meaning and music. ~ Colum McCann


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Fish Anthology 2019

These glorious pieces have spun across the globe – pit-stopping in Japan, the Aussie outback, Vancouver, Paris, Amsterdam and our own Hibernian shores – traversing times past, present and imagined future as deftly as they mine the secret tunnels of the human heart. Enjoy the cavalcade. – Mia Gallagher


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Fish Anthology 2019

Fish Anthology 2018

The standard is high, in terms of the emotional impact these writers managed to wring from just a few pages. – Billy O’Callaghan

Loop-de-loopy, fizz, and dazzle … unique and compelling—compressed, expansive, and surprising. – Sherrie Flick

Every page oozes with a sense of place and time. – Marti Leimbach

Energetic, dense with detail … engages us in the act of seeing, reminds us that attention is itself a form of praise. – Ellen Bass


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Fish Anthology 2017

Fish Anthology 2017

Dead Souls has the magic surplus of meaning that characterises fine examples of the form – Neel Mukherjee
I was looking for terrific writing of course – something Fish attracts in spades, and I was richly rewarded right across the spectrum – Vanessa Gebbie
Really excellent – skilfully woven – Chris Stewart
Remarkable – Jo Shapcott


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Fish Anthology 2016

The practitioners of the art of brevity and super-brevity whose work is in this book have mastered the skills and distilled and double-distilled their work like the finest whiskey.


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Sunrise Sunset by Tina Pisco

Sunrise Sunset

€12  (incl. p&p)   Sunrise Sunset by Tina Pisco Read Irish Times review by Claire Looby Surreal, sad, zany, funny, Tina Pisco’s stories are drawn from gritty experience as much as the swirling clouds of the imagination.  An astute, empathetic, sometimes savage observer, she brings her characters to life. They dance themselves onto the pages, […]


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Fish Anthology 2015

Fish Anthology 2015

How do we transform personal experience of pain into literature? How do we create and then chisel away at those images of others, of loss, of suffering, of unspeakable helplessness so that they become works of art that aim for a shared humanity? The pieces selected here seem to prompt all these questions and the best of them offer some great answers.
– Carmen Bugan.


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Fish Anthology 2014

Fish Anthology 2014

What a high standard all round – of craft, imagination and originality: and what a wide range of feeling and vision.
Ruth Padel

I was struck by how funny many of the stories are, several of them joyously so – they are madcap and eccentric and great fun. Others – despite restrained and elegant prose – managed to be devastating. All of them are the work of writers with talent.
Claire Kilroy


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Fish Anthology 2013

Fish Anthology 2013

The writing comes first, the bottom line comes last. And sandwiched between is an eye for the innovative, the inventive and the extraordinary.


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Fish Anthology 2012

A new collection from around the globe: innovative, exciting, invigorating work from the writers and poets who will be making waves for some time to come. David Mitchell, Michael Collins, David Shields and Billy Collins selected the stories, flash fiction, memoirs and poems in this anthology.


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Fish Anthology 2011

Reading the one page stories I was a little dazzled, and disappointed that I couldn’t give the prize to everybody. It’s such a tight format, every word must count, every punctuation mark. ‘The Long Wet Grass’ is a masterly bit of story telling … I still can’t get it out of my mind.
– Chris Stewart


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Fish Anthology 2010

The perfectly achieved story transcends the limitations of space with profundity and insight. What I look for in fiction, of whatever length, is authenticity and intensity of feeling. I demand to be moved, to be transported, to be introduced into other lives. The stories I have selected for this anthology have managed this. – Ronan Bennett, Short Story Judge.


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Fish Anthology 2009 – Ten Pint Ted

I sing those who are published here – they have done a very fine job. It is difficult to create from dust, which is what writers do. It is an honour to have read your work. – Colum McCann


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Fish Anthology 2008 – Harlem River Blues

The entries into this year’s Fish Short Story Prize were universally strong. From these the judges have selected winners, we believe, of exceptional virtue. – Carlo Gebler


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Fish Anthology 2007

I was amazed and delighted at the range and quality of these stories. Every one of them was interesting, well-written, beautifully crafted and, as a short-story must, every one of them focused my attention on that very curtailed tableau which a short-story necessarily sets before us. – Michael Collins


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Fish Anthology 2006 – Grandmother, Girl, Wolf and Other Stories

These stories voice all that is vibrant about the form. – Gerard Donovan. Very short stories pack a poetic punch. Each of these holds its own surprise, or two. Dive into these seemingly small worlds. You’ll come up anew. – Angela Jane Fountas


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All the King’s Horses – Anthology of Historical Short Stories

Each of the pieces here has been chosen for its excellence. They are a delightfully varied assortment. More than usual for an anthology, this is a compendium of all the different ways that fiction can succeed. I invite you to turn to ‘All the King’s Horses’. The past is here. Begin.
– Michel Faber


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Fish Anthology 2005 – The Mountains of Mars and Other Stories

Literary anthologies, especially of new work, act as a kind of indicator to a society’s concerns. This Short Story collection, such a sharp and useful enterprise, goes beyond that. Its internationality demonstrates how our concerns are held in common across the globe. – Frank Delaney


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Fish Anthology 2004 – Spoonface and Other Stories

From the daily routine of a career in ‘Spoonface’, to the powerful, recurring image of a freezer in ‘Shadow Lives’. It was the remarkable focus on the ordinary that made these Fish short stories such a pleasure to read. – Hugo Hamilton


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Feathers & Cigarettes

In a world where twenty screens of bullshit seem to be revolving without respite … there is nothing that can surpass the ‘explosion of art’ and its obstinate insistence on making sense of things. These dedicated scribes, as though some secret society, heroically, humbly, are espousing a noble cause.
– Pat McCabe


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Franklin’s Grace

It’s supposed to be a short form, the good story, but it has about it a largeness I love. There is something to admire in all these tales, these strange, insistent invention. They take place in a rich and satisfying mixture of places, countries of the mind and heart. – Christopher Hope


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Asylum 1928

There are fine stories in this new anthology, some small and intimate, some reaching out through the personal for a wider, more universal perspective, wishing to tell a story – grand, simple, complex or everyday, wishing to engage you the reader. – Kate O’Riodan


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Five O’Clock Shadow

I feel like issuing a health warning with this Fish Anthology ­ these stories may seriously damage your outlook – Here the writers view the world in their unique way, and have the imagination, talent, and the courage to refine it into that most surprising of all art forms ­ the short story. – Clem Cairns.


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From the Bering Strait

Every story in this book makes its own original way in the world. knowing which are the telling moments, and showing them to us. And as the narrator of the winning story casually remarks, ‘Sometimes its the small things that amaze me’ – Molly McCloskey


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Scrap Magic

The stories here possess the difference, the quirkiness and the spark. They follow their own road and their own ideas their own way. It is a valuable quality which makes this collection a varied one. Read it, I hope you say to yourself like I did on many occasions, ‘That’s deadly. How did they think of that?’ – Eamonn Sweeney


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Dog Day

Really good short stories like these, don’t read like they were written. They read like they simply grew on the page. – Joseph O’Connor


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The Stranger

The writers in this collection can write short stories . . . their quality is the only thing they have in common. – Roddy Doyle


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The Fish Garden

This is the first volume of short stories from Ireland’s newest publishing house. We are proud that fish has enabled 15 budding new writers be published in this anthology, and I look forward to seeing many of them in print again.


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12 Miles Out – a novel by Nick Wright

12 Miles Out was selected by David Mitchell as the winner of the Fish Unpublished Novel Award.
A love story, thriller and historical novel; funny and sad, uplifting and enlightening.


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Altergeist – a novel by Tim Booth

You only know who you can’t trust. You can’t trust the law, because there’s none in New Ireland. You can’t trust the Church, because they think they’re the law. And you can’t trust the State, because they think they’re the Church And most of all, you can’t trust your friends, because you can’t remember who they were anymore.


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Small City Blues numbers 1 to 51 – a novel by Martin Kelleher

A memoir of urban life, chronicled through its central character, Mackey. From momentary reflections to stories about his break with childhood and adolescence, the early introduction to the Big World, the discovery of romance and then love, the powerlessness of ordinary people, the weaknesses that end in disappointment and the strengths that help them seek redemption and belonging.


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The Woman Who Swallowed the Book of Kells – Collection of Short Stories by Ian Wild

Ian Wild’s stories mix Monty Python with Hammer Horror, and the Beatles with Shakespeare, but his anarchic style and sense of humour remain very much his own in this collection of tall tales from another planet. Where else would you find vengeful organs, the inside story of Eleanor Rigby, mobile moustaches, and Vikings looting a Cork City branch of Abracababra?


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News & Articles

Fish Anthology 2024

Fish Anthology 2024 LAUNCH

11th June 2024
Monday 15th July at 6:30 Marino (Old Methodist) Church Bantry, West Cork, Ireland The Launch of the Fish Anthology 2024 was held in this charming old methodist church. Many of the authors published in the Anthology read from their work, to showcase sample of  the talent in this book.  We had a get together of […]

Poetry Prize 2024: Results

15th May 2024
  Winners Short-list Long-list     Here are the winners of the Fish Poetry Prize 2024, selected by Billy Collins, to be published in the Fish Anthology 2024. Below you will find short biographies of the winners and the Long and Short Lists. From all of us at Fish we congratulate the poets whose poems […]

Short Story Prize 2023/24: RESULTS

10th April 2024
Winners Short-list Long-list   On behalf of all of us at Fish, congratulations to all of you who made the long and the short-lists.  Apologies for the delay in this announcement. The 10 winners will be published in the Fish Anthology 2024. The launch will be during the West Cork Literary Festival, Bantry, Ireland – […]

Flash Fiction Prize 2024: RESULTS

10th April 2024
Winners Short-list Long-list   From all of us at Fish, thank you for entering your flashes. Congratulations to the writers who  were short or long-listed, and in particular to the 11 winners whose flash stories will be published in the Fish Anthology 2024. The launch will be during the West Cork Literary Festival, Bantry, Ireland […]

Short Memoir Prize 2024: RESULTS

1st April 2024
Winners Short-list Long-list   On behalf of all of us at Fish, we congratulate the 10 winners who’s memoir made it into the Fish Anthology 2024 (due to be launched in July ’24 at the West Cork Literary Festival), and to those writers who made the long and short-lists, well done too.  Thank you to Sean […]

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