Winners

Short-list

Long-list

 

---

 

Here are the winners of the Fish Poetry Prize 2025, selected by Billy Collins, to be published in the Fish Anthology 2025.

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 made it here. There were 1,886 entries and competition was very tough.

The Fish Anthology will  be launched as part of the West Cork Literary Festival, (Marino Church, Bantry, West Cork Wednesday 16th July – 18.30.) All are welcome!

 

 

FIRST PRIZE:

The Harvesters by Michael Lavers  (Read Winning Poem)

Another of Michael Lavers’s poem, On Cabbages, is an honorary mention. 

 

 

SECOND PRIZE:

Prayer at the Cove by Wes Lee

 

 

THIRD PRIZE:

A zuihitsu on how everything is about my estranged father by Sue Burge

 

 

 

HONORARY MENTIONS (In no particular order): 

 

On Meeting Shakespeare in the Supermarket  by Kate Bailey

 

 

Aubade to my Phlebotomist  by Partridge Boswel

 

 

Blitzkrieg in the Library by Seamus Scanlon

 

 

Whatever else by Jane Williams

 

 

The Fisherboy´s Knots by Paris Rosemont

 

 

Kells Turning by Elaine O’Connor

 

 

 

 

BIOGRAPHIES

Michael Lavers is the author of two poetry collections, After Earth and The Inextinguishable, both published by the University of Tampa Press. His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, The Kenyon Review, AGNI, Southwest Review, The Georgia Review, and elsewhere. He has been awarded the University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor’s International Poetry Prize, the Moth Poetry Prize, and theBridport Poetry Prize. He teaches poetry at Brigham Young University.

Wes Lee has three poetry collections. Most recently she was  awarded the Magma Editors’ Prize 2024/05; the 2024 Free Verse Prize, by The Poetry Society, in London; the Heroines/Joyce Parkes Women’s Writing Prize 2022, in New South Wales, and placed in The Plaza Poetry Prize 2025. Her short story ‘How They Live Now’ was the subject of The Stinging Fly Podcast for September 2022, originally selected by Sally Rooney and read by Susannah Dickey, in Dublin.

Sue Burge is a freelance writer, mentor and editor based in North Norfolk, UK. She is also a film-studies tutor with a penchant for silent film, road movies and David Lynch. Her most recent poetry collection, The Artificial Parisienne (Live Canon 2024 ), explores the alter ego she left behind in Paris three decades ago and her edgy on-going relationship with the city. Her eco-angst collection, watch it slowly fade, is forthcoming with Yaffle Press.

Kate Bailey is a violinist and musician who has always enjoyed writing, photography and languages on the side. Her house is rather like a jumble sale, and her garden like a jungle, and she suspects that these analogies extend to the contents of her brain. One of her biggest joys (other than music, eating and her family and friends) is listening to a blackbird singing. She is married with two grown-up daughters and lives in Oxford.

Partridge Boswell is the author of the 2024 Fool for Poetry Prize-winning chapbook Levis Corner House and Grolier Poetry Prize-winning collection Some Far Country. He is co-founder of Bookstock Literary Festival and teaches at Vallum Society for Education in Arts & Letters in Montreal. He troubadours widely with the bard band Los Lorcas—touring Ireland and West Cork’s inhabited islands in support of their new album Wild Island in June 2025.

Seamus Scanlon loves Fish so but not so, fish. Because a vegan. He explores the ambiguity of the Irish towards violence and pressing social issues like skorts in camogie.Recent fiction outings include Walking the Thin Line (Promethean); I Follow (2024 Fish Anthology). Recent drama outings include The McGowan Trilogy, Thomastown (May 2025). Recent gym outings, zero. Recent failings, greater than zero. Recent and recurrent longing, Organico (Bantry). Work in progress – The Skorts Trilogy (Play). www.seamusscanlon.com

Jane Williams was born in England to Irish and Australian parents and was raised in Australia. Widely published and anthologised, Jane is the author of several collections of poems and has featured at readings and festivals in countries including Ireland, Canada, Malaysia and Slovakia. Her poem Whatever else was written during a Hosking Houses Trust Writers’ residency near Stratford-Upon-Avon. Jane lives in Lutruwita/Tasmania. For more: janecwilliams.com

Paris Rosemont is an Asian-Australian poet and author of Banana Girl (2023) and Barefoot Poetess (2025). Her debut was long and shortlisted for Poetry Book Awards 2024 in Australia, Greece and the UK, and was awarded ‘Distinguished Favorite’ in the NYC Independent Press Award 2025 (USA). Paris takes delight in bringing her poetry to life through performance. She has graced stages at events and festivals in almost every state/territory within Australia. Find her at www.parisrosemont.com

Elaine O’Connor raised two children as a solo parent, which drove her into the Civil Service, where imaginative writing was not unknown. Returning to real creative writing, her stories, No Competition and Carmel were Highly Commended in the Historical Writers Association (2024) & Bedford Competitions (2025). The Long Road Home, (unpublished) was short-listed in the Cinnamon Press First Novel competition (2025).  Her next novel, The Herbalists, traces a devout young Victorian woman’s descent to murder. Current ambitions? Find an agent and get those novels published.

 

 

---

 

 

SHORT-LIST in alphabetical order. (72 poems. Total entry was 1,886) 

Alan Coombe	On the 468 bus
Anne Casey	Night flier
Anne Casey	Shift
Anne Casey	Mal at Mothar
Brian Hill	Egyptian Soul
Carolyn Curtis-Mahoney	Fairy Dust
Christopher Watson	Cicuta / Water Hemlock
Dean Gessie	a theory of everything
Derek Dickinson	Irish Nocturne
Derval Walsh	How to Write a Love Poem
Derval Walsh	Soldiers
Di Slaney	Why changing a duvet is like writing a poem
Doreen Gurrey	Adam and Eve
Elaine O’Connor	Kells Turning
Gail Ingram	Homesick (or imposter syndrome)
Ian Egan	The Poem as Poem
Jane Williams	Whatever else
Jim Conwell	Father Fitzgerald
Johanna Magin	The Prophet Is Dead
Johanna Magin	There ought to be a poem
Johanna Magin	The Fact of Living
Johanna Magin	Small Fires
Johanna Magin	In One Room With a Question
Johanna Magin	Rage Becomes Her
Johanna Magin	Solastalgia
Johanna Magin	10 Bucks
John Bourke	Komorebi
John Walsh	Fenian Dead
John Williams	The Cook’s Shipwreck
Kate Bailey Wilson	On Meeting Shakespeare in the Supermarket
Kathy Miles	Bees
Kerry Gray	Sun setting over Ardglass harbour
Kizziah Burton	If you are taken like Persephone
Kizziah Burton	This Wood I Am of Owl and Ghost
Lou Amyx	When My People Come
Lydia Kennaway	Incident – Recurring Dream No 5
Lynnda Wardle	How far away would you need to be
Marcella Remund	Spirals
Marian Brannigan	Letters from Anamar School 1969
Mary Catherine Lake	The whole length of the long road
Mary Mulholland	Sister, rewind
Matt Hohner	At a Friend’s Grave on His Birthday
Michael Andrew Coverson	Bulls Head Car Park, January 1964
Michael Lavers	The Harvesters
Michael Lavers	On Cabbages
Michael Lavers	Darkness and Rain
Michael Miller	hanging out
Michael Swan	SGM
Michelle Dennehy	Reasons the Goddess Persists in Persuit of the National School Teacher who is the Pure Image of Eamon de Valera
Mike Baynham	QUARTET
Miranda Saake	Rapunzel
Nancy Schoenberger	13 Miller’s Court: Mary Jane Kelly
Paris Rosemont	The Fisherboy’s Knots
Partridge Boswell	Aubade to My Phlebotomist
Patricia Sheppard	Intake at the Juvenile Detention Centre
Patrick Keedy Brown	This Is Not A New Story
paul Newton	The Beginning and the End
Peggy Acott	Town Center Village Assisted Living Facility
Pratibha Castle	THE DAY MY FATHER LOITERS IN THE STREET
Robin Schwarz	Fire in the Palisades
Robin Schwarz	Last August
Seamus Scanlon	Where it Counts
Seamus Scanlon	Blitzcrieg at the Library
Seamus Scanlon	Winnie Battle
Sharon Black	Billy Collins in the Old Coachhouse, En-suite
Shoshauna Shy	(No) Return to Sender
Sue Burge	A zuihitsu on how everything is about my estranged father
Susanne Kennedy	Lawn Sprinkler
Susanne Kennedy	Spirit Level
Susanne Kennedy	Swimming in the Wet
Susanne Kennedy	Turkey Swan Raptor
Vaughan Hoy	Montblanc
Wes Lee	Prayer at the Cove

 

 

---

 

 

LONG-LIST in alphabetical order. (242 poems. Total entry was 1,886) 

 

Agnes Dussault	Maybe I keep breaking all of my cellphones because
Áine Rose Connell	The Anxious Brain Resides West of Amygdala Creek
Alan Coombe	Troy Town
Alan Coombe	On the 468 bus
Alan Coombe	On the 468 bus
Alexandra Corrin-Tachibana	Mash-up of Moments in Shizuoka Prefecture
Allen Shadow	Hunter and Me
Anita Gail Tucker	Mother’s Ruin
Anita Gail Tucker	Ashore
Anne Casey	Shift
Anne Casey	Night flier
Anne Casey	Shift
Anne Casey	Mal at Mothar
Anne Cousins	HOLY
Annette Sisson	True North, Tracings, Seizing the Throne
Anthony Lawrence	Listening to James Wright Read…
Bill Richardson	Passage Tomb
Bill Richardson	The Saint’s Eyes, Fixed To The Floor, Shed Eternal Tears
Brian Hill	Egyptian Soul
Carolyn Curtis-Mahoney	Fairy Dust
Christopher Stocks	The Last of England
Christopher Watson	Smoke Tree
Christopher Watson	Learning to Read
Christopher Watson	Cicuta / Water Hemlock
Christopher Watson	Cicuta / Water Hemlock
Cindy Snow	Relearning the World
Clif Mason	Auabade
Colette Tennant	Trying to Remember What I Never Knew About my Grandmother
Daniel Dempster	Saltmetallemonspit
David Austin	Home.
Dean Gessie	a theory of everything
Derek Dickinson	Blue Morpho
Derek Dickinson	Icebox Aphorisms
Derek Dickinson	Irish Nocturne
Derval Walsh	How to Write a Love Poem
Derval Walsh	Soldiers
Di Slaney	I am a contract killer
Di Slaney	Me and Mrs Jones
Di Slaney	Road trips
Di Slaney	The little kist
Di Slaney	The weather is another animal
Di Slaney	Eighth poem – Tomato love
Di Slaney	Two horses running through the streets of central London
Di Slaney	Tenth poem – Why changing a duvet is like writing a poem
Donna Harlan	Suspension
Doreen Gurrey	Adam and Eve
Dragana Lazici	I try to explain my four identities to a stranger at a dinner party
Elaine O’Connor	Kells Turning
Elaine O’Connor	Kells Turning
Elena Croitoru	The Likeness
Elisa Alt	Everyone You’ve Ever Loved
Elizabeth Palmerton	Mississippi Barn
Elizabeth Whyatt	Hop Pickers
Elizabeth Whyatt	Anthems
Emma Goldman-Sherman	[Let there be a world of slowness]
Emma Murf	What to Do If You’re Stuck in a Conversation About Fishing
Emma Neale	Matinée Performance in my Aunt and Uncle’s Garden
Fokkina McDonnell	Love poem written on a Zoom workshop with tutor interventions
G. Smyth Bernes	The heat of his touch
Gail Ingram	Homesick (or imposter syndrome)
Gavin Duffy	Stare Down
Geraldine Stoneham	Letter to Fleur Adcock, c. 1995
Hajri Aga	The Anatomy of a Goat
Harry Bauld	Visiting the Book
Helen Bar Lev	Ceasefire
Helen Pinoff	ORDER
Ian Chambers	Morning Cuppa
Ian Egan	The Poem as Poem
Imogen Osborne	Flies
Irene Evans	Forecast
Jane Williams	Whatever else
Janice Warman	I’ve made a list of things for you to worry about
JAX AINSLEY-RITCHIE	MEDITATION ON MY LEFT HAND
JAX AINSLEY-RITCHIE	Jaws
JAX AINSLEY-RITCHIE	HYACINTHS IN THE HALLWAY
JAX AINSLEY-RITCHIE	Questions for the Oracle
JAX AINSLEY-RITCHIE	In The Kitchen
JAX AINSLEY-RITCHIE	OUT IN THE WOODS
Jean Tuomey	Unannounced
Jed Myers	Poem to My Partner on Her Birthday
Jed Myers	Reflection
Jennifer Dunlop	Ravelling Hope
Jim Conwell	Father Fitzgerald
Johanna Magin	Ode to Ellipses
Johanna Magin	What They Never Tell You
Johanna Magin	Chaos de Huelgoat
Johanna Magin	The New Order
Johanna Magin	We’ve Eaten War
Johanna Magin	10 Bucks
Johanna Magin	The Prophet Is Dead
Johanna Magin	There ought to be a poem
Johanna Magin	The Fact of Living
Johanna Magin	Small Fires
Johanna Magin	In One Room With a Question
Johanna Magin	Rage Becomes Her
Johanna Magin	Solastalgia
Johanna Magin	10 Bucks
John Bourke	Komorebi
John Bourke	Komorebi
John Stapleton	Camus on the Beach
John Stapleton	The End of Encyclopaedias
John Stapleton	Winter Warriors
John Walsh	Fenian Dead
John Williams	Taseko’s Hands
John Williams	The Cook’s Shipwreck
Joseph Hoban	Two Windows
Judith Thurley	The Wind
Julian Wakeling	Samuel Palmer Moon
Karen J McDonnell	Tidal
Kate Bailey Wilson	On Meeting Shakespeare in the Supermarket
Katherine Bonamo	One Last Meeting, On Zoom
Katherine Hahn Falk	Wasted Time
Kathy Miles	1950’s Mothers
Kathy Miles	Washerwoman
Kathy Miles	Bees
Kerry Gray	Sun setting over Ardglass harbour
Kevin Brodie	Tremors
Kevin Smith	A Corner On Bombowlee Creek Road
Kevin Smith	Boulder
Kim Maley	dry
Kizziah Burton	This is a portrait of a mother holding a candle in the dark
Kizziah Burton	Teaching a Girl to Talk in Our Language
Kizziah Burton	Wild Strawberries
Kizziah Burton	The Child in the Winds
Kizziah Burton	The Old Road Tells Me The Way is Long and Narrow
Kizziah Burton	I Am Afraid of Dying
Kizziah Burton	Something higher than my soul was trapped
Kizziah Burton	If you are taken like Persephone
Kizziah Burton	This Wood I Am of Owl and Ghost
KP McCarthy	Near to Nether
Lana Holman	Give Me a Day
Lani O’Hanlon	Uile Uice/All Heal
Lani O’Hanlon	For Rain
Lee Stockdale	Oh, Sister
Lesley Sharpe	Spell to quell a storm
Lesley Sharpe	The unbroken line of ink
Lesley Sharpe	Out of season
Lesley Sharpe	Hindsight
Lou Amyx	When My People Come
Lou Amyx	When My People Come
Lou Lesovitch	The Gift
Lydia Kennaway	Incident – Recurring Dream No 5
Lynnda Wardle	How far away would you need to be
Lynne S Viti	Crazy Legs at St. Rita’s Fair
Madeleine Lamm	Louisville
Marcella Remund	Spirals
Marian Brannigan	Letters from Anamar School 1969
Marion Quednau	Ivory
Mary Catherine Lake	Searching for a lost lottery ticket
Mary Catherine Lake	It was written in the margin
Mary Catherine Lake	The whole length of the long road
Mary Mulholland	how to choose a new washing machine
Mary Mulholland	Sister, rewind
Matt Hohner	At a Friend’s Grave on His Birthday
Melanie Tibbs	The Day the Poet Came to Our Town
Michael Andrew Coverson	Bulls Head Car Park, January 1964
Michael Lavers	The Leap
Michael Lavers	On Hearing the Buddhist Describe her Enightenment
Michael Lavers	The Harvesters
Michael Lavers	On Cabbages
Michael Lavers	Darkness and Rain
Michael Miller	hanging out
Michael Pearce	Queen Sidra
Michael Pearce	Bucket of Noise
Michael Shoemaker	détente
Michael Swan	Everything was very interesting
Michael Swan	SGM
Michelle Dennehy	Reasons the Goddess Persists in Persuit of the National School Teacher who is the Pure Image of Eamon de Valera
Mike Baynham	NEVER ONCE
Mike Baynham	COOKING
Mike Baynham	SNOWFALL
Mike Baynham	AN T-EILIAN MUILEACH
Mike Baynham	QUARTET
Miranda Saake	Rapunzel
Nan Montgomery	Common Blue
Nancy Schoenberger	13 Miller’s Court: Mary Jane Kelly
Nancy Steinkraus	Grace
Nicholas Rice	Beacon
Paris Rosemont	The Fisherboy’s Knots
Partridge Boswell	Aubade to My Phlebotomist
Partridge Boswell	Aubade to My Phlebotomist
Patricia Demery	Sticky Lozenge
Patricia Sheppard	Underwater Search and Recovery Unit
Patricia Sheppard	Intake at the Juvenile Detention Centre
Patrick Keedy Brown	This Is Not A New Story
Paul Newton	The Beginning and the End
Paul Newton	The Beginning and the End
Paula Brancato	Love
Peggy Acott	Town Center Village Assisted Living Facility
Peter Lindley	Foundling
Peter Tadd	Quantum High
Phil Hawtin	On Walking from Albert Bridge to Marden
Pratibha Castle	THE DAY MY FATHER LOITERS IN THE STREET
Raymond Ferik	Cloister
Rob Barth	George
Rob Ritchie	Mother, Moon
Robin Schwarz	Fire in the Palisades
Robin Schwarz	Last August
Robin Schwarz	Fire in the Palisades
Robin Schwarz	Last August
Robin Shohet	Parlez-vous Love?
Roger Bonner	Ocean Days
Róisín Leggett Bohan	I Lose My Mother
Róisín Leggett Bohan	We Lost Baby Jesus
Sandy Longley	Please Let Us Know How We Did
Seamus Scanlon	Where it Counts
Seamus Scanlon	Winnie Battle
Seamus Scanlon	Blitzcrieg at the Library
Seán Ó Dálaigh	Crying on the Dancefloor
Seohyun Lee	Poetry Prize Submission
Seth Kronick	Learning to Love the Feeling of Falling
Sharon Black	Billy Collins in the Old Coachhouse, En-suite
Shelley Stenhouse	When a Hand Comes Home with Yo…
Shoshauna Shy	(No) Return to Sender
Sinéad Griffin	Naming a Baby
Soma Mei Sheng Frazier	Budapest
Stephen Pollock	Diabolus in Musica
Sue Burge	A zuihitsu on how everything is about my estranged father
Susan Dines	Imposter Syndrome
Susan Landgraf	Frogs
Susan Taylor	Making Sense
Susanne Kennedy	Lawn Sprinkler
Susanne Kennedy	Spirit Level
Susanne Kennedy	Swimming in the Wet
Susanne Kennedy	Turkey Swan Raptor
Sylvia Cohen	I Talk to my Father Across the Styx
Thomas Williamson	The Last of All I Loved
Tim Relf	Be 100% satisfied EVERY SINGLE TIME
Tom Moore	Lunch Poem
Veronica A. Bettencourt	The Gloomy Octopus
Veronica A. Bettencourt	Panini Maker
V. P. Loggins	Baptism
Vanessa Lampert	Almost Certainly
Vaughan Hoy	Montblanc
Wes Lee	The Newborn
Wes Lee	A City Wakes
Wes Lee	Prayer at the Cove
Terence McGinity	Help is Coming

Winners

Short-list

Long-list

 

From all of us at Fish, thank you for entering your flash stories. Congratulations to the writers who  were short or long-listed, and in particular to the 10 winners whose flash stories will be published in the Fish Anthology 2025.

The launch will be during the West Cork Literary Festival, Bantry, Ireland – 16 July. Venue: Marino Church, 6.30 pm. It is a free event and all are welcome.

---

 

Winners

Here are the 10 winning Flash Fiction Stories, as chosen by Tania Hershman, to be published in the FISH ANTHOLOGY 2025.

Comments (below) on the flash stories are from Tania, who we sincerely thank for her time and expertise. 

 

 

 

FIRST: Lover  by	Allegra Mullan
SECOND: Empty Space   by	Justine Sweeney
THIRD: Breath and Bone   by	Letty Butler
HONORARY MENTIONS (no particular order)
I’ve Lost a Lot of Friends Through Love  by	Ralph Storer
A.W.O.L   by	Lisa Donoghue
For a Good Time, Call . . .   by	Annalisa McMorrow
Leaving in Four   by	Rebekah Clarkson
Picture This   by	Simon Roberts
Transformations   by	Shakira Christodoulou
My Father’s Wedding   by	Xavier Combe

 

Allegra Mullan is a writer of fiction and poetry. She is 23 years old and lives in London. Her work has been published in the Keats-Shelly Review, The Fish Anthology, SomeSuch Magazine and Toe-Rag, amongst others.

Justine Sweeney is from Belfast in the north of Ireland. She writes software code but finds writing fiction much more interesting. Her first collection of stories was shortlisted in the Bath Novella-in-flash Award 2025, and she was shortlisted in the Fish Short Story Award 2025. Her work appears in the Dublin Review, Fictive Dream, Inkfish Magazine, Flash Fiction Magazine and other places. She has an MA in Creative Writing and is working on her first novel.

Letty Butler is a writer and performer with a penchant for tarot cards and cheap granola. She writes across multiple genres and has just finished her second novel. This isn’t her first Fish-flavoured rodeo—she landed The Short Story Prize in 2023—and has been trying (and failing) to score a hat-trick ever since. Coming 3rd this year has really egged her on. She’s Brighton-based and represented by Alexander Cochran at Greyhound Literary. 

Ralph Storer is a widely-travelled writer best known for his award-winning series of guidebooks to the Scottish mountains. His other books include Love Scenes (a novel about films and the single life in Edinburgh), The Joy of Hillwalking and The Sex Trivia Quiz Book. He loves to disappear with a tent into the mountains of the American West, while at home he satisfies his love of adventure by attempting to create darkwave music on his computer.

Lisa Donoghue hated every single day she spent at school, so no one was more surprised than her when she became an English teacher.  She left the UK in 2005 to travel the world for a year or two, and twenty years later she has still not returned. She is currently living and teaching in Suzhou, China.

Annalisa McMorrow is an insomniac writer living in rural Northern California. But once upon a time, she lived in Los Angeles, where she worked (in no particular order) as a popcorn girl, masseuse, receptionist, casting assistant, and ghostwriter. She once won a deejay slot by penning a murder mystery in under 50 words. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, on KQED radio, and in multiple magazines that start with the letter “P.”

Rebekah Clarkson lives on Peramangk land in South Australia. Her short story cycle, Barking Dogs is published by Affirm Press. Her award-winning short stories appear in Best Australian Stories and Something Special, Something Rare: Outstanding Short Stories by Australian Women’(Black Inc.). Her short memoir, Dominion was recently published in The Louisville Review and forms part of a broader memoir/fiction project exploring family, religion, and missing mothers. Rebekah possesses the world’s worst sense of direction.

Simon Roberts is Based in West London. He writes short fiction and plays, and has been nominated for a number of prizes including the Bridport Short Story Prize (2023) and the Cranked Anvil Short Story Prize (2024). He was a finalist in the Plaza Prizes Short Story Award (2024). He makes regular appearances on Story Radio Podcast. Simon’s adaptation of Patrick Hamilton’s The Slaves of Solitude premiered at the Questors Theatre last year. Website: Simon Roberts 

Shakira Christodoulou is a slightly niche jack-of-all-trades. Her outsize animal sculptures amused and confused island communities in Britain and Canada, she’s painted murals some liked and some didn’t, led habitat restoration for a tiny Island NGO, and is a novelist and part-time Egyptologist. People have kindly published her words on mummies, cats, and fungus, and asked her for poetry about conservation. She writes on Bluesky, and Youtubes about wildlife gardening, as WellManneredXS.

Xavier Combe is a freelance translator and conference interpreter based in France. He teaches at the University of Paris X. He has authored 2 non-fiction books and a novel in France as well as quite a few (moderately) philological op-eds in the French press. He writes and narrates most of the stories for the award-winning absurdist fiction podcast Muffy Drake produced by 2-time Peabody Award winner Jim Hall. www.muffydrake.com

---

 

Comments from judge, Tania Hershman

 

I had a very very hard time – harder than usual – choosing between my top three stories, it was like comparing an apple with a fighter jet with a grain of sand. Since I am not allowed to present a three-way tie, I made the choices I was required to make with only a nanogap between these three brilliant pieces. For me, they are sublime examples of the enormity of what can be conveyed in a flash story, and not just what happens but how the writer decides to bring it to us, the effect of shapes and forms on the page and how they intrigue the reader’s eye as well as the language, the characters, the story.

 

I found it fascinating, having judged no small number of short and short short fiction competitions, that this time there were almost no fancy, weird, complicated titles across the shortlist I was given to read. A title can do a great deal of work, especially for short pieces, whether prose, poetry or hybrids, and I think it’s worth keeping in mind and spending some time on. A title might come straight away, or might emerge slowly as you work on a piece, or afterwards. Sometimes the simplest of titles, just one or two words, is exactly right, but sometimes more is actually more!

 

Anyway, without further ado, congratulations first to the longlist, the shortlist, and, in fact, everyone who sends their work out into the world to be not only read but judged. It is an act of courage, of optimism, please keep doing it! And now, please congratulate my three prize-winning flash stories, all of whom rose up out of the shortlist the first time I read them, immedately going into my “Yes” pile, and then offered me more and more and more each time I re-read them. It was an honour to be asking to present my choices, and a privilege to read these stories, which will stay with me for a very long time.

 

1^st prize:

Lover by Allegra Mullan

If someone asked what happens in this tiny story, I’d find it hard to answer. In some ways, almost nothing, and from another angle, everything. I was immediately drawn in by the first line, and felt myself assuming how this flash would go. I was utterly delighted to be proved so wrong! The third line started to hint that this was not at all what I had thought it might be. The use of the “you” point of view is perfect, we are seeing through their eyes someone they love, someone they try and understand, looking at so closely that they even notice inside their lover’s mouth. It is intense, intimate, and with a gorgeous oddness in what the writer chooses to include: incongruities, strange pairings, critique of our consumerist society, life and death, tenderness, pain and love – and all in one paragraph. A triumph.

 

2^nd prize:

Empty Space by Justine Sweeney

Before even reading this wrenching flash story, seeing it on the page immediately intrigued me, with its playing with form. “Show don’t tell” is a “writing rule” I strongly object to; there are no rules, writers should write what they want in the way that want to write it. That said, I loved what this writer was showing me visually before I’d even stepped into the opening line. The reason I chose this as the second prize winner was because this writer took a plot which might have slipped into cliché and made it completely their own. I was there, I felt and heard what the narrator was feeling and thinking. It was visceral, personal, painful, finished and unfinished in that perfect way I love in a short short story, where you know it’s over and you can’t stop thinking about it.

 

3^rd prize:

Breath & Bone by Letty butler

Once again, a story we have heard before, and, once again, a writer takes it and makes it their own, makes it so much more than simply an account of what happens on this one day. Here we have an “I” and a “you”, and we are in that space between them, which is difficult and uncomfortable, made even more so by the excellent use of pacing. The shape of this poignant flash – two short one-sentence paragraphs at the beginning and end, and in the middle, a long one-sentence section – is so well done, as is the precise choice of words and phrases like “fractured”, “snarl”, “guzzling”, and “quiet terror”. This is everything a stunning flash can be, a whole life and a whole world in half a page.

 

---

 

A LITTLE ABOUT THE WINNERS:

Allegra Mullan is a writer of fiction and poetry. She is 23 years old and lives in London. Her work has been published in the Keats-Shelly Review, The Fish Anthology, SomeSuch Magazine and Toe-Rag, amongst others.

Justine Sweeney is from Belfast in the north of Ireland. She writes software code but finds writing fiction much more interesting. Her first collection of stories was shortlisted in the Bath Novella-in-flash Award 2025, and she was shortlisted in the Fish Short Story Award 2025. Her work appears in the Dublin Review, Fictive Dream, Inkfish Magazine, Flash Fiction Magazine and other places. She has an MA in Creative Writing and is working on her first novel.

Letty Butler is a writer and performer with a penchant for tarot cards and cheap granola. She writes across multiple genres and has just finished her second novel. This isn’t her first Fish-flavoured rodeo—she landed The Short Story Prize in 2023—and has been trying (and failing) to score a hat-trick ever since. Coming 3rd this year has really egged her on. She’s Brighton-based and represented by Alexander Cochran at Greyhound Literary. 

Ralph Storer is a widely-travelled writer best known for his award-winning series of guidebooks to the Scottish mountains. His other books include Love Scenes (a novel about films and the single life in Edinburgh), The Joy of Hillwalking and The Sex Trivia Quiz Book. He loves to disappear with a tent into the mountains of the American West, while at home he satisfies his love of adventure by attempting to create darkwave music on his computer.

Lisa Donoghue hated every single day she spent at school, so no one was more surprised than her when she became an English teacher.  She left the UK in 2005 to travel the world for a year or two, and twenty years later she has still not returned. She is currently living and teaching in Suzhou, China.

Annalisa McMorrow is an insomniac writer living in rural Northern California. But once upon a time, she lived in Los Angeles, where she worked (in no particular order) as a popcorn girl, masseuse, receptionist, casting assistant, and ghostwriter. She once won a deejay slot by penning a murder mystery in under 50 words. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, on KQED radio, and in multiple magazines that start with the letter “P.”

Rebekah Clarkson lives on Peramangk land in South Australia. Her short story cycle, Barking Dogs is published by Affirm Press. Her award-winning short stories appear in Best Australian Stories and Something Special, Something Rare: Outstanding Short Stories by Australian Women’(Black Inc.). Her short memoir, Dominion was recently published in The Louisville Review and forms part of a broader memoir/fiction project exploring family, religion, and missing mothers.  Rebekah possesses the world’s worst sense of direction.

Simon Roberts is Based in West London. He writes short fiction and plays, and has been nominated for a number of prizes including the Bridport Short Story Prize (2023) and the Cranked Anvil Short Story Prize (2024). He was a finalist in the Plaza Prizes Short Story Award (2024). He makes regular appearances on Story Radio Podcast. Simon’s adaptation of Patrick Hamilton’s The Slaves of Solitude premiered at the Questors Theatre last year. Website: Simon Roberts 

Shakira Christodoulou is a slightly niche jack-of-all-trades. Her outsize animal sculptures amused and confused island communities in Britain and Canada, she’s painted murals some liked and some didn’t, led habitat restoration for a tiny Island NGO, and is a novelist and part-time Egyptologist. People have kindly published her words on mummies, cats, and fungus, and asked her for poetry about conservation. She writes on Bluesky, and Youtubes about wildlife gardening, as WellManneredXS.

 

 

---

 

Short-list:

(Alphabetical order: 30 stories)

 

Alan Gray	Memorable Houses in English Literature
Aline Soules	Abscission
Allegra Antonia Mullan	Lover
Annalisa McMorrow	For a Good Time, Call…
David Antares	Baby
David Stephens	Getting away with it
Gill O’Halloran	The First Rule Of Prostate Club
Ivan Debel	The Author
Joanna Miller	Catching the Moment
Joe Evans	Search History
John Mulligan	Don’t ring this number
John Mulligan	Parking cars and pumping gas
Julie Evans	Gallery: Portrait 1916 (Oil on Canvas)
Justine Sweeney	Empty Space
Karon Alderman	The Hobby Hearse
Letty Butler	Breath & Bone
Lisa Donoghue	A.W.O.L
Lucille Agapov	Beautiful Monster
Neil Oughton	Dance Teacher
Ralph Storer	I’ve Lost a Lot of Friends Through Love
Rebekah Clarkson	Leaving in Four
Rich Buley-Neumar	The Spicy Stuff Eating Contest
Roger Lightfoot	Black Thursday. Spain
Roger Lightfoot	A Room at the Inn
Roger Lightfoot	Young Dylan’s Muse
Shakira Christodoulou	Transformations
Simon Roberts	Picture This
Susan Bennett	The Things That Matter
Tom Bryan	Eevie, Ivy, Over
Virginia Miranda	Adonis
Xavier Combe	My Father’s Wedding

 

 

---

 

 

Long-list:

In alphabetical order (100)

 

Adana Keane	Lisa Gherardini
Alan Egan	Ruby
Alan Gray	Memorable Houses in English Literature
Aline Soules	Abscission
Allegra Antonia Mullan	Lover
Amy Goodman-Bide	Louise
Andrew Trimble	Overheard I
Andrew Trimble	Overheard II
Anna Hopwood	The Accident
Annalisa McMorrow	For a Good Time, Call
Aspasia Sparages	Fibreboard and January
Barbara Mogerley	Broken Dolls
BRUCE POWELL	Stage Fright
Caroline Clark	Salo
cathy leonard	Vanity Case
Cathy Sampson	The Hunter’s Moon
Chris Cottom	Last Year of English Lit
Chris Phillips	Our flammable selves
Conor Montague	Lovebirds
Dale Marie	The Nautical
Darren Moorhouse	Burnt Threads
Davey Freedman	Bamboo
David Antares	Baby
David Lovell	A Trip to the Park
David Stephens	An Affair of the Heart
David Stephens	Getting away with it
Douglas Cochran	Off Marla
Fiona Ritchie Walker	Shang-a-Lang
Genevieve Methot	The Five-Year Frontier
Gerald Inberg	Anywhere Elementary
Gill O’halloran	The First Rule Of Prostate Club
Henry Hudson	Nothing but the truth
Isabelle Shifrin	Water Bitch
Ivan Debel	The Author
Jeffrey Buppert	Magnolia Pearl
Jeffrey Buppert	So Much Left To Say
Jessica Magee	Black and white
Jim Gleeson	Downward Dog
Jo Skinner	Black Man Running
Joanna Miller	Catching the Moment
Joe Evans	Search History
John Fullman	Scattering My Father’s Ashes
John Mulligan	Don’t ring this number
John Mulligan	One man against the mountain
John Mulligan	Parking cars and pumping gas
John Shirey	Lasting Marriage
Jonny Moore	A Lesson in Boyhood
Julie Evans	Gallery: Portrait 1916 (Oil on Canvas)
Justine Sweeney	Empty Space
K. T. Downs	Apricots and Other Fruit
Karon Alderman	The Hobby Hearse
Katie Beck	The 12th annual dance marathon
Keith Wood	The Portobello Elemental
Kerrie Penney	Black Widows
Kevin MacAlan	Frank
Kevin MacAlan	Housebound
Laura Kyle	T For Transient
Letty Butler	Breath & Bone
Lisa Donoghue	A.W.O.L
Lucille Agapov	Beautiful Monster
Marcus Moore	Things Joburgers did and didn’t tell you before you moved to the Orange Farm township.
Mel Fawcett	Laughing at the Moon
Nancy Freund	Burhan Now or Never
Neil Oughton	Dance Teacher
Niall Rodgers	In search of tiny life
Nicholas Matsas	Getting the Part
Nickie Foley	Smeltin’
Paul Currion	Appetite
Peter Howard	Saskia
Peter Slater	Hands
Philip Wilson	You’ve Been Framed
Phoebe Robertson	Aquarium
Ralph Storer	I’ve Lost a Lot of Friends Through Love
Rebekah Clarkson	Leaving in Four
Rebekah Clarkson	The Night Runners
Rich Buley-Neumar	The Spicy Stuff Eating Contest
Richard Scarsbrook	Blue Line
Richard Scarsbrook	Violets
Roger Lightfoot	Black Thursday. Spain
Roger Lightfoot	A Room at the Inn
Roger Lightfoot	Young Dylan’s Muse
Ronnie Nixon	ALLOTMENTS
Ronnie Nixon	RETROSPECTIVE
Samarth Bhasin	Mr. Masters
Shakira Christodoulou	Transformations
Siân Quill	skinny witch
Simon Roberts	Picture This
Simon Roberts	What About Vienna?
Steph Lay	What burns beneath
Sue Ryan	The Prisoner
Susan Bennett	The Things That Matter
Susan L. Edser	Swipe Right
susan lake	Lucy
Taurenelle Mononym	She should be walking by now
The Vinh Nguyen	The Promotion
Tom Bryan	Eevie, Ivy, Over
Tom Bryan	Hamish and the Hoolies
Virginia Miranda	Adonis
Xavier Combe	Jude
Xavier Combe	My Father’s Wedding

 

Winners

 

 

 

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. 

The 10 winners will be published in the Fish Anthology 2025. See Sean’s comments on the winning stories below.

The launch will take place during the West Cork Literary Festival, Bantry, Ireland. Festival dates are 11 – 18 July, the launch date to be confirmed.
Venue: Marino Church. The launch is a free event and all are welcome.

(There were 1,175 entries to the competition.)

 

---

 

First Prize:

 

 

 

Second Prize:

 

 

 

Third Prize:

 

 

 

Honorary Mentions (no particular order):

 

My Dead Mother by Jo Stein

 

 

The Only Dalit in the Village  by Mohini Singh

 

 

Sore Winner  by David Ralph

 

 

Keeping Cool  by Linda Chase   

 

 

Lonely Meets Lonely  by Nicola Schofield     

 

 

Entropy  by Barry Brophy

 

 

Fiasco  by Rand Richards Cooper

 

 

 

SEAN LUSK’S COMMENTS on the ten winning stories:

Stories taking us from an Indian earthquake to a sweltering New York, and from the awkwardness of middle-aged dating to highly believable hauntings of one sort or another, the shortlisted stories all show a confidence of writing voice and originality of approach that makes them shine.

Fiasco is a beautifully realised story of a newly married young couple in 1950s New England on their honeymoon. I wanted to read on – perhaps because this felt more like an opening to a novel than a short story.

Entropy is a clever, playful story of a physics lecturer who takes an English course that prompts him to ponder all the ways in which entropy affects his life.

I really admired the way Lonely Meets Lonely used its structure to give us great sympathy for all the characters in this story of dating in late middle age, and the pressing human need to make connection. Deftly done.

I loved the voice in Keeping Cool, as a New Yorker who knows he’s being a fool tries to instal an air-conditioner in his run-down apartment with predictable (but not too predictable) results.

Sore Winner is told in the convincing voice of an unreliable narrator, whose spiky relationship with his younger brother has murky origins. We, the reader, share fully in his disturbing self-realisation.

The Only Dalit in the Village has a wonderfully timeless quality. In many ways a parable, it handles every character with touching sympathy. Perfectly paced, and admirably controlled, this is writing of great assurance.

My Dead Mother captured me completely with its whip-smart narrative voice, its wholly convincing haunting by the dead mother, its crackling humour and perfect twist. An absolute delight.

Top Line moved me, a story of two widowers, brothers-in-law, who are preparing to dance with each other at a ballroom competition, it is, appropriately enough, a masterclass in the choreography of the short story. Every touch, gesture and look is applied with the skill of a watercolourist. Beautiful.

The Making of Us is set in an English boarding school in the not-so-distant past and subtly establishes a deep sense of unease, the young narrator’s voice not fully grasping what we as a reader can understand all too well. The massed schoolboys are like a threatening army, their strange ululations adding to the gathering certainty that something terrible is going to happen. This has the quality of a classic. It is a story with a haunting quality, if not a ghost.

This is London, Baby is wholly its own thing. The writing fizzes and flames with originality, honesty and a kind of self-outrage. Here we follow the messy life of a woman from hedonistic clubbing in the nineties when she is eighteen to a sober assessment of all its highs and lows when she is in her mid-forties. It leaves us pondering all that she has not told us and, like the very best short stories, the feeling that we have been given a glimpse of a character’s true soul. The language is startling, fierce and singular. Truly outstanding.

 

BIOGRAPHIES of Winning Authors

Jay McKenzie swapped the North East coast for Greece, Indonesia, Singapore, Australia and South Korea.  Her weakness is knitwear and she lives with her husband, daughter and too many cardigans. If spotted without a cup of tea in hand, it is likely that she is sending a distress signal and the relevant authorities should be contacted with haste. How to Lose the Lottery will be published with HarperFiction in Spring 2026.

Robin Booth is a writer and editor from Stroud, Gloucestershire. He was sent to boarding school at the age of eight, in circumstances that were very different from those in his story. His work has been published by Stroud Short Stories and Ad Hoc Fiction, and his stories have received prizes at the Bath Short Story and Mairtín Crawford Awards. He is a member of the Wild Writers group in Stroud.

Hannah-Fleur is a novelist and short story writer, represented by Nicole Etherington at Blake Friedmann. Her short fiction has been published in the Bridport Anthology, a previous Fish Anthology, and Blackfriars Books. She was longlisted for the BBC Short Story Award 2022. She has an MA from Goldsmiths in Creative Writing and works at the Natural History Museum. Her first stories were about woodland animals, all ending the same way: …they went to bed, tired but happy.

Jo Stein lives on the Hudson River in Harlem, close enough to walk to the school where she teaches 8th graders how to write and a couple of blocks from City College where she got her MFA. Every now and then her husband threatens to give away books that pile up in the apartment. Stein is terrified her students will read her stories on the internet. 

MOHINI SINGH studied Computer Science at Cambridge and worked as a software engineer for eight years before deciding it was not the career for her. She took evening classes in creative writing, completing a diploma in Novel Writing from Birkbeck. She has been published in the Bridport Anthology and The Good Journal. In her free time she learns Japanese in the hope to one day be able to read Haruki Murakami.

David Ralph’s stories and essays have been published in Dublin Review, Banshee, New Irish Writing, Southword, Litro, and the Irish Independent. He won a New Irish Writing award in 2020, and his memoir piece ‘Two Bastards’ was placed third in the Fish Memoir Prize in 2022. In 2024 he was shortlisted for the Francis McManus Short Story Award, and his story ‘Turncoat’ was broadcast on RTE Radio 1. 

Linda Chase was born in New York City and currently lives in the bucolic Hudson River town of Rhinebeck, NY. Her writing career includes several books on art and a suspense novel. Excerpts from her memoir The Suicide Gene, earned her a Fellowship in Nonfiction Literature from The New York Foundation for the Arts. Fiction/Memoir! Memoir/Fiction! While teaching Creative Writing at Pace University she is trying to find enough time to write both!

Nicola Schofield is a writer from Salford.  She has written for theatre and TV, including plays for children and community projects.  She won a Bruntwood Prize at Royal Exchange Theatre in 2004 and currently teaches Playmaking at the University of Manchester.  Her mum is from Ireland and was born in a village named Hospital, County Limerick.  Nicola has no pets, and that is perhaps a failing. She lives with her family in Greater Manchester.

Barry Brophy was born and lives in Dublin where he works as an engineering and technical communication lecturer at UCD. He has been writing all his life; factually about Laurel and Hardy, sitcoms and making presentations; and fictionally in several unpublished (as yet) novels. The common factor in all of this is a fascination with dialogue, and his influences in this regard include Evelyn Waugh, Muriel Spark and Steptoe & Son.

Rand Richards Cooper lives in Connecticut and is the author of two works of fiction, The Last to Go and Big As Life. As essayist and journalist he has covered an alarming range of topics, from coed locker rooms to Botox parties, the wonders of the F-word, the search for lost WW II submarines, the origins of jerk barbecue, and the sexual politics of having your dog neutered. His memoir, “Chess With The Wehrmacht,” won the Fish Short Memoir Prize last year.

 

---

 

Short-list:

(alphabetical order) There are 35 stories on the short-list. 

 

AUTHOR	TITLE
Aideen Henry	Distributing space
Barry Brophy	Entropy
Bridgett Kendall	An Old Lady And A Different Ol…
Catherine Whelton	Snowmelt
Clare O’Reilly	Tea for Two
Daniel Magnowski	Satan Comes to Churston Ferrer…
David Ralph	Sore Winner
Deirdre Cartmill	Blackwater
Dylan Pritchard	Spirit Level
Elizabeth Cooke	Pretty China
Elizabeth Linklater	The Reckoning of Tristram McKe…
Fionnuala Meehan	The Red Bag
Hannah Fleur Fitz Rankin	Top Line
James Putnam	Appointments
Jay McKenzie	This is London, baby
Jo Stein	My Dead Mother
justine sweeney	Heading South
Karen Ashe	Poisoned
Lesley Bungay	The Shadow Child
Linda Chase	Keeping Cool
Lizzie Golds	Beauty Queens
Maggie Ling	Rosa Felicia
Mohini Singh	The Only Dalit in the Village
Nicola Schofield	Lonely Meets Lonely
Peter Rose	Neon Valentine
Rand Richards Cooper	Fiasco
Ray Stoute	Carnival Dawn
Robin Booth	The Making of Us
Róisín Burke	Bye Benny
Sally Bramley	Waiting for the balloons
Shanley Kearney	Hand in Hand
susan lake	That Shit, Hamlet
Susannah Waters	Brothers
Tabitha Topping	The Artist’s Wife
Thiva Narayanan	A Keralan Horror Story

 

---

 

Long-list:

(alphabetical order)

There are 99 stories in the long-list. 

AUTHOR	TITLE
Aideen Henry	Distributing space
Alison Froggatt	The Visitors
Allen Shadow	The Moment
Amy Ferguson	Da Capo (From the Beginning)
Andrew Laurence	A Christmas Gift
Anna Smajdor	Upload
Arthur Wright	Unique Forms of Continuity in Space
Barry Brophy	Entropy
Brendan Dempsey	The Parcel
Bridgett Kendall	An Old Lady And A Different Old Lady
Bruce Alexander	MIRACLE
Catherine Whelton	Snowmelt
CEMILE GULDAL	The Savior
Charlotte Cole	1995
Clare O’Reilly	Tea for Two
COLETTE WILLIS	This Little Tent of Blue
Cristina Alvarez Ortiz	Don’t think of Kimberli
Daniel Magnowski	Satan Comes to Churston Ferrers
David Ralph	Sore Winner
Deirdre Cartmill	Blackwater
Dylan Pritchard	Spirit Level
Eliza Mood	One Last Move
Elizabeth Cooke	Pretty China
Elizabeth Linklater	The Reckoning of Tristram McKellen
Elizabeth Nichol	Truly
Elizabeth Whyatt	Another Country
Emmy Holman	Red Squirrel and Rusty Nail
Enda Wyley	Too Far
Evan Morgan Williams	Roster
Fiona Birkbeck	Derry Girl
Fionnuala Meehan	The Red Bag
Gary Grace	THIS IS A VOLUNTARY ADMISSION
Geoff Mead	Jeux D’Amour
Gillian Metheringham	Nylon Knickers
Hal Ackerman	The One That Isn’t Moving
Hannah Fleur Fitz Rankin	Top Line
Ingrid Keenan	Smile
Itto and Mekiya Outini	The House of Dust
Jack Kennedy	Cosmos in Collapse
Jack Z	Eclipse
Jaime Gill	Mysterious Rooms
James Ellis	Last Days
James Putnam	Appointments
Jay McKenzie	This is London, baby
Jillian Laux	Reconciled
Jo Stein	My Dead Mother
John Langan	Many are Called
John Merkel	Not Even for a Song
Justine Sweeney	Heading South
Karen Ashe	Poisoned
Keelan Gallagher	I Found In Me A Gloomy Wood
Keith Johnson	The Drum and the Bell
Kevin Noel Power	A fresh Start
Kevin Noel Power	Stephen Hawking’s Dog
L.J. SEXTON	Nae use cryin’ o’er spilt milk
Lauren Alonso Miller	Clive From Kirk Ella
Lesley Bungay	The Shadow Child
Linda Chase	Keeping Cool
Lizzie Golds	Beauty Queens
Lizzie Golds	Trigger
Louise Mangos	Home is Where
Maggie Ling	Rosa Felicia
Mark de Rond	WWJD
Mary White	Downsizing
Matthew Haynes	These are Private Joys
Matthew Haynes	When Considering the Stars
Michael Button	When I Was A Doll I Had A Boy
Mohini Singh	The Only Dalit in the Village
Nathan Power	The Worries
Nicola Schofield	Lonely Meets Lonely
Ofelia Orko	A Woman of No Apartment
Paul Hammond	Night Work
Paula Harnois	Medea
Peter Rose	Neon Valentine
PJ Lemer	Victim
Rachel Ephraim	The Need in Her Eyes
Rand Richards Cooper	Fiasco
Ray Stoute	Carnival Dawn
Robin Booth	The Making of Us
Róisín Burke	Bye Benny
Ronan O’Halloran	Speak No Evil
Rosalind Minett	Caretaker
Ruth Guthrie	Intaglio
Sally Bramley	Waiting for the balloons
Seamus Scanlon	The Blue Wide Open
Seth Gannon	A Good Outcome
Shanley Kearney	Hand in Hand
Simon Roberts	Letters & Scraps
Solomon Jessie	One Minute She’s Hera
Sophie Burkham	That Was Then, This Is Now
Stefani Nellen	Twin Friendship (Ivan)
Susan Lake	That Shit, Hamlet
Susannah Waters	Brothers
Susie Goldsbrough	Thankful
Tabitha Topping	The Artist’s Wife
Thiva Narayanan	A Keralan Horror Story
Tom Kiernan	Brother Mine
Toril Cooper	Honey
Tracy Smith	The Keepers of the Words

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 a sample of  the talent in this book. 

 

 

We had a get together of authors and some of the Fish team in Ma Murphy’s Bar, the evening before the launch and we were back there after the launch to continue celebrating.

Email post launch from Joshua Davis
(author of short story, The Liberating Death of Freedom)

It was a pleasure to be invited back to Bantry, and to spend a vivid couple of evenings with you in Ma Murphy’s. I’ve just about finished the collection now, and it’s incredible (I thought this last time too) how you bring together such an array of voices into a panoptic, living book–alive with the details of experience. Thank you for the encouragement you’ve given me, and so many other writers. 

 

On The 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, often 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)

 

MORE ABOUT THE ANTHOLOGY 

 

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 made it here. There were 2,164 entries and competition was very tough.

The Fish Anthology will  be launched as part of the West Cork Literary Festival, (Marino Church, Bantry, West Cork – Monday 15th July – 18.30.) All are welcome!

 

 

FIRST PRIZE:

No, I am not a Robot (An Ekphrastic Poem of Sorts) by Brooke Herter James

Read Winning Poem

 

SECOND PRIZE:

Writing About the Invisible by Mary K O’Melveny

 

THIRD PRIZE:

Early Tintoretto at the Accademia by Rosalind Brackenbury

 

 

 

HONORARY MENTIONS (In no particular order): 

A Clarification by Toby Litt

 

 

This poem asks where violence begins by Heidi Williamson

 

 

Small White Sphere by Philip Rösel Baker

 

 

Uncle Tony Fishing, Muckross Lake by Josh Geffin

 

 

Hearsay by Marion Quednau

 

 

Two Hours Before Lone Ranger by Kathy Clayden

 

 

June Wedding in the West of Ireland:
North of Connemara, East of the Ocean’s Waves by Linda Nemec Foster

 

 

 

Brooke Herter James is the author of four poetry chapbooks, a children’s picture book and a poetry/prose/photography collection. Her poems have appeared in various journals and anthologies. She lives with her husband in a small village in the green mountains of Vermont.

Mary K O’Melveny, a happily retired labor rights lawyer of Irish descent, lives with her wife near Woodstock, New York. Mary’s poetry has appeared in numerous print and on-line literary journals and anthologies. Her recent collection, Flight Patterns (Kelsay Books 2023) was nominated for the Eric Hoffer Book Award. Merging Star Hypotheses (2020), her second book, was a semi-finalist for The Washington Prize sponsored by The Word Works. Coming soon: an on-line music-themed collection from Jerry Jazz Musician. For more: http://www.marykomelvenypoet.com.

Rosalind Brackenbury is English and lives in Key West with her American husband. Her poetry has been published by Taxus Press in the UK and Hanging Loose in the US. Her latest novel, “Bone Whispers” was published in February, 2024. She was Key West’s second Poet Laureate. She likes swimming, walking and exploring new places, and is leading a writing retreat in June 2024 at the Flores Retreat Centre in north-western Spain.

Toby Litt is a writer and environmental activist. His novels include Corpsing, Ghost Story, Patience and A Writer’s Diary. His run on the comic Dead Boy Detectives is the basis for the 8-part Netflix series. Toby is Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Southampton. He is a member of English PEN and editor of the XR Writers Rebel website. When he is not writing, Toby likes sitting doing nothing.

Heidi Williamson is a poet, writing tutor, and mentor. She runs a Reading Round group for the Royal Literary Fund sharing celebrated stories and poems with library users in Norwich. She also teaches for the Poetry Society, Poetry School, The Writing Coach, and National Centre for Writing. Through the magic of Zoom, she enjoys working online with poets world-wide. Her three Bloodaxe collections are Electric Shadow, The Print Museum, and Return by Minor Road. www.heidiwilliamsonpoet.com

Philip Rösel Baker is an Anglo-German writer living with his wife, Maria, under dark night skies near a remote hamlet in East Anglia.  As well as writing, he loves table tennis and plays in a village club every Monday. Recently, he has been intrigued to notice that the practice of Zen mindfulness improves his game as well as his poetry. He performs his poems regularly at the Soapbox sessions at the Steamboat pub in Ipswich.

Josh Geffin is a folk musician and writer from Dorset, based in London. He is currently working towards a masters in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths, University of London. Josh’s often playful poems explore themes of mindfulness, memory and belonging. His poetry has been published in The Rialto, Acumen, Allegro and The Friday Poem. He won second prize in the Jack Clemo Poetry Competition 2023 and has also been commissioned to write poems for Montcalm Hotels.

Marion Quednau lives on Canada’s unruly west coast, known for its protests, parades and off-the-path hiking. Her poetry has won numerous awards and appeared in Best Canadian Poetry 2019, (ed. Rob Taylor, Biblioasis). Her recent work includes the collection, Paradise, Later Years (Caitlin, 2018), and her short fictions, Sunday Drive to Gun Club Road (Nightwood, 2021), described as both "dark" and "hilarious" She thrives on notes of juxtaposition and surprise within the daily conundrum.

Kathy Clayden was born in Cambridgeshire, and was raised ‘on the move’ in Bedfordshire, Lancashire, Lincolnshire and Sussex. Into adulthood this morphed into living in countries across the globe as is reflected in her ‘portmanteau’ career. From childhood, Kathy has written and sketched. Poetic success in the 1990s and 2000s ended when the muse took a holiday. Kathy has worked hard to reconnect with her poetic self. She lives in Oxford, does ceramics, has a partner of 46 years.

 

---

 

 

SHORT-LIST in alphabetical order. (57 poems. Total entry was 2,164) 

NAME	TITLE
Alinda Wasner	Little Did I Know of Birds and grasses
Andrew Murphy	The Why About That
Brett Ashley	Nocturne Mashup
brooke james	No, I Am Not a Robot
Christopher Watson	Eternity on Dean Street
Christopher Watson	Museo del Oro
Dena Fakhro	Not long after the Baghdad Café
Derval Walsh	Unsmiling
Di Slaney	Curse of the Orchard House
Di Slaney	Moat
Di Slaney	Finished knitting
Elise Ball	Daffodils
Gary V. Powell	Schwinn
Heidi Williamson	This poem asks where violence begins
Heidi Williamson	Wordle as fugue state
Ingrid Anderson	Repetitive motion
James Kelly	Mabeliss Takes Your Order
James Kelly	Finders Keepers
James Lowell	Boy in the Well
James Lowell	The Irish Lumper
Jed Myers	Spirit Letter to Norman
Jon Escher	The Third Floor
Josh Geffin	Uncle Tony Fishing, Muckross Lake
Judith Allnatt	Bubbles
Julian Wakeling	A Reprieve
Karina Holm	Birthday cake
karla k morton	Something
Kate Teves	The Fool
Kathy Clayden	Two Hours Before Lone Ranger
Kegan Swyers	Rejoice!
Lana Holman	Moment Interrupted
Lana Holman	Disappointed Angel
Linda Nemec Foster	June Wedding
Liz Kendall	A matter of trees and time
Lori Jakiela	One Day When He Was Dying
Marion Quednau	Hearsay
Martin Clayton	Insomnia
Martyn Golding	Very Sick
Mary O’Melveny	Writing About the Invisible
Olga Balaeva	A Date with Connemara
Patricia Osborne	The night carer
Patricia Sheppard	Sequelae
Philip Rösel Baker	Small White Sphere
Rekha Mehra	Shortchanging the Next Occupants
Rita Geil	Lyons Creek Trail
Róisín Ní Neachtain	I see you knew my small betray…
Rosalind Brackenbury	Early Tintoretto at the Accademia
Sabrina Wolfe	When I went back, nothing was the same
Sally Furneaux	Lost Song
Scott Dorsch	Your Eyes Were Fists and They Were Reaching
Simon Petty	Packing
Sinead McClure	Before, during and after my husband’s death, the birds came
stacey forbes	When West Virginia speaks its …
Stephanie Feeney	Pink Load
Steve Xerri	housefly metaphysics
Susanna Lang	A Clattering of Jackdaws
Tania Dain	Red Witch
Toby Litt	A Clarification

 

---

 

 

LONG-LIST in alphabetical order. ( 254 poems. Total entry was 2,164)

NAME	TITLE
Alan Coombe	The rigging shop
Alexandra Tyndale	Traces
Alinda Wasner	Little Did I Know of Birds and grasses
Alison Gorman	Cherry
Alison Powell	“This House Does Not Exist”
Allen Shadow	I Crossed You
Allie Wilson	Last Rites
Andrew Murphy	The Why About That
Andy Price	Larghetto
Angela Costi	A Revised History of the Balcony
Angela McCabe	Washingbay Lough Neagh
Anjanette Delgado	Sunset Therapy
Ann VanVolkenburgh Chang	Today At Running Club
Ann VanVolkenburgh Chang	This Is Just A Honey Do List
Anne Berkeley	Daphne
Anne Gerard	Insomnia Nocturne
Anne Gleeson	The Carer
Anthony Costello	Why Lee Brown Left
Attracta Fahy	1. Scythe
Avril Erskine	Barfly
Barbara Ford	Starbucks
Bill Richardson	Fact Fiction August 28 2017
Billy Fenton	Raven
Brett Ashley	Nocturne Mashup
brooke james	No, I Am Not a Robot
Bruce Meyer	Slippers
C. Mikal Oness	Take a Letter
Celia Chavez	The Borderlands
Charles Jennings	Nostalgia Is So Yesterday
Charles Jennings	Recurring Dream
Christopher Genzardi	Do Overs
Christopher North	Faint Echo of Myriad People Misremembered from the Bhavagad Gita
Christopher Watson	Eternity on Dean Street
Christopher Watson	Museo del Oro
Christopher Watson	Salinas
Christopher Watson	Smoke Tree
Clare O’Reilly	Life Saver
Clare O’Reilly	Aobh
Colleen Newquist	Sunday Dinner
Damen O’Brien	Cement
Damen O’Brien	Heart in a Box
Damen O’Brien	Alarm
Deirdre Anne Hines	Gloria
Deirdre Anne Hines	Bigfoot
Deirdre Anne Hines	American Relatives
Deirdre Anne Hines	What The Raccoon Told Me
Deirdre Anne Hines	If you want to know the future look at the past
deirdre devally	Toes to The Daisies
deirdre devally	The Head Gardener Walks the Avenues, Glasnevin Cemetery
Dena Fakhro	Not long after the Baghdad Café
Derval Walsh	Unsmiling
Di Slaney	Curse of the Orchard House
Di Slaney	Moat
Di Slaney	Finished knitting
Dila Toplusoy Gunay	‘Anthropo–’ (human) + ‘–cene’ (new)
Donald Wildman	Night
Elisabeth Lorentzsen	Sexy Saturday
Elisabeth Lorentzsen	Printed Piece of Punditry
Elisabeth Murawski	Grounded
Elise Ball	Daffodils
Emma Wells	Lettered
EUGENE O’HARE	Things She Told The End of Life Nurse
EUGENE O’HARE	Eating a peach After Midnight
Faye Stevenson	Tinkle, Tinkle, Brittle Stars
Fiona Bennett	The Reset
Fiona Shillito	I said let’s be lovers
Frances Gapper	Tanked
Gary V. Powell	Schwinn
George Drew	Light Falls at a Murderous Angle
Geraldine Clarkson	Loophole
Geraldine Clarkson	A wind comes up from Coleridge
Gerda Stevenson	Wintering Bees
Gerda Stevenson	Coffined
Gerda Stevenson	Red Umbrella
Gerda Stevenson	One Word
Gerda Stevenson	Getting to Know You in Stoke
Gillian Dawson	On the Iona Ferry
Gloria Gonsalves	In The World of Censoring Words, the Chickens Will do
Gwynne Sawtelle	More Than One Way To Be A Bird
Hannah Morphet	Old friend
Heidi Williamson	This poem asks where violence begins
Heidi Williamson	Wordle as fugue state
Helen Arthur	My garden’s a picture
Hugh Dunkerley	Shaving My Father
Ingrid Anderson	Repetitive motion
James Kelly	Mabeliss Takes Your Order
James Kelly	Finders Keepers
James Lowell	Boy in the Well
James Lowell	The Irish Lumper
James Lowell	All Aboard
James Lowell	Clotheslines
James Lowell	The Coping Stone
James Lowell	The Last Eunuch of China
James Lowell	The Last Pencil
James Lowell	The Millpond
James Lowell	The Pheasant King
Jane Newberry	Shepherd’s Hey
Jed Myers	Spirit Letter to Norman
Jed Myers	Persistence Theory
Jed Myers	Can’t Be Far
Jed Myers	Refugee Bandit Birthday Rag
Jed Myers	In a Growling Wind
Jennifer Dunlop	A Song Inside
Jennifer Dunlop	Grace
Jenny Pollak	Things fall down
Jeremiah Ward	Cult
Jessamyn Fairfield	The Apartment
Jet McDonald	The thing about hitchhiking back from Amsterdam
John Paul Caponigro	Everyone In Your Dream Is You
Jon Escher	The Third Floor
Jonas Tschugguel	Lit Match
Josh Geffin	Uncle Tony Fishing, Muckross Lake
Josh Geffin	Heatwave In North London
Josh Geffin	Happening Upon Laurence Olivier (1907-1989)
Josh Geffin	Pens Down
Josh Geffin	Kin
Joyce Victor	Tick and Me
Judith Allnatt	Bubbles
Judith Allnatt	The Old Woman looks through a Rectangle
Judith Wozniak	Going to the Dogs
Judy Luttrell	Hopscotch
Julian Wakeling	A Reprieve
Julie Sumner	If You Teach a Man to Fish
Julio Trujillo	This Lime
Karen Tobias-Green	This House
Karina Holm	Birthday cake
karla k morton	Something
karla k morton	Riding the Line
Kat Glaser	Elaine’s POV
Kate Teves	The Fool
Katherine Hahn Falk	Wasted Time
Katherine Hahn Falk	Suppose
Kathy Clayden	Two Hours Before Lone Ranger
Katrina Moinet	Premature Procrastination
Kegan Swyers	Rejoice!
Kelley Pujol	Black shoes, green pants
Kelly Quinn Anderson	I’m Looking For Half of My Face
kerri cripps	When war breaks out in your kitchen
Kevin MacAlan	Comeragh, 1921
Kim Jensen	Breath Holding Contest
Kristen Mears	Daughters
Kurt Luchs	The Sign of Odysseus
Kurt Luchs	Seasonal
Lana Holman	Moment Interrupted
Lana Holman	Disappointed Angel
Laurie Holding	Bicycle Tricks
Layla O’Mara	the medicine grows close to the source of the illness
Lesley Sherwood	On the Street Where They Live
Linda Nemec Foster	June Wedding
Lisa Smith	Vintage
Liz Byrne	Boy of rain
Liz Kendall	A matter of trees and time
Liz Kendall	The Sutton Hoo hoard has been Temporarily Moved
Liz Kerr	Waving the Runner Home
Lollie Butler	A GHAZAL FOR THE LAST SHOW
Lori Grapes	Let’s Go Fishing
Lori Jakiela	One Day When He Was Dying
Lori Jakiela	After a Pitcher of Beer at Antlers Pub I Believed I was Brave
Lori Jakiela	The Lady in 38C
Lori Jakiela	The View During Takeoff
Lou Lesovitch	Christina
Louise DiLenge	Shattered Glass
Luz Leyden	TWISTED
Lynnda Wardle	Sailing on 31 Mile Lake, Quebec
Maggie Jackson	The in-between
Malcolm Povey	Too Late for Sorry
Malcolm Povey	Lessons
Malissa Priebe	the chickens dance
Mandy Pannett	Fugitives
Mandy Pannett	A Fourteenth Way of Looking
Marion Quednau	Hearsay
Mark de Rond	The Sickness
Martin Clayton	Insomnia
Martyn Golding	Very Sick
mary mulholland	Parents gaze at spaceboy
Mary Ruth Wallen	Coming Home
Mary Ruth Wallen	Saccade, Solitude, or My Own Philosophy of Time and Space
Mary O’Melveny	Writing About the Invisible
Matt Hohner	Dispatch from the Artist Residency
Matthew Zhao	We Are All Named After Someone
Mel Konner	Grand Canyon Dawn
Michael Swan	Names
Miriam O’Meara	Life Has Three Arrivals
Miriam O’Meara	It is Easier to be a Monk
Mran-Maree Laing	Bird. Sea. World.
Nicholas Hogg	The Blind Photographer
Nicolette Daskalakis	Landscape with Burning Car
Ninette Hartley	My Mother’s Sewing Box
Noelene Nash	Mealwords
Ockert Greeff	Speed Trap
Olga Balaeva	A Date with Connemara
Olga Balaeva	A Date with Connemara
owen lewis	My Partisan Grief
Paige Sandgren	White
Patricia Millner	Between Worlds
Patricia Osborne	The night carer
Patricia Osborne	The night carer
Patricia Osborne	The White Horse
Patricia Sheppard	Sequelae
Peter Archer	House Party
Philip Rösel Baker	Small White Sphere
Regina O’Melveny	AWAKE
Rekha Mehra	Shortchanging the Next Occupants
Renee Sgroi	each day i drive the edge of my own omphalos
Rhonda Collis	Dam
Rhonda Collis	Locket
Rita Geil	Lyons Creek Trail
Rita Geil	Lyons Creek Trail
Rita Geil	Party of One
Rob Phillips	TIMEWORN
Rob Phillips	Blackbird in Lorcan Blue
Roberta Beary	From that Moment in the Garden…
Rodney Aldrich	A Field Plowed Late
Roger Camp	A Model of Abstraction
Roger Camp	Pinched in the Metro
Róisín Leggett Bohan	anticipation of anaphylaxis
Róisín Leggett Bohan	Letter to a Lifeguard
Róisín Ní Neachtain	I see you knew my small betray…
Rosalind Brackenbury	Early Tintoretto at the Accademia
Sabrina Wolfe	When I went back, nothing was the same
Sally Furneaux	Lost Song
Sandeep Kumar Mishra	Immigration- A Tree Without Roots
Sarah Blizzard Robinson	Building Bridges in the Air
Sarah Davies	Flight from Bristol to Cork
Sarah Reader Harris	The Power of Flowers
Scott Dorsch	Your Eyes Were Fists and They Were Reaching
Scott Dorsch	Vanishings
Scott Dorsch	How Close We Are in the Blue Hour
Shoshanna Rockman	In sequence. In sequence. In sequence
Simon Petty	Packing
Simon Petty	The Worm Stones
Sinead McClure	Before, during and after my husband’s death, the birds came
Soledad Alfaro-Allah	DIG
stacey forbes	When West Virginia speaks its …
stacey forbes	Dream with wild rhubarb and a Mockingbird
Stephanie Feeney	Pink Load
Stephanie Feeney	A Mother Can’t Help but Eavesdrop at the Park
Stephanie Feeney	The Scene
Stephanie Feeney	Loon Song
Stephanie Saywell	In Which My Anger Introduces Herself as the next Bond Girl
Steve Xerri	housefly metaphysics
Susan Roney-O’Brien	Until Light Came
Susan Roney-O’Brien	Multiple Sclerosis
Susanna Lang	A Clattering of Jackdaws
Suzanna Fitzpatrick	Little Armoured One
Tania Dain	Red Witch
Tate Standage	honest skeletons
Toby Litt	A Clarification
V. A. Bettencourt	We Seem Like Misfits But
V. A. Bettencourt	Life Lessons from Floral Hyenas
Vasiliki Albedo	When I say I’m a firewalker I mean our bedroom’s burning
vincent Barton	Seahorse
Wayne Medford	I want to be seen naked by someone other than a trained healthcare professional
Willie Schatz	In the Georgetown Law Men’s Room

 

 

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 – 15 July. Venue: Marino Church, 6.30 pm. It is a free event and all are welcome.

(There were 1,256 entries to the competition.)

 

---

 

First Prize:

Second Sight by Alison Fields

 

 

 

Second Prize:

The Other Life by Eve Thomson

 

 

 

Third Prize:

Continuity Error by Ewan Gault

 

 

 

Honorary Mentions (no particular order):

 

Cargo by Cath Sampson

 

 

The Liberating Death of Freedom by Joshua Davis

 

 

The Nail House by Amanda Hildebrandt

 

 

My da’s a Hero by Laura Kyle

 

 

The Púca’s Share by Monica Corish

 

 

Polishing The Silence by Rowland Cooke

 

 

Derry Blue by Garret Dwyer Joyce

 

 

 

 

Sarah Hall’s comments on the ten winning stories:

 

Winner – Second Sight

What a wonderful, fully-rounded and gripping story this is! The characterisations, landscaping and the drama are so well calibrated; it feels like a vivid, compressed, atmospheric world, with humane and dynamic personalities inside that have histories and emotional complexity. All the component parts work well together. The prose is beautiful, perfectly-gaged, tense, clean, suited to both place and character; the descriptions are both astute and evocative. It’s a very rewarding read, and it utterly transported me while reading – I forgot where I was completely! – appealing to all the senses, visually stimulating, and page-turning.  

 

Second Place – The Other Life

This is a really intelligent, coruscating, witty piece of writing that skilfully uses the very compelling and entertaining voice of its main character to explore family relationships, history, gender dynamics and the drama/art controversy set up by its premise. The story unfolds really skilfully and surprisingly. This author has a brilliant talent for narrative voice and intrigue, and an ability to create strangeness and disquiet (the operating keys of the form), and to move the reader without being sentimental.

 

Third Place – Continuity Error

A fantastic, very atmospheric tale, that is both funny and tragic. The drama is really well contained, with a sense of context around it – a hinterland – which is a sign of a writer who really understand the form of the short story, what to include, and what to allude to. I loved the use of the demotic, and the language and descriptions – the metaphors especially – are so well written. The choice of subject is unusual, marginal, and very well handled. Much admiration for this writer. 

 

Runners Up:

Cargo –   
A very well written story, with a neat community drama inside, an interesting shift of narrative perspectives, and careful handling of history.

 

The Liberating Death of Freedom –
This is a skilfully handled story, that keeps a lid on the tension and keeps a steady, suitable, almost detached tone throughout, which, by the end of the story, comes into its own and pays dividends. 

 

The Nail House – 
A super, smart, colourful and playfully linguistic tale, which is a riot to read and uses its odder qualities to brilliant ends. 

 

My da’s A Hero – 
A great attempt at a story with driving plot, using political troubles and character conflict to create a small crucible of tension, intrigue and revelation. 

 

The Puca’s Share – 
Loved the creativity and playful inventiveness of this story, which lands somewhere between adult & children’s fiction and has a real sense of folkloric verve and moral engagement to it. 

 

Polishing The Silence – 
A compelling, subversive story, that takes on disquieting subject matter, human flaws and breaking points, and walks a tricky line with them using cleverly understated prose.

 

Derry Blue – 
A melancholy, cleanly written story about trauma, the loneliness of grief, and how the aftermath of damage and loss has no neat ending.

 

 

---

 

Short-list:

(alphabetical order) There are 46 stories on the short-list. 

 

Alex Rourke	Amphibian
Alison Fields	Second Sight
Amanda Hildebrandt	The Nail House
Cathy Sampson	Cargo
Chloe Banks	Blighty One
Clayton Bradshaw	The Two Things Blassie Knows
Dale Marie	Shadow Companions
Dan Micklethwaite	Like Everest Maybe, or El Capitan
David Smith	Kintsugi
deirdre devally	The Inquest
Donna Brown	Suddenly, and with Flowers
Elizabeth Whyatt	Another Country
Elizabeth Whyatt	Indigo Shore
Eve Thomson	The Other Life
Ewan Gault	Continuity Error
Garret Dwyer Joyce	Derry Blue
Jay McKenzie	Hairdressing Tips for Ugly Girls
Joshua Davis	The Liberating Death of Freedom
Julian Wakeling	Greetings From LA
Justine Busto	Espejo Majico
Kyleigh Leddy	Perpetual Sunset
Laura Kyle	My da’s a Hero
Lesley Bannatyne	Coaxing Sugar From the Trees
Liam Keller	Fill Your Pockets With Stones
Liz Houchin	Fluorescent Blues
Liza Hartley	The Sound of the Pigs
Lorcan Byrne	The Egret
Maggie Ling	The Last Time I Saw Richard
Marc Joan	Golden Mummy
Mark Johnson	All Good
Martin Costello	Eddie Grouse
Matilda KIME	REST
Max Youngman	WHITE RABBITS
Monica Corish	The Púca’s Share
Natasha Hutcheson	Gill Drayton’s Plunder – a Scrapbook
Niamh Mac Cabe	The Third Beagle
Rachel Bowman	Help for Kitty Hopkins’ Nerves
Ronan Ryan	Ghoul
Rowland Cooke	Polishing the Silence
Rupert Dastur	Love, at the Deepest Point
sean coffey	Academic Affairs
Shamaine Loo	The Second Can Wait
Sheila Killian	Flight
Sofie De Smyter	Q&A
Thomas Gabrielson	NOT THAT EASY
Vincent Barton	HAPAX LEGOMENON

 

 

---

 

Long-list:

(alphabetical order)

There are 134 stories in the long-list. 

 

Adam Oliver	La Hora Azul
Alex Rourke	Amphibian
Alexander Cullen	Do They Know It’s Christmas?
Alice Murray	Greta
Alison Fields	Second Sight
AM Ruiz Zepeda	Leopard Seals
Amanda Garrie	Leaving the Sea
Amanda Hildebrandt	No Safe Place
Amanda Hildebrandt	The Nail House
Andrew Hanson	In Place of Ashes
Ann Landi	Three Women
Anna Linstrum	He Sits Amid His Finery
Ben James	Animal Spirits
Benedict Pignatelli	A Murder of Crows
Bill Zaget	The Enfolding Space
Cathy Sampson	Cargo
Charles Cooper	Pas Si Prêt à Porter (Not So Ready to Wear)
Chloe Banks	Blighty One
Clayton Bradshaw	The Two Things Blassie Knows
Dale Marie	Shadow Companions
Dan Micklethwaite	Like Everest Maybe, or El Capitan
Dan Winterson	About Now Sounds Right
Daniel Larbi	Board of Governors of Shepherd High School
David Smith	Kintsugi
deirdre devally	The Inquest
Dennis McNamara	By Sea By Land
Donna Brown	Suddenly, and with Flowers
Dylan Pritchard	Vergogna
Edward Fry	Best of Three
Elaine McCluskey	Father Eduardo
Elizabeth Whyatt	Another Country
Elizabeth Whyatt	Indigo Shore
emily grabham	Joy Lane
Emily Ruth Ford	See Me
Emma Penruddock	The Shape of an S
Esme Gutch	The Only Truth She Knows is Pa…
Evan Boyer	Smuggling Seminar for the Elderly and Disabled
Eve Thomson	The Other Life
Ewan Gault	Continuity Error
Feargal Ó Dubhghaill	My Quizmaster Voice
Finn Dignan	The Standstill
Frances Gapper	Mrs Foxglove
Garret Dwyer Joyce	Derry Blue
Gill Gregory	The Speck In Her Eye
Guy Mitchell	Saver Girl
Hilary Bell	Cliffs
hugh mccormack	Keep Spinning
Jack Z	Hurling
James Lee	Ed
Jane Dabate	Garbage
Jay McKenzie	Hairdressing Tips for Ugly Girls
Jennifer Bailey	A Fish Story
Jessica White	Esther
Jim O’Connor	Et in Arcadia
John Fullman	Luck…A Long Covid Weekend
Jon Stapley	No Exceptions
Joshua Davis	The Liberating Death of Freedom
Julian Wakeling	Greetings From LA
Juliet Hill	In the Doorway
Justine Busto	Espejo Majico
justine sweeney	Coins in My Fist
Katrina Moinet	Borderline Discomfort
Kate Lockwood Jefford	Dead Friend’s Coat
Kieran Marsh	BLESSED IS THE FRUIT OF YOUR WOMB
Kyleigh Leddy	Perpetual Sunset
Laura Kyle	My da’s a Hero
Lesley Bannatyne	Coaxing Sugar From the Trees
Liam Keller	Fill Your Pockets With Stones
Lindsay Gillespie	Window Dressing
Liz Houchin	Fluorescent Blues
Liza Hartley	The Sound of the Pigs
Lorcan Byrne	Rock Dove
Lorcan Byrne	Scallop Shell
Lorcan Byrne	The Egret
Louis Hall	Album Track
M.G. Eugene	Through the Waves of a Melody
Maggie Harris	Under the crab-apple tree
Maggie Ling	The Last Time I Saw Richard
Marc Joan	Golden Mummy
Marc Joan	The Law of the Little Fishes
Marc Joan	The Year That Nothing Comes
Marco Patitucci	Love Means Nothing
Marion Quednau	Pairs of Shoes
Mark de Rond	Summer in Southwark
Mark Johnson	All Good
Martin Costello	Eddie Grouse
Martin Daly	Deora Dé
Mary Black	The Thaw
Mary Black	Her Handsome Prints
Mary Shovelin	The White March
Matilda KIME	REST
Max Youngman	WHITE RABBITS
Megan Jennaway	Radio Hour
Michael Males	Acquired Daughter
Michelle Crowell	The Drama of an Unwanted Separation
Monica Corish	The Púca’s Share
nada marjanovich	The Leftovers
Natalie Southworth	The Pocket Book
Natasha Hutcheson	Gill Drayton’s Plunder – A Scrapbook
Niamh Mac Cabe	The Third Beagle
Nick Okapi	Ministry of Justification
Nikki Barrowclough	Once….
Nina Cullinane	The Fort
Oscar Maloney Hill	Peel
Patricia Mullin	Hush
Paul Bassett Davies	Fit
Paul Buchheit	Crayon Games
Penny Frances	Exposure
Penny Simpson	Until your wild world ends
Peter Hankins	Nemo Kizh – the Fight Against Beauty
Peter Rodgers	One last flirtation
Peter Rose	Illegal Aliens
Phil Cummins	Mug
Rachel Bowman	Help for Kitty Hopkins’ Nerves
Rina Soloveitchik	Her Wholeness
Robert Daseler	A Dictionary of Loneliness
Ronan Ryan	Ghoul
Ronnie Greig	The Night They Bombed Belfast
Rosey Darbishire	S.W.A.L.K
Rowland Cooke	Polishing the Silence
Rupert Dastur	Love, at the Deepest Point
S A Lunn	We’re Not Getting Divorced
Sara Roberts	Seed
sean coffey	Academic Affairs
Shamaine Loo	The Second Can Wait
Shamaine Loo	The Spider Spirits
Shannon Savvas	The Resurrection of Michalis Charalambous
Sharryn Ryan	Bespangling Every Bough
Sheila Killian	Flight
Sofie De Smyter	Q&A
Sophie James	Substitutes
Stephen Flanagan	The Roboticist
Susan Wigmore	OTHER
Tina Cameron	Reckless Redemption
Thomas Gabrielson	BLANK PAGE
Thomas Gabrielson	NOT THAT EASY
Tracey Shillito	Reunion
vincent Barton	HAPAX LEGOMENON
Will Maclean	Quantitative Easing
Ximena Escobar de Nogales	AN INFLATABLE HERO
Zandra Carrington	Maurice and Finnian

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 – 15 July. Venue: Marino Church, 6.30 pm. It is a free event and all are welcome.

 

---

 

Winners

Here are the 10 winning Flash Fiction Stories, as chosen by Michelle Elvy, to be published in the FISH ANTHOLOGY 2024.

Comments on the flash stories are from Michelle, who we sincerely thank for her time and expertise. 

 

 

---

 

FIRST PLACE

Messiah: by Kate O’Grady

A story that feels energetic and unbound, but is finely crafted, about individual anguish and loss, and collective responsibility and guilt.  The reader is caught from the very start – from the opening lines that suggest innocence alongside a more sinister sense of hysteria. And by the end, the collective ‘we’ can’t be escaped; we feel, eerily, hope in the remembering but also intense regret. We see the cruelty of children, the human potential for bullying. The tone is controlled as it moves from early antics to serious concerns for survival, as it shifts from past-tense memories to present-tense grief. The extended saviour metaphor is created in the dark spaces between fantasy and reality, and the use of second person – and the unforgettable image of the greatcoat and Docs – builds both tension and tenderness. A beautifully haunting story that surprised me and did not let go.

 

 

SECOND PLACE

Starship Borders General:  by Susan Shepherd

This story begins simply enough but before you know it you’re in a whole community, an entire world. And even if dead serious, the language is lively and playful: a baby’s heart-shaped nostrils, son singing ‘You are my sunshine’ and the fishmonger, with ‘a turmoil of porpoises rolling in the blue carpet tiles of his wake’. The neatly ordered details in this narrative make it memorable: a father’s departure and a mother’s ‘mock croc handbag’; the whirr of the radiology machine and the memory of a cake with buttercream paste. This is sensory writing invoking the maddening present and the dreamy past, the borders fluid; despite the intensity of death or near-death in the ward, there is an overall feeling of jubilation at the unexpectedness of life. The final phrase sticks: ‘the colour of delicious’. It’s not where we think we are heading, and it’s just right.

 

THIRD PLACE

 

Blue Moon Memory: by PS Duffy

The casual voice invites us into this story; it’s familiar and comfortable. But this is not a comfortable story. What begins as a seemingly romantic encounter moves through a maelstrom of emotions, flashing backward and forward, tangling images and feelings in a brief moment of contact. The moment blurs to memory, and the story is alive with living and re-living. Here, a play with words that shows the uncertainty of the narrator-character, but also the careful rhythms of the writing:  ‘when you stumbled, when I stumbled, when we stumbled into, I don’t know, the best of us’. What is striking is not only the story (of now, of then, of the residue of surviving), but the way this story is written, (the fragments, the repeated  ‘remember?’), even as we are reading something so vivid as a moment that lives somewhere in the realms of darkness, rescue and salvation.

 

 

EIGHT HONORABLE MENTIONS (In no particular order)

 

A Story in 300 Words :  by alfie lee

 

 

 

Coming of Age:  by Jo Nestor

 

 

 

THE Interrogation of Lauren Lundgren:  by Alan Falkingham

 

 

 

Pivot Point:  by Judith Brown

 

 

 

The Importance of Firm Upholstery: by Fionnula Simpson

 

 

 

I Follow: by Seamus Scanlon

 

 

 

Things That Hurt:  by Nicole Love

 

 

 

Blue Light:  by RJ Dwyer

 

---

Notes from Michelle Elvy:

What a delight to read the submissions for the 2024 Fish Flash Fiction Prize, and what an honour and a challenge to make selections. The work I read demonstrates the way the form can be stretched, shaped and synthesised to create new imaginative views. Most pieces I read dealt with the landscape of human emotion and folly. Some read like traditional stories, some were like prose poems – all took risks in one way or another. The ones that engaged difficult subjects did so with an inquisitive and sometimes playful nature, also tenderness and grace. The works I selected for inclusion are the ones I returned to several times, and then several times again.

Some of them play with voice and form, from the deceptively simple backwards narrative of ‘A Story in 300 Words’ to the intimate second-person storytelling of ‘Coming of Age’ and the spare and poignant dialogue in ‘I follow’. Some explore the collisions and ruptures between people; despite the sometimes jaunty writing style,  ‘No Idea’, ‘The Importance of Firm Upholstery’ and ‘The Interrogation of Lauren Lundgren’ navigate complex terrain. Some stand out for the way they land: in ‘Blue Light’, ‘Things That Hurt’ and ‘Pivot Point’, the reader is left in a state of quandary, or wonder.

In the works selected, I found new ways of sensing realities, and what lies just beyond reality. Compelling is the way these fictions explore language, too. Each of the top three presents a steady and strong voice; there is writerly control while also a sense in each story that the edge is there to explore. These are big stories, whole worlds.

Writers of flash fiction are a fearless lot – and these stories prove that.

Michelle Elvy

 

---

 

A LITTLE ABOUT THE WINNERS:

Kate O’Grady is Irish by birth, but now roams the hills of Stroud, Gloucestershire trying to come up with ideas for stories. In fact she is obsessed with stories, the reading of them, and the writing of them. She also likes to eat bagels and lox with cream cheese. Her favourite short story writers are Lorrie Moore, Kevin Barry, Claire Keegan, Joy Williams and Wells Tower. Her favourite bagels are from Katz’s Deli in New York.

 

Susan Shepherd lives in the Scottish border town of Hawick, famed for producing medal-winning haggis and Scottish national rugby players. A journalist and poet – she won the Fish Poetry Prize in 2022 – Susan enjoys belting out hymns at the local Baptist church on a Sunday, and pushing her new granddaughter round the park in her pram. She is partial to Guinness, live music and the sound of oystercatchers along the river Teviot.

 

PS Duffy lives in Minnesota, where she misses sailing on the North Atlantic, yet, oddly, feels very much at home. Her publications include a memoir about her family’s time in 1940s Wuhan, China, where she was born, and The Cartographer of No Man’s Land, a WW I novel set in France and Nova Scotia. Published in the U.S., Canada, Israel, and the UK, it was a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, which recognizes the power of fiction to promote peace.

 

alfie lee discovered gravity and invented french kissing. when he’s not circumnavigating the globe on his solar-powered chimichanga he’s making stuff up. you can find them at alfielee.com.

 

Jo Nestor, retired Adult Educator, writes fulltime. She won the 2020 Leitrim Guardian Literary Award, has twice long-listed for FISH memoir competitions, and was shortlisted for Allingham Festival in 2023. Jo’s writing features in A Word in Your Ear – Roscommon New Writing Anthology 2019-2023, as well as several editions of the Roscommon broadsheet Autumn Leaves. Her well-received book reviews are available online at www.writing.ie . Despite global despair, she chooses to live in hope.

 

When Seamus Scanlon won the Fish Flash Fiction Prize with The Long Wet Grass (2011) he thought he had arrived (in West Cork). When the story became a one act play (2014) he thought he had arrived (on Broadway).  When the story became a film (2015) he thought he had arrived (in Hollywood). When the play was translated into Japanese and staged in Tokyo (2018) he thought he had arrived (in the East). Will the Beauty Curse (2022) finally lift his arrival curse? Stay tuned www.seamusscanlon.com

 

Alan Falkingham currently lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, but originally hails from England. He is a published author of micro and flash fiction, short stories and occasional poetry. He has completed 2 full length novels. Alan’s 80,000-word dark mystery, Clearwater Lake, is represented by Meredith Bernstein. When not writing, Alan spends his time being ordered around by his two teenage daughters, guzzling craft beer with his partner, Gina, and following the latest sporting mishaps of Leeds United. 

 

Judith Brown, born the eldest and only girl of five learnt early in life to seek out solitude. Then after a few years of marriage had solitude forced on her as a young widow. Even today, being alone is a natural preference apart from every other day when it’s not. 

 

Fionnula Simpson is a writer, researcher, and teacher who is drawn to experimenting with poetry and prose. In her spare time, she likes to run (fairly slowly) and cook (rather poorly). She recently earned a PhD in English Literature from the University of Galway.

 

Nicole Love  is a bit of an odd blend. Malted in Scotland. Mashed in Belgium. Fermented in Singapore. Distilled in San Francisco. Aged in Boston. Shelved in Edinburgh. She is currently pursuing a Master’s Degree in Creative Writing at the University of Edinburgh and has a gentle obsession with scotch, surrealism, linguistics and cultural oddness.

 

RJ Dwyer is a writer and doctor, currently pursuing an MLitt in Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow. His stories have featured in thi wurd Magazine, The Interpreter’s House and the 2024 Anthology of the Federation of Writers (Scotland), among others. An extract of his novel-in-progress was shortlisted for the Moniack Mhor Emerging Writer Award. He has also worked as part of the editorial team for three books released by indie publisher thi wurd.

 

---

 

Short-list:

(alphabetical order: 31 stories)

 

The Interrogation of Lauren Lundgren			Alan Falkingham
A Story in 300 Words			alfie lee
Flash Fiction			alfie lee
What You Don’t Know Can Kill You			Amy Blau
Just a moment			Ciaran Fitzpatrick
Singles Night			Faye Stevenson
The Importance of Firm Upholstery			Fionnula Simpson
Fingers Crossed			Jacky Willett
Starry Mourning			Jaime Greenberg
Faceoff			Jim King
Coming of Age			Jo Nestor
Pivot Point			judith brown
Messiah			Kate O’Grady
The Blind Man			Katherine MacGloin
Wear your Pink Coat			Katherine William-Powlett
Fireworks			Kim Gravell
Leave Granted			L Khasanshina
Newborn Mother			Mary Butler
The Sweep			Michelle Bitting
Car keys			Nat Pree
Transient Household Contacts			Nat Pree
The Ritual			Natalie Morphet
Things That Hurt			Nicole Love
The maths lesson			NIROSHA GUNATILLAKE
Blue Moon Memory			P.S. Duffy
Blue Light			RJ Dwyer
I Follow			Seamus Scanlon
No Idea			Seamus Scanlon
Wings			Sean Murphy
Starship Borders General			Susan Shepherd

 

 

---

 

Long-list:

In Alphabetical order (124)

Rehab	AK~ Kaiser
The Interrogation of Lauren Lundgren	Alan Falkingham
STATIC ON THE LINE	ALEX REECE ABBOTT
flash fiction	alfie lee
A Story in 300 Words	alfie lee
The Door	Alison Bundy
A Stick of Incense	Alison Bundy
How Good Is Our Universe?	ALISON GROVE
What You Don’t Know Can Kill You	Amy Blau
The 52-year old man who turned into a cliché	Anita Lehmann
The Argument	Ariane Sherine
Polka Dot Cardi	Belinda Moore
A small diver and a very large pool	Bernard Steeds
1970s Kiev	Breda Nathan
Just a moment	Ciaran Fitzpatrick
Apricity	David Micklem
Try	David Rhymes
Singles Night	Faye Stevenson
The Importance of Firm Upholstery	Fionnula Simpson
I’m up here	Frances Fischer
Family Violence	GAY LYNCH
Thanks. No.	GAY LYNCH
Mapping the Madness	Geraldine Walsh
A Swarm of Boys	Harriet Whitehead
Adieux, Henri	Helen Bar-Lev
Fluid of the Animal Body	Ian Lee
Fingers Crossed	Jacky Willett
Starry Mourning	Jaime Greenberg
Mind the Gap	James Garvey
Faceoff	Jim King
Who’s Greg Badger?	Jonathan Sellars
Can’t Kill the Spirit	Jude Higgins
Pivot Point	judith brown
The Holler	Judy Luttrell
Safe House	Jupiter Jones
To the Little Old Archivist Who Lives in My Head	Kaitlin Roberts
Messiah	Kate O’Grady
The Blind Man	Katherine MacGloin
Wear your Pink Coat	Katherine William-Powlett
Shaxton’s Law	Kathryn Aldridge-Morris
The Drop	Ken Byrne
The difference between you and a drone pilot	Kevin Walsh
Fireworks	Kim Gravell
Leave Granted	L Khasanshina
Attendance: 9th Grade English, 8.00 am	Lana Holman
Buck	Laura J. Bobrow
Family – a collection of disparate memories	Lesley Bungay
Bone	Louisa Scott
Unrepairable	Louise Henriksen
But I’m Here Now	Luanne Castle
Subterranean Tears	Luka Bulajic
The CV	Maeve Shaw
Newborn Mother	Mary Butler
A Second Chance	Matthew Nicholls
Au Revoir, World Crisis	Michael Russell
The Sweep	Michelle Bitting
Car keys	Nat Pree
Transient Household Contacts	Nat Pree
The Ritual	Natalie Morphet
Things That Hurt	Nicole Love
Decimation	Nikki Barrowclough
The maths lesson	NIROSHA GUNATILLAKE
Paper Dolls	Orla Russell-Conway
Blue Moon Memory	P.S. Duffy
(In)(Complete) Relationship Conversations	Pernille A Egidius Dake
If András Were a Soldier	Peter Dorward
That Day When …	Peter Rodgers
Just Breathe	PJ Lemer
PATTY’S ROAST CHICKEN	Rachel Fowler
CARRION CALL	Rae Cowie
Mariachi Pantomime	Randy Osborne
Blue Light	RJ Dwyer
The God of Diversity	Robert Paterson
Shall we call this just a Viennese Encounter	Saara Kahra
I Follow	Seamus Scanlon
No Idea	Seamus Scanlon
%	Sharon Boyle
According to Wikipedia, Most Damelflies Emerge in Cool  Daytime Conditions	Sherry Morris
Case Closed	shirley larkin
Fishface	Stephen Gallagher
Starship Borders General	Susan Shepherd
Swiped	Tim Fywell
Dave	Wiebo Grobler
Left Out	William MacFarlane
Déjà Vu	William Natale
Dymphna	Yanna Papaioannou
The Unbreakable Egg	Zoe Arena