356 stories longlisted
(1,575 stories submitted in total)
Story Title |
Author |
Miller | Aidan OKeeffe |
I Want You | Aisling Campbell |
The Overman | Alan Timmons |
A SLICE OF PARADISE | Alex Reece Abbott |
Falling Up | Alice Jolly |
The Faithful | Alice Jolly |
July for the Canada Geese | Alison Earls |
Creels | Alison Lock |
(Un)familiar | Allie Rogers |
Somebody Else’s Child | Amy Jomantas |
Collection Day | Andrew Fox |
69 | Andrew Judd |
Starlight | Andrew Judd |
Our Eliza | Andrew Murphy |
And Then We Ran | Andy Wilson |
Book, kitchen, shelf | Angelita Bradney |
She | Angelita Bradney |
Tom | Ann Butler Rowlands |
The Grave Digger | Ann Cahill |
Ill Omen in Kabylia | Ann Dufaux |
The Gift | Ann Mooney |
Reconstruction | Anna Freyberg |
Through a Cracked Lens | Annabel Abbs |
The man with no hands | Anne Aylor |
Misunderstanding | Anne Cleasby |
Love and Living Dangerously | Anne Cleasby |
These Silver Fish | Anne O’Brien |
Fragile | Annette Dunne |
The Note | Ariel Gil |
Hatch 9 New Applicants and enquiries | audrey corr |
A Betting Man | Barbara Fried |
Burial | Barbara Tarrant |
Shelley’s Boys | Benjamin DaSilva |
Small Stones | Beth Cardier |
Twenty Pence | Beth Tyrrell |
A Voice | Bill Davis |
Pyramid | Bill Davis |
Blind White Worm | Bill Davis |
JFK’S LAST INTERVIEW | Bob Reynolds |
The Irish Twins | Bonnie McCune |
Love in an Abattoir | Brendan Gill |
This Is Not Me | Bridgett Kendall |
Heliophobia | Carol Farrelly |
Rainbow’s End | Carol Jones |
The Inner Exiles | Caroline Lea |
Penguin | Carolyn Power |
Tribe | Caron Tate |
She Says Yes | Carrie Alexander |
Everything is Lighter | Catherine Bateson |
Strange Currents | Catherine Donnelly |
Sheep | Catherine Kirwan |
The Book of Bruises | Catherine McNamara |
Shrinking From Life | catherine talbot |
Poor Carol and Other Amusing Stories | Cathy Layne |
Snowstorm | Catrin Kean |
Ice Man | Charles Evans |
Love in the Time of Electronics | Charlie Neuner |
Of Small Consequence | Charlotte Seden |
Break Character | Chloe Wilson |
Bookworm | Chris Dooley |
The Pace of Change | Chris Weldon |
The Poor Dead | Christina Dowling |
Bubbles | Claire Constant |
Heatwave | Claire Hennessy |
I NEVER TOLD | Claire McNamara |
The Shawl | clare jarrett |
Castaway | Clare Le May |
Song for Solomon | Clare O’Dea |
Hey Presto | clare O’reilly |
Kicking the Habit | clare O’reilly |
Secrets | Clarrie Pringle |
KEEP THE FAITH | Colin Burns |
The Pictures | Connie Gaind |
Rogey | Daniel Murphy |
The Small Print | Daniel Schweimler |
Alone | Darren Ryding |
Here there are no stars | David Bausor |
The Free Brontosaurus | David Berkeley |
Where the pine trees fall | David Higgins |
WHEREVER, WHATEVER | David Jay |
The Walker | David Martin |
Dorothy | David Mathews |
Kodak Memories | David ODwyer |
10,000 Miles from Home | David Slater |
Laying my Ghosts | David Slater |
A Little Trouble with the Spirits | Deborah Cameron |
JELLYFISH DREAMING | Deborah McCutchen |
Somebody’s Girl | Debra Curtis |
Over-the-Rhine | Dedria Barker |
Goblin Market | Donna Triggs |
Collect Your Cards | Eamon Murphy |
Under the Tree | Eileen Herbert-Goodall |
Under the Tree | Eileen Herbert-Goodall |
Gateway to the Starry Sky | Eleanor O’Reilly |
His Own Man | Elizabeth Jane Corbett |
The Lost and Found | Emma Balmforth |
Frozen Tears | emma purcell |
Eleanor | Eva Lomski |
Jonnie Through the Glass | Faith Mimnall |
Roundabout | Federica Lugaresi |
In My Shoes | Fiona Drury |
The Seaview | Fiona Skepper |
Postcards From Berlin | Fiona Whyte |
Her Own Kind | Fiona Whyte |
Emma | Franco Alonso |
after all . . . | Frank Cossa |
Chronicle of a Death Forestalled | Frank Rizzuto |
Jerry | Franny French |
Mixed Reviews | Fuchsia Fishbourne |
In the Land of the Dinosaur | Garret Dwyer-Joyce |
Sin | Georgina Eddison |
Yana | Georgina Eddison |
Some Days Even the Goldfish . . . | Georgina Eddison |
Quite | Georgina Eddison |
Siren | Georgina Eddison |
A DEAD LIKENESS | Gerald Benedict |
Jaundice | gerard galvin |
Down to the black Sullán | gerard galvin |
Ducks and Geese | Gerry Dorrian |
Tigers | Gerry McCullough |
The Developing World | Gerry McKeague |
Crossing The Line | Gillian Holland |
Grand Finale | Glynis Gertsch |
The Anniversary | gordon parker |
American Holiday | grace french |
Marching Season | Grahame Williams |
Lowmans Road | Gráinne O Toole |
Into the Light | Gregory Hanafin |
Wrung | Hannah-Fleur Fitz-Gibbon |
All the rules we could ask for | Heather Richardson |
Pennyboy | Heather Richardson |
A Slut and a Liar | Helen Dann |
The Treat | Helen Hogan |
I Had a Little Nut Tree | Helen Hogan |
The Last Fix | Helen McGoldrick |
Telling the Bess | Helen Morris |
Not LIke Us | Hilary Fennell |
Hereafter | Hilary Fennell |
Red Kites Over The M40 | Hilary O’Sullivan |
The Materialist | Horatio Potter |
The Spirits of Whiskey Row | howard russell |
Revenge | howard russell |
To Spain And Back | Iona Coulter |
Dig deep, and throw well back | J Mulligan |
After The Angelus | Jack McAuliffe |
Thieving in a Minor Key | Jacob Appel |
Washing with the May Dew | Jacqueline Nolan |
The Irresistible Decline of hope in the Kingdom of Shadows | James Gargan |
Dust & Bones | James O’Sullivan |
Mr and Mrs Clark and Blanche | james woolf |
R v Sieger – additional documents disclosed by the Crown Prosecution Service | james woolf |
SAFE ARRIVAL | James Yeo |
M’boosa and the Spirit of Fire | James Yeo |
The Gower Explorer | Jane Fraser |
Breathless | Jane Roberts |
The Look Out | Janet Swinney |
The Queen of Campbeltown | Janet Swinney |
The Menace at the Gate | Janet Swinney |
HOME | Jean Rogers |
Way station | Jennifer Salkin |
The Well at the End of the World | Jill Gientzotis |
BROTHERS | Jin Baker |
Buttons | Jo Barril |
Rehearsal | Joan Christie |
The Visit. | Joan Morrissey |
Smoothin’ | Joanna Campbell |
Enzo Ponza | joanna walsh |
Judo For Jesus | Joe Golombek, Jr. |
9678 | Joe Golombek, Jr. |
The Crossing | John Inglis |
Bury My Heart | John McHugh |
The Left Side | John O’Donnell |
Financial Engineering or Whatever Shall We Do With Grandma? | Jonathan Pinnock |
Pumpkin Head | Joshua Sabatini |
The Artists | Josie Turner |
White Cube | Joy Manne |
Death of a Stoveman | Judith Brown |
Reader I Married Him | Julie Kearney |
Dangerous Beauty | Julie Kearney |
The Kid | Julie Kearney |
Louise and Louisa | k Lockwood Jefford |
THE MIRROR | KALLIOPI PASXALIDOU |
Two Funerals | Kara Moskowitz |
Unravelling | Karen Hollands |
Hidden Depths | Karen Laffan |
A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME | Karen Wolff |
The Invisible Woman | Karen Woods |
PLATEAU | Katayoun Medhat |
The Journey | Kate Mahony |
Combat | Katherine West |
The Man in the Suitcase | Kathleen Hansen |
Stone Sett | Kathryn Burke |
Residue | Kathryn Burke |
Hourglass | Kathryn Phelan |
Alma | Kathy D’Arcy |
Healing Waters | Keeley Mansfield |
Tomorrow | keren heenan |
Pigeon Blood | Kerry Barner |
Water Music | Kim Murdock |
SG642975 | Kirsten Pell |
Aurora | Lela Tredwell |
Lessons in a foreign language | Lezanne Clannachan |
Clean | Lisa Harding |
The Red and the Dark | Lorna Cooper |
Skeleton Leaf | Louisa Lester |
November Dead List | Louise Kennedy |
The Crossing | Louise King |
The Orange Step | Louise Swingler |
Hell Is Other Gods | Lucie-Gabrielle Jolicoeur |
The Light in the Attic | Luke Temple |
Other Side of the River | Lyn Broadhurst |
Alien Big Cats | M J Jackson |
Abel’s Mountain | Madeline Moran |
Six Cans | Maggie Hill |
Don’t Bury Me In Doonaree | Maggie Murphy |
The Thaw | Maire Mulhern |
High Noon | Malachi O’Doherty |
Mr. & Mrs. Mort | Manus Boyle Tobin |
Blossom | Manus Boyle Tobin |
The Long Room | Manus Boyle Tobin |
Lucky Strike | Margaret Ries |
As Simple As That | Mariam Haji |
Two Sheets to the Wind | marie kennedy |
The Firemen | Marina Marinopoulos |
Merry Christmas, Charlie | Marion Loughe |
The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over The Lazy Dog | Marius O’Shea |
Things Fall Apart | Mark Arnold |
COMPREHENSIVE COMPREHENSION | mark cole |
The Caretaker | Mark Klassen |
Universe, Sea | Mark Liddington |
White Wings | Mark Patton |
The Accumulation Of Small Wounds | Mark Smith |
Steps | Martin Hulton |
Something Beginning | Martin Hulton |
Full Tilt | Martin Keating |
Blackie | Martin Keating |
Campaign for Light | Mary Bilan |
The Herbalist of Baghdad | Mary Fox |
Going Home | Mary McKeone |
Twice Singular | Mary Moorkens |
Norah | Mary Moylan |
An Exam for Mister Mortenson | Mary Winsor |
At the Edges | Maureen Connolly |
Grift Bred in the Bone | Maureen Millea Smith |
Neuroplasticity | Melanie Cheng |
Silent as Storks | melanie whipman |
Portrait Show | Michael Barrett |
An audience of cranes | Michael Bird |
The Warlord of Aisle Nine | Michael Logan |
Dover, Japan | Michael Milton |
Polack is Warming Now | Michael Morrissey |
Weights | Michelle Scorziello |
The Widening Gyre | Miranda Bowen |
Life Happens! | Muraledharan Pillai |
Bench | Nawapak Lerthirunvibul |
Flame | Niamh MacCabe |
A Jog | Niamh MacCabe |
Memory Foam | Niamh MacCabe |
Polyxena and Achilles | Nicholas Angel |
Dear Mumsey | nick wright |
Marks | Nicolas Bellorini |
Peephole | Oana Aristide |
Criminal | Ofir Oz |
Watermelon | Omar Al-Khayatt |
The Downfall of Keith Alpen | Omar Al-Khayatt |
Knuckleheads | Pamela O’Brien |
The Barn | Pat boran |
Battery Hens | Pat Davis |
Baxter | patria hatami |
Blind Encounter | Patrick Courtney |
The Sinking | Patrick Dixon |
Murmurations | Paul McMichael |
Big Night | Paul Michel |
The Piebald Buck | Paul Michel |
Eureka | Paul Michel |
Rajasthan | Paul Saville |
Unfinished Business | Pauline Brown |
Shh | pauline clooney |
Nothing to Tell | pauline rooney |
Tablecloth | Pauline ryan |
Now… | Peter Jones |
Deliverance | Petra McNulty |
Traitor | Philip O Neill |
Desray | Pippa Gough |
Dog | Pippa Gough |
Little Bears | Ray Prowse |
The Duel Carraigeway | Raymie Watson |
The Engagement – Belfast 1975 | Raymond Watson |
Between My Ribs | Riba Taylor |
When I Was a Dog | Riba Taylor |
Ma’s Pavotitti | Richard Lysaght |
Stafford Street | Riona Judge McCormack |
Some Strange Moon | Riona Judge McCormack |
The Gift | Robert Lumsden |
Santa Claus | Robert Mundy |
The Mute | Roisin Donovan |
Wicklow Cowboy | Rory McArdle |
Mrs Frank and the Red Chair | rosemary gerring |
Girlfriend | Rosemary Jones |
Looking Back | Rosie Dastgir |
Live Meat and Freedom | Rowena Macdonald |
The Griffin | Ruby Soames |
Glossolalia | Ruth Frendo |
And Each One of Her Bones Shall be Broken | ruth gilligan |
King Mikey | Ruth Thorlby |
Oviparous | Sam Sudar |
Steve Wright in the Afternoon | Sandra Ireland |
A Thousand Grains of Sand | Sarah Hegarty |
The Green Gumar | Sarah Kilfeather |
STARS ON THE CEILING | Seamas Keenan |
THE FLYING FIFTY-TWO | Seamas Keenan |
Driving Lessons | Shannon Azzato Stephens |
The Pigs and Patrick | Simon Broad |
The Goldfish and the Button | simon poore |
Dominoes | sinead roarty |
things You Discover in the Smallest Room | Siobhan Harte |
Drift | Siobhan Harte |
The Descendent of Byron’s Parrot | Stephanie Norgate |
Partitions | Stephanie Scott |
Waiting for Gadjo | Stéphanie Sébileau |
Cathedral Streets | Stephen Flanagan |
The Two Trials of Aller | Steve Wade |
Trouble in the Forest | Steve Wade |
The bus | susan lloyd |
Dancing With The Mountains | Susan Schadler |
The Painter’s Child | Suzanne Frankham |
The Danger | Suzy Knights |
Ya Mama | Taabta Sharran |
Sartre’s Lobster | Tamara Jones |
Sweating Checkov | Tanvir Bush |
ة (ta marbuta) | Tendayi Bloom |
A Reunion at The Hotel Meurice | Terence Cady |
Cold Storage | Terence Cady |
The Parlour | Teresa B. Reilly |
Marks On My SKin | Teresa OBrien |
Compulsion | Tessa Robinson |
Blood Orange | Theodore Johnston |
Portrait of an American Girl | Thomas Carney |
A MAN ABOUT A DOG | Thomas Turner |
Hokkaido no Yuki | Thomas Watson |
The Jimmy Walk | Tim Booth |
My Kentucky Mountain | Timm Holt |
Absolutely | Timothy Moloney |
The Party | Toby Corballis |
The Cost Of Not Living | Toby Roebuck |
L Is For Laura | Tom Billings |
Meeting Constance | Tom McElligott |
What Does the Eagle Think? | Tony Lindsell |
Twisted | Tracy Fells |
The Watcher | Valerie Ryan |
Hunted by Dreamlight | Virginia McRae |
MAKING A BREAK FOR IT | Viv McDade |
Mrs Hennie Vervoerd | Wendy Archer |
Little White Lie | Winifred Scheffler |
No More | wolfgang eulitz |
Voices From Upstairs | wolfgang eulitz |
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)
More… 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
‘… 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
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
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
MoreThese 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
MoreThe 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
MoreDead 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
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.
More€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, […]
MoreHow 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.
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
The writing comes first, the bottom line comes last. And sandwiched between is an eye for the innovative, the inventive and the extraordinary.
MoreA 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.
MoreReading 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
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.
MoreI 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
MoreThe 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
MoreI 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
MoreThese 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
MoreEach 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
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
MoreFrom 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
MoreIn 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
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
MoreThere 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
MoreI 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.
MoreEvery 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
MoreThe 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
MoreReally good short stories like these, don’t read like they were written. They read like they simply grew on the page. – Joseph O’Connor
MoreThe writers in this collection can write short stories . . . their quality is the only thing they have in common. – Roddy Doyle
MoreThis 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.
More12 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.
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.
MoreA 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.
MoreIan 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?
More