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Fish Anthology 2024 LAUNCH

June 11th, 2024 | Uncategorized | Comments Off on Fish Anthology 2024 LAUNCH

Fish Anthology 2024Monday 15th July at 6:30
Marino (Old Methodist) Church
Bantry, West Cork, Ireland

The Launch of the Fish Anthology 2024 was held in this charming old methodist church. Many of the authors published in the Anthology read from their work, to showcase sample of  the talent in this book. 
We had a get together of 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 

Poetry Prize 2024: Results

May 15th, 2024 | Uncategorized | Comments Off on Poetry Prize 2024: Results

 

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.

Billy Collins

Billy Collins.

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:

Brooke Hetter JamesNo, I am not a Robot (An Ekphrastic Poem of Sorts) by Brooke Herter James

Read Winning Poem

 

 

SECOND PRIZE:

Mary K MelvenyWriting About the Invisible by Mary K O’Melveny

 

THIRD PRIZE:

Rosalind Brackenbury

Early Tintoretto at the Accademia by Rosalind Brackenbury

 

 

 

HONORARY MENTIONS (In no particular order): 

Toby LittA Clarification by Toby Litt

 

 

Heidi WilliamsonThis poem asks where violence begins by Heidi Williamson

 

 

Philip Rösel BakerSmall White Sphere by Philip Rösel Baker

 

 

Josh GeffinUncle Tony Fishing, Muckross Lake by Josh Geffin

 

 

Marion QuednauHearsay by Marion Quednau

 

 

Cathy ClaydenTwo 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.

Linda Nemec Foster lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan and was selected to serve as that city’s first Poet Laureate (2003-05). Her 12 collections of poetry include, The Blue Divide, The Lake Michigan Mermaid (2019 Michigan Notable Book), and Amber Necklace from Gdansk. Her book of flash fiction, Bone Country, was recently published. Foster has been honored with numerous awards including first prize in the 2023 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Contest sponsored by The Poetry Center (USA).

 


 

 

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

 

 

Short Story Prize 2023/24: RESULTS

April 10th, 2024 | Uncategorized | Comments Off on Short Story Prize 2023/24: RESULTS

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.

Sarah Hall

Judge, Sarah Hall

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:

Alison Fields, Fish Short Story 2023/24 winner

Second Sight by Alison Fields

 

 

 

Second Prize:

Eve Thomson Fish Short Story Prize winnerThe Other Life by Eve Thomson

 

 

 

Third Prize:

Continuity Error by Ewan GaultEwan Gault Fish Short Story Prize 2023/34

 

 

 

Honorary Mentions (no particular order):

 

Cath Sampson: Fish Short Story Prize 2023Cargo by Cath Sampson

 

 

Joshua Davis: Fish Short Story Prize 2023The Liberating Death of Freedom by Joshua Davis

 

 

Amanda Hildebrandt: Fish Short Story prize 2023, winner.The Nail House by Amanda Hildebrandt

 

 

Laura Kyle: Fish Short Story Prize 2023, winner.My da’s a Hero by Laura Kyle

 

 

Monica Corish: Fish Short Story Prize 2023, winner.The Púca’s Share by Monica Corish

 

 

Rowland Cooke: Fish Short Story Prize 2023, winnerPolishing The Silence by Rowland Cooke

 

 

Garret Dwyer Joyce: Fish Short Story Prize 2023, winner.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

Flash Fiction Prize 2024: RESULTS

April 10th, 2024 | Uncategorized | Comments Off on Flash Fiction Prize 2024: RESULTS

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

Fish Flash Winner 2024Messiah: 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

Fish Flash Fiction 2nd Prize 2024Starship 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

 

Fish Flash Fiction 3rd 2023Blue 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)

 

Fish Flash Fiction Prize 2023: winnerA Story in 300 Words :  by alfie lee

 

 

 

Fish Flash Fiction Prize 2023: winnerComing of Age:  by Jo Nestor

 

 

 

Fish Flash Fiction 2023: winner

THE Interrogation of Lauren Lundgren:  by Alan Falkingham

 

 

 

Fish Flash Fiction 2023: winnerPivot Point:  by Judith Brown

 

 

 

Fish Flash Fiction 2023: winnerThe Importance of Firm Upholstery: by Fionnula Simpson

 

 

 

I Follow: by Seamus Scanlon

 

 

 

Nicole Love: Fish Flash Fiction Prize 2024, winner.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

 

Short Memoir Prize 2024: RESULTS

April 1st, 2024 | Uncategorized | Comments Off on Short Memoir Prize 2024: RESULTS

Winners

Short-list

Long-list

 

On behalf of all of us at Fish, we congratulate the 10 winners who’s memoir made it into the Fish Anthology 2024 (due to be launched in July ’24 at the West Cork Literary Festival), and to those writers who made the long and short-lists, well done too. 

Thank you to Sean Lusk, for the time and enthusiasm that he put into selecting the winners.

Notes from Sean on the 10 winning memoirs.

(About Sean’s latest novel.)

(There were 717 entries in total)


 

The 10 Winners:

Selected by Sean Lusk. Author of The Second Sight of Zachary Cloudesley

 

FIRST

Rand-Richards-Cooper

Chess with the Wehrmacht
by Rand Richards Cooper (USA)

 

SECOND

David LongstaffI Should Have held Him
by David Longstaff (UK)

 

THIRD

Daisy O'CleeBefore the Sun
by Daisy O’Clee (UK)

 

 

 

HONORARY MENTIONS (In no particular order.)

Sara Green

Train to Nowhere
by Sara Green (Australia)

 

 

Sylvia TortiThe Mortal Shift
by Sylvia Torti (USA)

 

 

Kirsti CockburnThe Lone Ranger
by Kirsty Cockburn (UK)

 

 

Arthur WrightSketches of Spain
by Arthur Wright (UK)

 

 

Gemma GreenThese Shoes
by Gemma Green  (UK)

 

 

Brian JonesAlfie Plum, The Unspoken Words
by Brian Jones (UK)

 

 

Stephen Bridger

Bubbles 
by Stephen Bridger (UK)

 

 

 

 

 

Notes from judge, Sean Lusk:

This very strong set of memoirs deliver emotional weight, combining the personal and particular with the universal. Each one is touching, though often in surprising ways: the loss of a child is a consistent theme – sometimes a child simply lost because they have left home, sometimes more searingly because a baby is lost in childbirth. Loss of parents, too, features in many of these memoirs. Significant international events – war, terrorism, and climate crisis, make their appearance, as do crumbling public services. The unifying factor is that each is described through the eyes of memory – subjective and not always wholly reliable. That the subject of memoir is so often personal trauma should not surprise us – these are so often the experiences that burn deep and which, when the time comes, we feel the need to tell.

 

Bubbles is an absorbing account of the often anarchic experience of a junior doctor working in a hospital in chaos, surrounded by larger than life characters – each going through their own intensely personal traumas.  Alfie Plum, the Unspoken Words is a tender account of a taciturn man’s wartime experiences, as imagined by a nephew who has to fill in the gaps. These Shoes is a mother’s reflections on losing a son because he has grown up and away, the process of redecorating what had been his bedroom almost a form of grief. Sketches of Spain is a gripping account of the Madrid bombing of 2004 and the public response to it, and to the government the electorate threw out when it became clear they had tried to exploit the tragedy to win an election. The Lone Ranger tells of two women seeking a man willing to be the father to the child they hope to conceive. He turns out to be not quite what he appears to be. The Mortal Shift intertwines the landscape of the Colorado desert and the search for water with one woman’s diagnosis of breast cancer. Train to Nowhere is a wonderfully written piece describing a chance encounter on a train, and a reminder that a memoir can be every bit as significant when recounting nothing more than an hour or two in a stranger’s company.

Third placed memoir Before the Sun is a moving and gripping account of dealing with a mother’s sudden death, while coping with the final stages of pregnancy. Beautifully observed, intensely honest, I felt in reading it as if I knew these people intimately. Second placed I Should have Held Him is a hugely moving account of the loss of a baby in childbirth, told from the perspective of a father who struggles to come to terms with that loss, trying desperately to be the man he wishes to be in this moment of profound heartbreak. Written with deceptive simplicity, it works on every level, and reminds us of the importance of holding each other, and of holding on. First placed Chess with the Wehrmacht is a stunning piece of writing. Set in 1987 in Mainz it describes how a young American, eager to understand the mindset of the wartime generation of Germans, slowly befriends a group of old men who play chess in the park. Week by week he gets to the heart of what is revealed to be a great self-deception – cynicism, cordial and absolute, as the memoir so precisely tells us. This is memoir as history, as travelogue, as memory, as storytelling, its observations striking at the heart of something truly important and revealing. When memoir does that for us, it does us all a great service.  

 

 

A LITTLE ABOUT THE WINNERS

 

Rand Richards Cooper is the author of two works of fiction, The Last to Go and Big As Life. As an essayist and journalist he has covered an alarming range of topics, from coed locker rooms to Indian casinos, Botox parties, the wonders of the F-word, the search for lost WW II submarines, the sexual politics of having your dog neutered, soccer and the meaning of life, the origins of jerk barbecue, and why McDonald’s should not be allowed to build on the corner of his street.  Which, by the way, is in Hartford, Connecticut. 

 

David Longstaff began writing stories two years ago. He has been shortlisted and a winner in six UK competitions. His dark humour is always present. He is an inch shorter than he was, has size 12 feet and his enlarged prostrate is currently being treated. He no longer owns a dog.

 

Daisy  O’Clee reported for local newspapers in Kent in the late 1990s. She delivered aid to Kosovan refugees in Albania and visited Brunei to interview the Gurkhas before they relocated to her home town of Folkestone. She has campaigned on behalf of cancer patients, children in the care system and people with severe mental illness. She lives in Hove with her children Mollie and Lenny, and is excited to be retraining in rebirthing breathwork.

 

Sara Green was born in the Caribbean, then taken to England by cruel parents.  Finding it too cold, she backpacked to Australia.  Her ancestors gave her the globe-trotting gene and she is busy writing their stories – a murdered great aunt, a ‘bolter’ grandmother, and an African explorer great-grandfather.  On her travels, she writes vignettes of people she meets.  Train to Nowhere is one of these.  Sara writes Creative Non-Fiction, Fiction and Memoir in the Australian bush and Sydney.

 

Sylvia Torti is an ecologist and writer. She holds a Ph.D. in biology and is the author of two novels (The Scorpion’s Tail, Curbstone Press, 2005 and Cages, Schaffner Press, 2017). Her short stories and essays have been published in numerous magazines and edited volumes. (https://sylviatorti.com/). She has just been named President of College of the Atlantic in Maine, USA, where students from across the world grapple with questions of human ecology.

 

Kirsty Cockburn lives on the South coast in the UK. She works in Communications and enjoys writing, running, swimming and cycling. Her favourite times tend to find her on a paddleboard or in a kayak having adventures with her two inspiring boys.

 

Arthur Wright. In the year 2000, after gaining a degree at Nottingham Trent University in analogue photography, Arthur relocated to Madrid, Spain along with his wife and two-year-old son. Combining photography work with English teaching and writing, he embraced the culture and language, only returning in 2017 to study an MA in Fine Art. Presently he is writing, making art, and teaching in North Norfolk, with aspirations to return one day to the land of his heart.

 

Gemma Green is an ex-Bailiff, now online tarot reader. She has a Masters in poetry from UEA and recently took up memoir in the hope of making sense of the past. She writes best from her sofa, surrounded by snacks and wrote this short memoir in secret. Now it’s getting published, she might have to tell the family what she’s been up to. Then again, she might not.

 

Brian Jones grew up in an industrial suburb of Manchester. His working life was steeped in IT, spiced with periods as  a civil servant,  sous chef, painter and decorator, photographer… In 2014 he started to write and in 2023 graduated from Chichester University with an MA in Creative Writing. He has had a number of short satirical pieces published and is currently studying philosophy and writing a novel set against the backdrop of Thatcher’s Britain. 

 

Stephen Bridger is a gastroenterologist, and part-time husband, father and writer. He has spent his life working and teaching in understaffed hospitals. If he isn’t catching up on sleep, then he likes to run and swim. He is too mean to pay for therapy. Bubbles is his first attempt at remembering.

 

 


 

SHORT-LIST (in alphabetical order. There were 717 entries in total)

Short-list of 26 memoirs

 

Afric McClinchy

Bluff

Arthur Wright

Sketches of Spain

Brian Jones

Alfie Plum, The Unspoken Words

Christine McDonough

Melancholy – Regret’s Shorter, Pimply Cousin

Daisy O’Clee

 Before the sun

Damien Ryan

Skeokhojeong

David Longstaff

I should have held him 

David McLoghlin

Extract From the Darien Gap

Ellie Rees

Memories of Joyce

Garret Dwyer Joyce

Bombs and Bullets

Gemma Green

These Shoes

Joel Bond

One Foot in Front of the Other

Julie Leoni

May All Sentient Beings Be Free From Suffering and From the Causes of Suffering

Katherine Drago

Ordinary Magic

Kirsty Cockburn

The Lone Ranger

Layla O’Mara

It Is Here That Nettles Grow

Martin Cromie

Absolved From Guilt

Michelle Brock

Walking on ice

Mike Murray

Dan the Man

Olivia Rana

The Woman at the TUI Blue Hotel

Philippa Groom

My Hummingbird Heart

Rachel Winner

Roommates

Rand Richards Cooper

Chess with the Wehrmacht 

Sara Green

Train to Nowhere

Stephen Bridger

Bubbles 

Sylvia Torti

The Mortal Shift

 

 

 

 


 

LONG-LIST (in alphabetical order. There were 717 entries)

Long-list of 79 memoirs 

 

Afric McGlinchey

Bluff

Alain Speed

Alzheimer’s

Alan Passey

Luigi and The President

Amelia Aston

Laila

Andrea Breen

Murmurings

Ann Fischer

Daddy’s Girl

Annette Corbett

The Long Goodbye

Arthur Wright

Sketches of Spain (1 and 2)

BARBARA Rouillard

Without Notice

Brian Jones

Alfie Plum – The Unspoken Words

Brian Witherden

Land of My Mother’s

C.P. Nield

The Twin Dilemma

Caroline Heffernan

The Phone Call

Carolyn Colburn

You Get What You Need

chris youle

Between the Cries

Chrissie Horton

The Private Life of Danny Bloom

Christine McDonough

Melancholy – Regret’s Shorter, Pimply Cousin

Claudia Cruttwell

Village Life

Daisy O’Clee

Before The Sun

Damian Ryan

Seokhojeong

David Hughes

Rebecca

David Longstaff

I should have held him

David McLoghlin

Darien Gap

David Ralph

May the Sun Keep Shining

Deirdre Anne Hines

My Beautiful Father -For-Get-Me-Not

Derek Perry

My Tale of Two Cities

Devon Becker

Who Will Conquer

Éanlaí P. Cronin

I Love You

Eithne O’Halloran

Kingdom of the Stars

Ellen Birrell

Deep End

Ellie Rees

Memories of Joyce

Evie Lambert

Freedom of Movement

Garret Dwyer Joyce

Bombs and Bullets

Gemma Green

These Shoes

Gina G

My Mother’s Mirror

James Garvey

Bonjour Banal

Jill Lewis

Arcs of a Life

Joel Bond

One Foot in Front of the Other

John Kaufmann

Eighty-Sixed

Judy Bridges Bridges

A Photographic Memory

Julie Leoni

May all sentient beings be free

Karen Samski

Fame and Infamy: Bridgework 87

Karin van Heerden

Goodbye

Katherine Drago

Ordinary Magic: The Spellbinding Nature of Fireflies

Kerry Beckett

Nursery Rhymes

Kirsty Cockburn

The Lone Ranger

Layla O’Mara

It Is Here That Nettles Grow

Letty Butler

The Dinosaur Museum

L J Mercer

Ding Dong

Marion Henderson

The Taste of Hate

Mark Cole

Unzipped

Martin Cromie

Absolved From Guilt

Matilda KIME

The Day Player.

Matt Taylor

Gone

Michelle Brock

Walking on Ice

Mike Murray

Dan the Man

Morgan Barbour

Teeth

Nicholas Murray

Ballymac

Noellyn Fraser

The Sailor and the Siren

Olivia Rana

To the Woman at the TUI Blue Hotel

Palli Ward

Pig-jawed

Patricia Guthrie

Mum

Philippa Groom

My Hummingbird Heart

Qingqing Cai

What I Misremember About a Dead Man

Rachel Winner

Roommates

Rand Richards Cooper

Chess With the Wehrmacht

Riba Taylor

Travelers

Robert Coles

DAKAR BY DAY

Robert James-Robbins

‘Nounou’

Sheena Wilkinson

How I Killed My Granda

Sheena Wilkinson

How Much is that Doggie in the Window

Simon Beechinor

Yesterday’s Soldiers

Stephen Bridger

Bubbles

Steve Stevenson

Metamorphosis

SYLVIA TORTI

The Mortal Shift

Toni Thomas

Lilacs

Sara Jane Green

Train to Nowhere

Troy Spence

Four Acts

Vera Hough

Refueling With Care

 

Launch of the Fish Anthology 2023

July 12th, 2023 | Uncategorized | Comments Off on Launch of the Fish Anthology 2023

Fish Anthology 2023 LaunchTuesday 11th July saw the launch of the 2023 Anthology in the Maritime Hotel, Bantry. Nineteen of the fourty authors published in the anthology were there to read from their piece, travelling from Australia, USA and from all corners of Europe.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Read about the Anthology

More photos of the night will be posted here shortly, plus links to the kindle and paperback editions on amazon.

 

Nineteen of the authors attended the launch and read from their work. 

Poetry Prize 2023: RESULTS

May 15th, 2023 | Uncategorized | Comments Off on Poetry Prize 2023: RESULTS

 

Winners

Short-list

Long-list

 


 

Winners:

Here are the 10 winners, as chosen by judge Billy Collins, to be published in the FISH ANTHOLOGY 2023.

The Anthology will  be launched as part of the West Cork Literary Festival, (The Maritime Hotel, Bantry, West Cork – Tuesday 11th July – 18.00.) All are welcome!

Second prize winner, Mary O´Donnell, is awarded a weeks in residence at Anam Cara Writer’s and Artist’s Retreat

 
Billy Collins

Billy Collins

Comments on the winning three poems are from Billy Collins (below), who we sincerely thank for lending his time and experience to judge the prize.

Congratulations to these ten poets, and also to those whose poems made the short and long-lists. Total entry was 2,348. 

 

More about the 10 winning poets (link)

The Ten Winners:

 

FIRST                                                                                                 

THE SCENE WITHOUT by Winifred Hughes

This poem is subtle elegy which uses the familiar scene of a rural backyard to evoke the absence of a loved one.  The flora and flora are intimately rendered for nothing has changed, except a terrible sense of absence, creating a palpable split on what’s on either side of the window.  An accomplishment in understatement. – Billy Collins

 

SECOND

VECTORS IN KABUL by Mary O´Donnell

Here, the difficult subject of the forces denying girls an education in Afghanistan is approached at an angle by which the poet ingeniously mixes the language of science with the plight of the young students to form a kind of mathematics of intolerance.  The poem is timely as well as formally commendable. – Billy Collins

 

THIRD

EXTINCTION by Luisa A. Igloria      

A poem with a facility of movement, swinging from the Judas goat to Darwin, a dying dog, and ending with our own dead, how they linger and return.  What a pleasure to watch his poet’s mind at work, guiding us this way and that, then landing on our own experience with mortality.  A poem with many interests, including the reader. – Billy Collins

 

HONORARY MENTIONS (in no particular order):

 

Rosetta Pebble

by Tania Dain

 

Aground  

by Sharon Black

 

Emozioni

by Steph Ellen Feeney

 

I Explain Time Travel to my Son

by Peter Borchers

 

Park Protocol

by Scott Renzoni

 

No Items Match Your Search

by Catherine Spooner

 


Toccata for Spoons

by Daniel Lusk

 

 

 

A LITTLE ABOUT THE WINNERS

Winifred Hughes is a reformed academic and active birder living in Princeton, NJ. The author of two chapbooks, as well as poems in scattered journals, she currently serves on the boards of two local environmental organizations and teaches courses in nature writing and ecopoetry. When she is not actually writing poems, she can be found leading bird walks and poking around in the local wetlands, or hanging out with her two grown sons.

 

Mary O’Donnell has published seventeen books since 1990. She was appointed Poet Laureate of Naas, Co Kildare, during 2022. Her eighth poetry collection is ‘Massacre of the Birds’ (Salmon). An essay, ‘My Mother in Drumlin Country’, was listed in Notable Essays and Literary Nonfiction of 2017 in Best American Essays (Mariner). People say she is a kick-ass creative writing teacher. She intends to write until the energy runs out, which it hasn’t—so far. Member of Aosdána. www.maryodonnell.com

 

Luisa A. Igloria enjoys drawing, hand-binding little books, experimenting with collage, trying out new recipes, and ripping out and re-starting knitting projects when she’s not writing or teaching. She adores figs, dumplings, and tango music. Originally from Baguio City, she makes her home in Norfolk VA and teaches English and Creative Writing in Old Dominion University’s MFA Creative Writing Program. Luisa is the 20th Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia (2020-22), Emerita. www.luisaigloria.com

 

Tania Dain has spent her life filling notebooks with poems, stories, novels and plays. She studied Creative Writing at Manchester University and CitiLit, and is a member of the ZB writing group and the McGechie Duo. A secondary school teacher, her daily commute takes in – wonderfully – the fine oaks and wandering deer of Richmond Park. She is currently putting together her first collection of poetry, obligatory in a family of scribblers.

 

Sharon Black is from Glasgow and lives in a remote valley of the Cévennes mountains in France. Her prizes including The London Magazine Poetry Prizes 2019 and 2018. She has published 4 full collections of poetry and a pamphlet. Her latest collections are The Last Woman Born on the Island (Vagabond Voices, 2022), exploring Scotland’s culture and heritage, and The Red House(Drunk Muse, 2022), set in her adopted homeland. She is editor of Pindrop Press. www.sharonblack.co.uk

 

Steph Ellen Feeney was born in Louisiana, and raised in Texas. She grew up in a family of fishermen, musicians and drinkers, and still dabbles in all three. She is a Board Director of Art for Human Rights. Her poems have appeared in The Poetry Review and Ink Sweat & Tears. These days, she calls Suffolk home.

 

Peter Borchers is a retired science teacher who has lived in South Africa, Malawi and Tasmania as well as the UK. He started writing poetry in later life once all the frenzy had died down.

 

Scott Renzoni is a poet & actor originally from Vermont, now based in the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Ekphrastic Review, KGB Bar Online Literary Review, Connecticut Poetry Review, the Library of Congress’ “Poetry 180” site, and others. Stage work has included everything from Shakespeare to farce and even a musical or two. A 4-time “Jeopardy!” champion, Renzo also works as a bartender and bookseller. 

 

Catherine Spooner recently returned to creative writing after a gap of many years. In 2021-2, she took a career break to complete an MLitt in Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow and in 2022, was the recipient of the Northern Writers’ Arvon Award from New Writing North. In her other life, she is an academic who writes about Gothic literature, culture and fashion. She is often found wearing black. 

 

Daniel Lusk is the winner of a Pushcart Prize for his genre-bending essay, “Bom.”  He is the author of eight poetry collections and other books, most recently Every Slow Thing, Farthings (eBook Yavanika Press, Bangalore), and The Shower Scene from Hamlet. Native of the prairie Midwest, and onetime preacher, sports writer, jazz singer, cowboy, teacher and NPR commentator, Daniel lives in Vermont (USA). He is married to Irish poet Angela (Goggins) Patten.

 

 


 

 

SHORT-LIST in alphabetical order. (68 poems. Total entry was 2,348) 

 

Ode to an Irish Minstrel

Mary Anne Eliza

Anderson

My father’s watch

Jennifer

Barber

Love You!

Angela

Beese

Aground

Sharon

Black

Asylum

Andy

Blackford

Sting of History

Rosalin

Blue

I explain time travel to my son

Peter

Borchers

Matryoshka

Partridge

Boswell

The Turn

Partridge

Boswell

Fences

Partridge

Boswell

My dad orders four drinks at a restaurant
on the Greek island of Zakynthos, 1987

Jeanette

Burton

Magic Tricks

Finola

Cahill

Abode

Joseph

Chamberlain

Shadowlands

Robert

Charlton

GRAFFITI

Alexandra

Corrin-Tachibana

Beast

Elena

Croitoru

Rosetta Pebble

Tania

Dain

Game. Set. Matched.

Deirdre

Devally

The Harp and Loom are String Sisters

Jane

Edmonds

Aubade

Birgit

Elston

Blocked Drains

Kate

Ennals

Latin Teacher

Frank

Farrelly

Emozioni

Stephanie

Feeney

Fishing Cooperative

Stephanie

Feeney

Spring’s sighting of a gator sunning itself
from the side of the road—

Amy

Fladeboe

On Reflection

Tom

Flaherty

Infinity curve, with cheesesteak

Stacey

Forbes

Fish Heaven

Sally

Fox

SORROW

Geoffrey

Gates

Bully

Alison

Gorman

The Urn

Alison

Gorman

The Nameless Gringos Get Drunk in Santiago
& Wind Up Working in the Vineyards

Jonathan

Greenhause

I Would Do Anything for Love

Anthony

Hanbury-Williams

TO BREAK ALIVE

Pauline

Holdstock

How the Goddess Artemus Gave Up War

Pamela

Hughes

The Scene Without

Winifred

Hughes

Extinction

Luisa A.

Igloria

While listening to NRK Klassik

Fin

Keegan

VOICE

Debbie

Knight

Oh No, Not the Beef Stroganoff!

Debbie

Knight

Paragard

Madeline

Lawler

anticipation of anaphylaxis

Róisín

Leggett-Bohan

After Making Love With The Feral Coyote

James

Lowell

Toccata for Spoons

Daniel

Lusk

The things you left behind

Jonathan

Marks

Cul-de-sac

Steve

Miell

1. laissez les bon temps rouler

Karla K

Morton

cake

Mary

Mulholland

VECTORS IN KABUL

Mary

O’Donnell

The scene on repeat in my mind for the past ten years

Lauren

O’Donovan

Ageing Poet in a Shop

Mary

O´Gorman

Sweet Boy

Jane

Otto

Why the Child Is Immortal

Christina

Park

Rogue males

Tim

Relf

Park Protocol

Scott

Renzoni

Summer Triumvirate

Susan

Richardson

Dementia is preferable

Sharon

Rockman

Was It a Dream?

Allen

Shadow

Prayer

Patricia

Sheppard

Family Matters

Fionnula

Simpson

Elizabeth Fortescue provides her numbers for the
Factory Inspector’s Report, 1834

Di

Slaney

Welcome to the Discharge Lounge

Di

Slaney

No Items Match Your Search

Catherine

Spooner

They Tell Me

Shamini

Sriskandarajah

Deep Listening to Daffodils

Jane

Thomas

Dog Talk

Tom

Vandel

Where The Need For Love Takes You

Rob

Wallis

In The Summer

Rob

Wallis

We Appreciate Your Work

Susan

Wolbarst

FORSYTHIAS BLOSSOMING

Ellen

Zhang

 


 

 

LONG-LIST in alphabetical order. (247 poems. Total entry was 2,348)

Slipface

Serena

Alagappan

Let’s Catch Up Soon

Serena

Alagappan

Shadowy drunk/poets dancing

John

Alter

Searching for William Butler Yeats

Mary Anne Eliza

Anderson

Ode to an Irish Minstrel

Mary Anne Eliza

Anderson

19/02/23

Helen

Arthur

Panama shuffle

Helen

Arthur

During the Third Week of the War

Jennifer

Barber

Onset

Jennifer

Barber

My father’s watch

Jennifer

Barber

What to expect…

Eleanor

Barlow

A Few Questions on a River Death

Gill

Barr

Leaving the Mental Ward

Angela

Beese

Love You!

Angela

Beese

Girl at a Funeral

Solano

Bianchi

Behind the shed

Sarah

Bird

Aground

Sharon

Black

Asylum

Andy

Blackford

Cafe, Heartlands

Adrian

Blackledge

Glass Delusion

Rosalin

Blue

Sting of History

Rosalin

Blue

Amelia

Faye

Boland

My Dead Boyfriends

Elizabeth

Boquet

Heirloom

Peter

Borchers

Sunday morning

Peter

Borchers

I explain time travel to my son

Peter

Borchers

Aubade of a Blended Eschatology

Partridge

Boswell

Ensō Carousel

Partridge

Boswell

The Poet’s Way

Partridge

Boswell

The Superpower

Partridge

Boswell

The Return

Partridge

Boswell

The Escape Artist

Partridge

Boswell

Matryoshka

Partridge

Boswell

The Turn

Partridge

Boswell

Fences

Partridge

Boswell

Quadri and Florian

Richard

Brait

FILMS WITH INTERESTING BUT UKNOWN ACTORS

Lawrence

BRIDGES

Longing

Lawrence

BRIDGES

ONE OF THOSE LINOLEUM DAYS

Lawrence

BRIDGES

Boomerang

Cory

Brown

My dad orders four drinks at a restaurant on the
Greek island of Zakynthos, 1987

Jeanette

Burton

Most of all, I remember his hands

Liz

Byrne

Magic Tricks

Finola

Cahill

Midnight at the Second-hand Record Store

Jonathan

Cant

Winter : Water

Charlotte

Carnegie

Bush lessons

Anne M

Carson

Nellie

Jean

Cassidy

Dividing Line

deborah

catesby

Abode

Joseph

Chamberlain

Shadowlands

Robert

Charlton

At the Feet of Michelangelo’s David

Suzanne

Cleary

I Thought You Were It

Hetty

Cliss

Éclairs

brid

connolly

Faith

Martin

Cordrey

GRAFFITI

Alexandra

Corrin-Tachibana

Rooster

Patrick

Cotter

Small-town Rumours

Patrick

Cotter

Beast

Elena

Croitoru

Rosetta Pebble

Tania

Dain

Proofs

Arno

Daniel

The Town

Robert

Daseler

Veronica Lake

Robert

Daseler

Notes on Hospitality

Christina

Daub

SONNET XVII

Gary

Davis

Game. Set. Matched.

Deirdre

Devally

Praise Alaska

Patrick

Dixon

Swearing In Swearing Out

Gabriel

Donleavy

Alone, now

Debra

Doonan

O’Keano’s

Anthony

Doyle

Waiting at the shopping centre coffee shop
for my daughter and her friends

Steven

Duggan

I Never Wanted To come To Your City

Hartley

Dupont

The Harp and Loom are String Sisters

Jane

Edmonds

Selkie

Jennifer

Elmore

Aubade

Birgit

Elston

Blocked Drains

kate

Ennals

Latin Teacher

Frank

Farrelly

Emozioni

Stephanie

Feeney

Fishing Cooperative

Stephanie

Feeney

appetite

Deborah

Finding

Spring’s sighting of a gator sunning itself
from the side of the road—

Amy

Fladeboe

On Reflection

Tom

Flaherty

For The Rose Man

Jean

Flanagan

The Breast Plate

Pauline

Flynn

Infinity curve, with cheesesteak

Stacey

Forbes

Fish Heaven

Sally

Fox

A Lesbian is a Cathedral

Caitlin

Francis

Pentimento

Mag

Gabbert

Bird Perched on Top of Cage

Sheri

Gaitings

Cardinals

Kate

Gale

The Swimmers : 24th November

Joan

García Viltró

SORROW

Geoffrey

Gates

The Curse of the Moon

Norman

Goodwin

Bully

Alison

Gorman

The Urn

Alison

Gorman

The Schooner

Ian

Gouge

BAND OF BROTHERS

Tim

Goulding

CLUSTER BOMB

Tim

Goulding

Venice

Sara

Greaves

Unfinished Hypotheses

Jonathan

Greenhause

The Nameless Gringos Get Drunk in Santiago
& Wind Up Working in the Vineyards

Jonathan

Greenhause

On longshore drift

Dominic

Gregory

Offering to the Blood Bank

Joseph

Grikis

Something like an Outlaw

Dan

Grote

I Would Do Anything for Love

Anthony

Hanbury-Williams

Sundays

Maggie

Harris

A pot of stew in the South of France,
replenished for 500 years

Lyd

Havens

Saying goodbye to my future boyfriend while he’s still
just a man I’ve had a six-week fling with

Rachael

Hill

The Unreeving

Matt

Hohner

Man Jumps on Hood of Car, Smashes
Windshield to Get at Errant Driver

Matt

Hohner

Sowing Begins in Eleven Regions of Ukraine

Matt

Hohner

TO BREAK ALIVE

Pauline

Holdstock

Convenient Acquaintance

Lana

Holman

Sing Whilst You Drown

David

Hughes

While Holding a Bouquet of Salvia

Pamela

Hughes

Mother As Metaverse

Pamela

Hughes

How the Goddess Artemus Gave Up War

Pamela

Hughes

The Scene Without

Winifred

Hughes

Extinction

Luisa A.

Igloria

Inconceivable

Casey

Jarrin

holy days

Dillon

Jaxx

Eyes Closed

Victoria

Kaplan

While listening to NRK Klassik

Fin

Keegan

At the River

James

Kelly

Some Times a Tornado

James

Kelly

A Large and Unexpected Statue of Anubis

Liz

Kendall

Why Otters are like Flashman

Liz

Kendall

To Be A Pilgrim

Liz

Kendall

The Instant of Death’s Triviality

Mohammad

Kheibari

How to Become a Poet

Jay

Kidd

VOICE

Debbie

Knight

Oh No, Not the Beef Stroganoff!

Debbie

Knight

Rumors of Love

Seth

Kronick

Farewell to a Lover

Francesca

La Nave

Photo Near the Beginning

Vanessa

Lampert

Old Days, These Days

Susan

Landgraf

Paragard

Madeline

Lawler

the lights are dimmed

Alfie

Lee

of

Alfie

Lee

Lifeguard

Róisín

Leggett-Bohan

anticipation of anaphylaxis

Róisín

Leggett-Bohan

A Note of Distinction

Lou

Lesovitch

Temple Rubbing

James

Lowell

Your Coaster

James

Lowell

After Making Love With The Feral Coyote

James

Lowell

Hidden

Joanna

Lowry

Toccata for Spoons

Daniel

Lusk

Morning Tea

Michael

Lyle

THE DEAD REGARD THEIR FIRST
THEIR LONGEST LOSS

Niamh

MacCabe

The things you left behind

Jonathan

Marks

Aflutter

Bibi

Marti

Migraine Bulletins

Kitty

Martin

Eternal Return

Seán

Martin

Bird song

Gary

Mason

unrequited ode to an anon

Athena

Mayahi-Barrett

Mass of the innocents

John

McCabe

The Usual

Olivia

McCarthy

One Hundred And Eleven Trees

Alison

McGuire

SUBJECT AND VERB. OBJECT

Sighle

Meehan

Heirlooms

Rekha

Mehra

Cul-de-sac

Steve

Miell

Dwarf Leatherwood

Claire

Miranda Roberts

Mothers of Mariupol

Matt

Mooney

In the horse stall,

Karla K

Morton

With Gratitude

Karla K

Morton

Something to Sing To

Karla K

Morton

1. laissez les bon temps rouler

Karla K

Morton

Rift

Mary

Mulholland

cake

Mary

Mulholland

Midnight on the Roman Line

Ruth

Nancekivell

DAMP DAY

Madelaine

Nerson Mac Namara

Piercing the Psalter

Helen

Newdick

(Three Poems for Fish)

Gloria

Nixon-John

Where the Children Grow

William

Norris

On the London Underground

Catherine

O’Brien

VECTORS IN KABUL

Mary

O’Donnell

The scene on repeat in my mind
for the past ten years

Lauren

O’Donovan

Le Coeur Gastronomique

Jamie

O’Halloran

Ode To Your Lips

Molly

O’Mahony

Saudade

Karen

O’Maxfield

Ageing Poet in a Shop

Mary

O´Gorman

Sweet Boy

Jane

Otto

Why the Child Is Immortal

Christina

Park

This is the Day

Lesley

Quayle

Shark

Marion

Quednau

On Forgiveness

Noah

Rabinovitch

yet spring

Sally

Rauch

Rogue males

Tim

Relf

Park Protocol

Scott

Renzoni

Summer Triumvirate

Susan

Richardson

Between

Sharon

Rockman

Dementia is preferable

Sharon

Rockman

A Woman and the Bardo

Lindsay

Rockwell

CAR BOOT SALE

Joe

Rogers

The Assassination of Piers Gaveston 1312

Neil

Rollinson

Who Killed the Carolina Parakeet?

Dilys

Rose

Confession

Christina

Ruotolo

The Neon Tower

Paul

Saville

Istanbul

James

Scoles

Dream and Dream and Dream

Allen

Shadow

The Bottom of the Roadrunner Cliffs

Allen

Shadow

Was It a Dream?

Allen

Shadow

I am a cow

James

Shapiro

Ugly Crackle

Shelley

Shaver

An Angel, an Argument, Other Arguments

PATRICIA

SHEPPARD

Intake at the Juvenile Detention Center

PATRICIA

SHEPPARD

Prayer

PATRICIA

SHEPPARD

Beethoven’s Spoons

Sorcha

Sills

Family Matters

Fionnula

Simpson

Elizabeth Fortescue provides her numbers
for the Factory Inspector’s Report, 1834

Di

Slaney

Welcome to the Discharge Lounge

Di

Slaney

The Toolbox

Kevin

Smith

Ham Sandwich

Gwendolyn

Soper

No Items Match Your Search

Catherine

Spooner

Wheels Fall Off

Shamini

Sriskandarajah

They Tell Me

Shamini

Sriskandarajah

Gertie Welcomes You to Woolworths & Woolco

Sherri

Stepakoff

Ghost Box

Steve

Stevenson

After Cancer

Christopher

Stewart

Spring Tide

Hannah

Stone

i still google “high functioning” to prove
to myself i wasn’t wrong about you

Sullivan

Summer

AGM

Michael

Swan

Deep Listening to Daffodils

Jane

Thomas

I looked out the window

Liz

Tivoli

what would do for you?

Richard

Toth

Self Portrait as Venice

Heather

Treseler

Walkthrough

Allen

Tullos

Blacktip Shark

Barbara

Tyler

The Satisfying Scent of a Hard Day’s Work

Barbara

Tyler

Dog Talk

Tom

Vandel

Just So You Know

Wendy

Videlock

ON WINGS OF SONG

Maggie

Wadey

My new notebook

Lucy

Wadham

No farewell

Brian

Wall

Rough Or Very Rough

Julia

Wallis

Where The Need For Love Takes You

Rob

Wallis

In The Summer

Rob

Wallis

Licked

Derval

Walsh

In the Munch Museum

John

Williams

Michi

John

Williams

Interfere

Mark Anthony

Williams

Paris in the Tweens

Kathleen

Winter

We Appreciate Your Work

Susan

Wolbarst

Cherry Pits

Ellen

Zhang

Remission

Ellen

Zhang

FORSYTHIAS BLOSSOMING

Ellen

Zhang

 

 

Flash Fiction Prize 2023: RESULTS

April 10th, 2023 | Uncategorized | Comments Off on Flash Fiction Prize 2023: RESULTS

Winners

Short-list

Long-list

 

From all of us at Fish, thank you for entering your flashes. So many gems deserving of a readership have left their imprint on the Fish editors and judge, Kit de Waal. It was an honour to read them all. Congratulations to the writers whose Flash Stories were short or long-listed, and in particular to the 10 winners whose flash stories will be published in the 2023 Fish Anthology. (Launch will be during the West Cork Literary Festival, Bantry, Ireland – July 2023.)

 


 

Winners

Judge: Kit De Waal

Here are the 10 winning Flash Fiction Stories, as chosen by Kit De Waal, to be published in the FISH ANTHOLOGY 2023.

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

 

 


 

FIRST PLACE

First Steps in Probability: by Susan Wigmore

Clever story, with a great sense of place, class and young love.  A tiny bit of a whole world.  Lovely to read, such joy in it.

 

SECOND PLACE

Dynamics:  by Barbara Tarrant

Funny, bright, intimate writing that gets right inside this family and the dynamics between them.  Lovely touches of wit and longing.  A joy to read.

 

THIRD PLACE

 

BECAUSE IT IS IMPOSSIBLE AND YET
: by Emma Goldman-Sherman

 

 

 

SEVEN HONORABLE MENTIONS (In no particular order)

 

HUNGER WALL:  by Mark Bowsher

 

 

NO!:  by Patricia Newbery

 

 

I SEE JESUS IN MY FEVERED DREAM IN QUAY STREET IN GALWAY:  by Linda Nemec Foster

 

 

WITNESS STATEMENT:  by Molly Underwood

 

 

THE FULL PACKAGE:  by Martin Daly

 

 

The Story of Our Beautiful, Smiling Family in Twenty-One Chapters:  by Kurtis Burton

 

 

He Who Dares Wyn Jones by Ian Johnson

 

 

 

“The Fish Prize is very dear to my heart so it was an absolute pleasure and privilege to judge the Flash Fiction category this year.  It’s always amazing to read how much story writers can cram into such a small space and every shortlisted story is a testimony to the skill and inventiveness of the flash fiction writers who entered the prize.  Choosing the winners and honourable mentions was a very difficult task – so much quality vying for attention – and every writer chosen should know that have managed to shine in a very strong field.  Congratulations to everyone and thank you for letting me read you work.”
Kit De Waal


 

A LITTLE ABOUT THE WINNERS:

A Londoner by birth, SUSAN WIGMORE grew up on jellied eels and cockney rhyming slang, but after spells in South Wales and Japan, has lived in Oxfordshire more years than she cares to remember. She loves writing short things, canoeing, climbing mountains (slowly) and challenging herself in all three, which can get her into trouble sometimes. She is currently working on a novella-in-flash (at pretty much the same rate as she climbs mountains).

 

BARBARA P TARRANT loves a challenge, recently she turned her attention (and curiosity) to Flash Fiction. Last year she undertook the Fish Playwriting course and has just finished writing her first play.
Barbara returned to education in her forties and received a BA and scholarship from UCD then later an MPhil in Creative Writing at Trinity. Barbara has won the Hennessy New Irish Writing award for new Fiction and been shortlisted for The Francis Mac Manus.

 

EMMA GOLDMAN-SHERMAN (she/they), is an outspoken Autistic, Agender, Queer, chronically ill, Feminist and Antizionist Jewish creative with plays produced on 4 continents. You can listen for free at TheParsnipShip.com and PlayingOnAir.org among others. Their poetry has been curated by American Athenaeum, Non-Binary Review, Oberon, Queerlings, Writers Resist and elsewhere. This is their first published Flash Fiction. They work as a coach and support writers and artists around the globe via https://www.bravespace.online/ 

 

MARK BOWSHER is a writer and award-winning filmmaker from Gravesend in Kent, now living in Bristol. His debut novel ‘The Boy Who Stole Time’ was published by Unbound in 2018. He is proudly dyspraxic and feels that it’s partly his short, neurodivergent attention-span that makes him want to write escapist YA fantasy books one minute and sweary satirical whodunnit movie scripts the next. He once climbed a mountain dressed as Peter Pan. 

 

PATRICIA NEWBERY’s work has appeared in Ambit, the Bath Flash Fiction Anthology, The Rupture and elsewhere. She’s a translator and editor and lives in Egypt.

 

LINDA NEMEC FOSTER is a poet and writer, living in Grand Rapids, Michigan (USA). Granddaughter of immigrants from southern Poland who settled in America before WWI. Author of 12 collections of poetry including Amber Necklace from Gdansk, Talking Diamonds, The Lake Michigan Mermaid (2019 Michigan Notable Book), and The Blue Divide. Her book of flash fiction, Bone Country, will be published in 2023. The Inaugural Poet Laureate of Grand Rapids (2003-05), Foster is the founder of the Contemporary Writers Series, Aquinas College. www.lindanemecfoster.com

 

MOLLY UNDERWWOOD is an eco-poet and writer living in Cambridge. She was the winner of the 2019 Manchester Poetry Prize, and has been shortlisted for awards including the Alpine Fellowship Poetry Prize and the Charles Causley prize; her work appears in the Aesthetica Creative Writing Anthology 2020. When she’s not writing, she can usually be found up a mountain or parked up in her converted campervan with a cup of tea.

 

MARTIN DALY was born in Douglas, Co. Cork to family lines of weavers and stone-cutters. He grew up surrounded by storytellers. He was a financial analyst in the construction industry and a stone mason for several years. In a nod to his ancestry, Martin’s preference now is to weave words together and to cut away what is unnecessary. He has completed his first novel. Martin remains deeply rooted in Douglas, but maintains no fixed abode.

 

KURTIS BURTON is a plague upon Colorado, USA who’s never published nor written about himself in the third person. “Kurtis enjoys hiking and skiing” is what this bio would say if he were a good Coloradan; he’s frail, allergic, and, when exposed to snow or sunlight, irritable. His only cultured and respectable hobbies are reading and writing. He is thankful for his confused and concerned family, who appreciate his writing but wish he’d go outside.

 

IAN JOHNSON escaped from Strangeways prison 30 years ago, dressed as a nun, and afterwards masqueraded as a nurse and CBT therapist in various mental health establishments which were unlucky enough to have him. He found the people he worked with a joy and, inspiration for a lot of his writing. Recently retired, he is now joint Chair of Tyldesley Creative Writers whom, on a weekly basis, he burdens with his jokes.

 

 


 

Short-list:

(alphabetical order)

 

There are 37 flash stories in the short-list. There were 1,127 entries in total.

TITLE

FIRST NAME

LAST NAME

Meeting Beethoven in my Imagination

Helen

Bar Lev

Hunger Wall

Mark

Bowsher

Lakota WIdow

Kevin

Burns

The Story of Our Beautiful, Smiling Family in Twenty-One

Kurtis

Burton

Happy Holidays

Leah

Carter

The crone remembers what she’d been told to forget

Lisa

Clapper

The Full Package

Martin

Daly

NIGHT RECEPTION

Tim

Fywell

Because It Is Impossible And Yet

Emma

Goldman-Sherman

Slogan to Nowhere

Mark

Grant

He Who Dares Wyn Jones

Ian

Johnson

Mischief Maker

Simon

Kensdale

Ninety-Nine Invocations

Lauren

Khater

Rattlesnake

Kathleen

Latham

Installation Art

Priscilla

Lawler

Crash

Roland

Leach

Please listen carefully to the safety instructions,
even if you are a frequent flyer

Jack

Lethbridge

Encyclical ‘Humanae Vitae’: a letter from His Holiness The Pope to The Faithful, May 1968.

Finbar

Lillis

Illya Kuryakin Is Dead

Thomas

Malloch

The Other Side of Laughter

Michael

Mcloughlin

Little Boys Have Need Of Wings

Jennifer

McMahon

A Candy Bar Existential For Life

William

Natale

I See Jesus in my Fevered Dream in Quay Street in Galway

Linda

Nemec Foster

No

Patricia

Newbury

Smokey Eyes

Vlad

Nikolic

The Worst, Times Two, Wouldn’t Have Happened

Hannah

Retallick

We Three

Shelley

Roche-Jacques

The Sheriff of Nottingham is more sexually attractive and more reasonable than people think

Shelley

Roche-Jacques

Grating

Nicholas

Ruddock

Delivery Failure

David

Sherman

An Hour Earlier

Karen

Storey

Dynamics

Barbara

Tarrant

Witness Statement

Molly

Underwood

Last Kiss, Age 10

Nate

Van Sweden

The Ask

Lauren

Watel

First Steps in Probability

Susan

Wigmore

Mother Love

Joanna

Will

 

 


 

Long-list 

(alphabetical order)

There are 105 flash stories in the long-list. There were 1,127 entries in total.

 

TITLE

FIRST NAME

LAST NAME

Duck, dip, dive

Juliana

Adelman

The Big Red Truck

Susanna Jade

Angolani

Inheritance

Alison

Archer

An Irreverent End

Canaan

Asbury

Meeting Beethoven in my Imagination

Helen

Bar Lev

Like a Penguin’s Flipper

Helen

Bar Lev

Am I an unofficial granddaughter of Elvis Presley?

Daria

Beger

Strangers

Jack

Bennett

Happy

Hayley

Blair

The Hunger Wall

Mark

Bowsher

Hunger Wall

Mark

Bowsher

Lakota Widow

Kevin

Burns

The Story of Our Beautiful, Smiling Family in Twenty-One

Kurtis

Burton

Happy Holidays

Leah

Carter

The crone remembers what she’d been told to forget

Lisa

Clapper

Things I Can’t Forget from Six Days That Summer

Chris

Cottom

After the Flood

Dominic

Creed

Lucky, Blessed

Nikki

Crutchley

The Full Package

Martin

Daly

Torture Dreams

Paul

Doolan

This message is for. Jonathan.

Ciaran

Fitzpatrick

I See Jesus in My Fevered Dream on Quay Street in Galway

Linda Nemec

Foster

NIGHT RECEPTION

Tim

Fywell

Aberrant

Maureen

Gallagher

Persephone in Later Life

Frances

Gapper

A Brief Natural History of Fairies

Amy

Goldmacher

Because It Is Impossible And Yet

Emma

Goldman-Sherman

Gone, Move On

Sam

Gordon Webb

Slogan to Nowhere

Mark

Grant

Teacher

Christine

Guillen

Self love

Caitlin

Gunthorp

Transience

Liam

Heffernan

The Story of Yellow

Lizzie

Holden

Shapes of Pure Desire

Patrick

Hopkins

Look Outside

Radhika

Iyer

The atomic structure of Dolly’s seclusion room

BM

Johnson

He Who Dares Wyn Jones

Ian

Johnson

The Petrified Forest

Fin

Keegan

Mischief Maker

Simon

Kensdale

The Wake of the Big Top

Liz

Kerr

Ninety-Nine Invocations

Lauren

Khater

Haircut

Mary Catherine

Lake

Bog iron

Shane

Larkin

Rattlesnake

Kathleen

Latham

Installation Art

Priscilla

Lawler

Crash

Roland

Leach

Lost

alfie

lee

Flash Fiction

alfie

lee

Please listen carefully to the safety instructions,
even if you are a frequent flyer

Jack

Lethbridge

How to Enrage Your Husband by Suggesting he Paint from a Photo

David

Lewis

Gone

Lynn

Lidstone

Encyclical ‘Humanae Vitae’: a letter from His Holiness The Pope to The Faithful, May 1968.

Finbar

Lillis

Mother Tongue

Kik

Lodge

Pa’s a wonky shopping trolley

Kik

Lodge

Berries of Belladonna

Lourdes

Mackey

Illya Kuryakin Is Dead

Thomas

Malloch

The King’s New Clothes

Caroline

McCartney

A Theatrical Entrance

Mary

McClarey

The Probability App that Measures Your Level of Happiness

Michael

Mcloughlin

The Other Side of Laughter

Michael

Mcloughlin

Little Boys Have Need Of Wings

Jennifer

McMahon

The Ticket Taker

Ken

Millman

Rough Awakening

Lois

Morrison

Market Street

Laura

Muetzelfeldt

The magic word for happy

Pauline

Murphy

A Candy Bar Existential For Life

William

Natale

I See Jesus in my Fevered Dream in Quay Street in Galway

Linda

Nemec Foster

No

Patricia

Newbery

Smokey Eyes

Vlad

Nikolic

Aurora Borealis

June

O’Sullivan

The Habitual Boredom of a Forty-Year-old Woman

Aileen

OBrien

Reflection

Gabriela

Paloa

Miniatures

Alan Michael

Parker

strangers breathe air into you

Jesus

Pena

Temporal Origami

Steph

Percival

A Dubious Hybrid

Tom

Rand

They Killed my Love

Nozhan

Resalati

Six Videos

Hannah

Retallick

The Worst, Times Two, Wouldn’t Have Happened

Hannah

Retallick

Double Act

Douglas

Reynolds

Wind Turbine

Kate

Rigby

Furiously Beneath

Shelley

Roche-Jacques

We Three

Shelley

Roche-Jacques

The Sheriff of Nottingham is more sexually attractive and more reasonable than people think

Shelley

Roche-Jacques

Do Good and Share With Others, For With Such Sacrifices, God Is Pleased

Belinda

Rowe

Grating

Nicholas

Ruddock

Death Dances on the Head of a Pin

Robin

Schwarz

Everything You’re Looking For

David

Sherman

Delivery Failure

David

Sherman

Waste Games

Jamie

Stacey

Inheritance

Bernard

Steeds

still air

Caroline

Stevens-Taylor

The Locust Men

Mark

Stewart

An Hour Earlier

Karen

Storey

Penance

Nora

Studholme

Dynamics

Barbara

Tarrant

Your Connection is Too Weak Please Try Again Later

Geraldine

Terry

Countdown to Departure

Jennie

Tucker

Witness Statement

Molly

Underwood

Last Kiss, Age 10

Nate

Van Sweden

The Ask

Lauren

Watel

First Steps in Probability

Susan

Wigmore

Mother Love

Joanna

Will

Minnow

Jo

Withers

 

 

 

 

Short Memoir Prize: Results 2023

March 31st, 2023 | Uncategorized | Comments Off on Short Memoir Prize: Results 2023

Winners

Short-list

Long-list

 

On behalf of all of us at Fish, we congratulate the 10 winners who made it to the Fish Anthology 2023, and to those writers who made the long and short-lists, well done too. 

Thank you to Sean Lusk, for the time and enthusiasm that he put into selecting the winners. (About Sean’s novel.)

 


 

The 10 Winners:

Selected by Sean Lusk.

 

FIRST

My Mother’s Daughter:
by Anneke Bender  (USA)

 

SECOND

The Dead on Street View:
by Nuala Roche  (Ireland)

 

THIRD

Escape Van:
by Sabine Casparie (UK)

 

 

HONORARY MENTIONS

A Brown Night: by Thelma McGough  (UK)

 

 

Carrying the Griefcase or Death by Overwork: by James Scoles 

 

 


Speaking of Love
: by Kathryn Phelan  (Ireland)

 

 

Of Many Things I have no clear remembrance: by Dani Salvadori  (UK)

 

 

Bravo India Lima: by Olivia Rana  (N Ireland)

 

 

For Richer, Poorer and Doritos: by Cheryl Miller-Fitzgerald (USA)

 

 

Except for One Thing: by Thomas Darlington Crancer (USA)

 

 

 

Notes from judge, Sean Lusk:

These memoirs took me on quite the journey – from the Grand Canyon to Tokyo, from Dublin to Colorado, from London to Poland. But a memoir is a journey in time, and many of these memoirs pinpointed the precise feeling of loss and longing and desire that memories evoke in us. Many were adventurous with form, being in the true sense ‘hybrid’ syntheses of essay, article, and story.

The winning memoirs (and it was hard to choose first, second, third and beyond) seemed to me to perfectly encapsulate the memoir, rising above form to call up a memory that felt intensely true and personal – at once particular and yet also universal. Except for One Thingis a tender, heartfelt account of coming to terms with grief. For Richer, Poorer and Doritos is beautifully observed, its sadness tinged with humour and, ultimately, acceptance. Bravo India Lima is a powerful and superbly observed memoir of the troubles in Northern Ireland, taking us from the eighties through the Good Friday Agreement and almost to the present day. Of Many Things I Have No Clear Remembranceis a collision of memories of words, artefacts and poems, a hybrid piece that captures the often fractured and uncertain nature of remembrance. Speaking of Loveis an enormously assured piece of writing, a story of a relationship told with deft sensuality and the troubling uncertainty of loss. Death by Overworkis a fascinating piece, set in Tokyo, the routine horror of train suicides punctuated by an English teacher’s regular conversations with his student, and a developing obsession with a woman merely glimpsed. It makes an unfamiliar culture seem both more alien and yet also intensely known. A Brown Nightis a harrowing story of a father’s attempt to take his own life, and the bravery of a nine-year-old girl who saves him and, in doing so, also saves herself. I found it very moving.

 Third placed story Escape Vanis another story that features psychological trauma and thoughts of suicide. Its honesty, the clarity of the writing and its redemptive quality are profoundly felt. It’s also written with quiet subtlety, with ever greater detail as the narrator responds once more to what life has to give. I thought it wonderful.

Second placed story, The Dead on Street Viewsurprised me. At first I feared it was going to be a lecture, with its dictionary definitions of the word ‘gatch’ (geáitse) and quotations, but it had me ensnared as the narrator observed the particular bend in their son’s neck, and then moved into the uses (and abuses) of google street view, and the notion that we are always looking back at the dead, as street view looks back in time. I thought it ingenious, and the ingenuity increased as the memoir made its case, and as the writing grew more lyrical and with such beautifully placed lines as ‘Each way lay an impaling’ and the aunt who says: ‘I’d like to know what I could’ve been.’ It’s well worth reading two or three times, this memoir, because it captures that longing for loss – lost time, lost moments, lost lives that is the epitome of memoir, while also playing skilfully with form.

 And finally, our first-placed story My Mother’s Daughter. This, it seems to me, does everything a memoir should – the slightly uncertain beginning, as the walk in the Grand Canyon is repeated three times through different photographs, reflecting the way memories come to us, initially uncertain before we impose our own sense and our own story upon them. The specificity of detail is so beautiful – the van, the lab, the trinkets. The relationship of the daughter with the mother, the ex-nun with a mischievous, even anarchic streak – is rendered perfectly. And their first moment of parting, the opening movement in the long parting to come, is simply exquisite. I was deeply touched by this memoir, as I was by so many I read. Judging these has truly been an honour. 

 

 


 

SHORT-LIST (43, in alphabetical order. There were 879 entries)

Boxes, Crates and Plastic-shrouded Pallets

Mara

Adamitz Scrupe

Ghosts

Amal

Alhomsi

From Enchanted Garden to Beguiling Seas

Clare

Allcard

My Mother’s Daughter

Anneke

Bender

Eggshells

Eleanor

Blake

ORPHEUS AFTER

Partridge

Boswell

Nozzy

Adam

Brown

Snake Handling

Grant

Buday

Escape Van

Sabine

Casparie

Still

Sarah Easter

Collins

Conversations in Hull

Sarah Easter

Collins

The Chevrotain

Lisa

Cortez

Exceot for one Thing

Thomas

Crancer

St Columba’s Curse

Sarah

Davies

Red and White

Wisteria

Deng

Cocoon

Yvonne

Fein

For Richer, Poorer and Doritos

Cheryl

Fitzgerald

My mum was a gardener

Sarah

Forbes

A Tale from the Silk Road

Stephen

Hayden

Beasts and Burdens

Emma

Hillier

A True Story About Mrs Smith

Rory

KILALEA

Rincon el Diablo

John

Ledford

Consider the Octopus

Francesca

Leonie

Deep Songs

Francesca

Leonie

Essay

Asya

Likhman

The first funeral

Harriet

Mason

Walking on Walls

Thelma

McGough

Tukwila Gold and Pawn

Nikita

Minkin

The year the clocks stopped

Clar 

Ni Chonghaile

How I Came to Spend Christmas in a Psychiatric Facility

Lauren

O’Donovan

Speaking of Love

Kathryn

Phelan

Standing in the Rain

Stephen

Policoff

Clip

Jay

Prosser

Bravo, India, Lima.

Olivia

Rana

Teach/Each/Ache: Notes from the
Fulton County Jail

Stuart

Robbins

The Dead on Street View

Nuala

Roche

Slammakin

Ailsa

Ross

Of many things I have no clear remembrance

Dani

Salvadori

Carrying the Griefcase or Death by Overwork

James

Scoles

A Walk Home

Michelle

Scorziello

The Distance Between Things

Carrie

Seymour

The Pink Hibiscus

Charlene

Smith

What to Expect When You’re Expecting Breast Cancer: Act I—Chemotherapy—Begins

Katie

Snyder

 

 


 

LONG-LIST (104. In Alphabetical Order. There were 879 entries)

Boxes, Crates and Plastic-shrouded Pallets

Mara

Adamitz Scrupe

Ghosts

Amal

Alhomsi

From Enchanted Garden to Beguiling Seas

Clare

Allcard

The Strange Legacy of a Diminutive Ghost

Anneke

Bender

My Mother’s Daughter

Anneke

Bender

Eggshells

Eleanor

Blake

Patriots’ Day

Partridge

Boswell

ORPHEUS AFTER

Partridge

Boswell

A Fiery Solace

Kevin

Brophy

Nozzy

Adam

Brown

Snake Handling

Grant

Buday

Dry Stone

James Roderick

Burns

Karmageddon

Lynn

Bushell

The Yellow Door

Mairéad

Carew

Escape Van

Sabine

Casparie

The Initiation

Jaineba

Chang

Shipwrecks

Stephanie

Colburn

Still

Sarah Easter

Collins

Conversations in Hull

Sarah Easter

Collins

My sister

jane

cornes maclean

The Chevrotain

Lisa

Cortez

Exceot for one Thing

Thomas

Crancer

Microwave Dinners & MTV

sally

cranswick

The Performance of Grief

Claudia

Cruttwell

Confession

Sarah

Davies

St Columba’s Curse

Sarah

Davies

Leaving Home

Teresa

DeCrescenzo

Red and White

Wisteria

Deng

Edith L. Slocum

Tim

Dennis

Names Will Never Again Hurt Me

Deirdre

Devally

The Gravy Train

Garret

Dwyer Joyce

Cocoon

Yvonne

Fein

For Richer, Poorer and Doritos

Cheryl

Fitzgerald

Do-Overs

Adrian

Fleur

My mum was a gardener

Sarah

Forbes

Last Dogs

Michael

Forester

The Lives We Leave Behind

Sally

Fox

This is Us

Sally

Fox

Zulu

TOM

FOX

Dear Mum

Joyce

Fox

The Other Half of Everything

Adrian

Fox

Casting On

Jane

Fraser

A Life in Three Plaits.

Ruth

Geldard

A Tale from the Silk Road

Stephen

Hayden

Beasts and Burdens

Emma

Hillier

Thirsty

Marcella

Hourihane

The Rocky Road

Rosemary

Johnston

Is Today Tuesday

Ann

Jolly

The Ash

Rosemary

Jones

A True Story About Mrs Smith

Rory

KILALEA

THE YEAR OF DEAD DAYS

Alice

Langley

Rincon el Diablo

John

Ledford

Consider the Octopus

Francesca

Leonie

Deep Songs

Francesca

Leonie

Essay

Asya

Likhman

Diary of an Iranian Schoolgirl

Mahta

Mansouri

The first funeral

Harriet

Mason

Flirting with the Pentecostals

Helen

McClements

Bare Naked Magic

Eileen

McFalls

Walking on Walls

Thelma

McGough

Tukwila Gold and Pawn

Nikita

Minkin

The Prodigal Son

Victoria

Mizen

Someone Young

Hannah

Morphet

The End

Carla

Myers

The year the clocks stopped

Clar 

Ni Chonghaile

Flames

Marilyn

Nunney

How I Came to Spend Christmas in a
Psychiatric Facility

Lauren

O’Donovan

He Waits for Me

fiona

O’Sullivan

Small and Lucky: One Mind’s Memoir

Kevin

ONeill

Speaking of Love

Kathryn

Phelan

Standing in the Rain

Stephen

Policoff

Problems in the Buying of Shampoo

Peter

Pool

Clip

Jay

Prosser

Mother of happiness

Marianne

Puxley

I Choose the Music

Marion

Quednau

Bravo, India, Lima

Olivia

Rana

Bravo, India, Lima.

Olivia

Rana

Crocodile Shoes

Jeff

Richards

Running in Thistles

Alina

Rios

Teach/Each/Ache: Notes from the Fulton County Jail

Stuart

Robbins

The Dead on Street View

Nuala

Roche

Slammakin

Ailsa

Ross

Goree Island

Zurina

Saban

Of many things I have no clear remembrance

Dani

Salvadori

A Daughter to Watch Over Her

Cathy

Schen

Blueberries

Anne

Schuchman

The Mommy Friends

Anne

Schuchman

Carrying the Griefcase or Death by Overwork

James

Scoles

A Walk Home

Michelle

Scorziello

The Distance Between Things

Carrie

Seymour

The Greyhound

Alan

Sincic

Brick by Brick

Vicki

Siska

Demolitions

Ruskin

Smith

The Pink Hibiscus

Charlene

Smith

What to Expect When You’re Expecting Breast Cancer: Act I—Chemotherapy—Begins

Katie

Snyder

Into the shadows; a memoir

Hayley

Solomon

A World Away

Charity

Starrett

Fathers’ Day

Claire

Steele

THE GREAT ONE

Michal Gregory

Stephens

Noli Me Tangere

Pamela

Swanborough

The Blue Curtain

Jackie

Taylor

It Never Rains in Wycombe

Jennifer

Twomey

Good Girl

Kayla Pica

Williams

Himalayan Sunset

Scott

Winkler

 

 

Short Story Prize 2022 Results

March 16th, 2023 | Uncategorized | Comments Off on Short Story Prize 2022 Results

Winners

Short-list

Long-list

 

On behalf of all of us at Fish, congratulations to the 10 winners, and to those who made the short and long lists. 

I was delighted to find so many skilled pieces in the entries this year, stories that
were gem-like, compressed and glinting . . . Sarah Hall


 

 

 

 

The Ten Winners:

Sarah Hall

Sarah Hall

Selected by Sarah Hall

The 10 winners will be published in the Fish Anthology 2023.

(There were 1,392 entries to the competition.)

     

First:
Vietnam  

Letty Butler (Sheffield, UK)

     

Second:
The Longhouse

Nicholas Petty (UK / Amsterdam)
     
Third:
Autophile
Dylan Garity (New York)
     
Endangered

Roger Vickery (Australia)

     
Fur  Allegra A Mullan  (London)
     
Hitch Emma Neale (New Zealand)
     
Readmission Josephine Rowe (Australia)  
     
The Parts He Missed Joshua Wagner. (USA / West Cork)
     
The Thing Adored Hanako Senzoku (Japan)
     
The Watch Case Hanako Senzoku  (Japan)
     
     

Comments from Judge, Sarah Hall:

Reading short stories is one of the most nerve-wracking experiences. You never know
what you are going to get as a reader, and as a critic. This is not just because they
showcase disquiet, tension, subversion and surprise, but because the form itself is so
difficult, so exacting, even punishing to attempt, and it remains, very often, an un-
mastered discipline.

But I was delighted to find so many skilled pieces in the entries this year, stories that
were gem-like, compressed and glinting, little worlds in entirety that refracted life and
ideas, and created a hinterland around their borders. Pieces that were written by
authors who really understood short story metrics – economy, traction, mood,
schematics, potency, negative space, and irresolution.

I was also heartened to experience a variety of themes and styles, because the form,
for all its limits, is oddly flexible, open to innovation, experimentation and originality,
a staging ground for a host of topics and landscapes and human goings-on. It is hard
to summarize these entries, other than to say, as always, existentialist DNA was deep
there, from which a myriad of ideas, tales and explorations branched out.

What a joy! What a joy to experience in these stories the many versions of us, told in
so many different ways, small episodes pushing up against big themes, propositions
and provocations that expand any restrictions we might make for ourselves, socially,
politically, or textually. What a joy to be transported to so many different places
around the globe, and into speculative futures, and back into the disputable past.
Yes, the reading was truly nerve-wracking, but for all the right reasons.

 

A little about the winners:

Letty Butler is a writer, actress, comedienne, creative coach and chronically indecisive. She’s based in a tiny flat in Sheffield, writes across multiple genres and has just finished her debut novel, Escape Artists. Letty’s always got multiple projects on the bubble due to a low boredom threshold. She’s currently working on her debut collection of short fiction and is developing a 12-part comedy series for screen, alongside award-winning director, Juliet May (Motherland, Miranda). 

Nicholas Petty is a British writer living in Utrecht, the Netherlands. His short fiction has previously been listed for the Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award and the Galley Beggar Press Short Story Prize, and has appeared in The Moth, The London Magazine, Short Fiction Journal, and elsewhere. When he’s not at his desk, he can be found on a sunny terrace with a plate of bitterballen and a tiny Dutch beer.

Dylan Garity is a writer and editor originally from Oregon, currently living in Brooklyn, New York. As a spoken word poet, he has toured around the United States, performing at a wide variety of venues and winning the college national poetry slam with Macalester College. He cofounded and served as vice president of Button Poetry for many years, and now works as a freelance fiction editor. “Autophile” is his first published short story.

Roger Vickery rescued this story from a shelter. From the jump, it whined, barked, scratched, and shat out demands to be re-located to a sunny home. Drawing on his multi-vocational (ADHD?) background Roger employed marketing wiles, legal arguments, military tactics, teaching aids and sailing tacks to up-sell the ingrate. Failure. Then he remembered The Fish. They’re a soft touch… accepted his poetry pup in 2015… maybe they’re open to a new stray?   

Allegra Mullan is twenty-two years old and lives in North London. She has had work published in the Keats Shelley review, the Penguin First Story anthology, the 2016 Foyles Young Poets anthology, and Rotters Magazine. When she is not on her phone, Allegra enjoys watching film trailers and walking. She is currently studying Creative Writing at Goldsmiths and working as a chef.

Emma Neale lives and works in Dunedin, New Zealand, as a freelance editor and occasional creative writing tutor. The published author of novels, poetry and short fiction, she is also the mother of two sons. Her husband works as a theoretical physicist; her sons like to say this family background of  ‘physics and poetry’ has clearly led directly to their own divergent passions: jazz percussion and basketball. 

Josephine Rowe is the author of three story collections and a novel, A Loving, Faithful Animal, published in the UK by Tuskar Rock Press. She was a 2021-2022 fellow at the New York Public Library’s Cullman Centre for Scholars and Writers, and a 2022 Writer in Residence at Literaturhaus Zürich. She has recently returned to Australia and is living in coastal Victoria, working on a new novel and sleep. Her latest collection of stories is Here Until August. 

Josh Wagner spent his early years in California before his folks dragged him off to Montana, where he learned to love a bit of solitude. He has a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Edinburgh, and is currently living in West Cork working on a baffling PhD concerning forests, grief, embodiment and spectrality. He dabbles in music, filmmaking and theatre, but the art of fiction will always be his first and most abiding love.

Hanako Senzoku has spent half her life in Melbourne, Australia and half as a returnee in Tokyo, Japan – her sense of what constitutes a barbeque is a present source of consternation, and writing an ever-guiding star. She is perpetually filled with wonder and confusion, and an appetite for delicious things. 

 

 


 

Short-list:

(alphabetical order) There are 45 stories on the short-list. (There were  1,392 entries in total).

Title

First Name

Last Name

Hanna. With Two Ns.

Peter-Adrian

Altini

Borrowed Bones

Rita 

Ariyoshi

Binoculars

Alex

Baines

How to rescue a cat

Liz

Barnard

The Martyr’s Brother

Paul

Bassett Davies

The Jewelled Sea

Paul

Bassett Davies

Mobile

Maryanne

Berry

The Approximate Distance in Light Years Between Us

Mike

Carson

Pomegranate

RAND RICHARDS

COOPER

Mending Wall

Mark

Edwards

Karma

Mark

Edwards

500 Internal Server Error

Nikki

England

The End of Pi

Andrew

Gardiner

Autophile

Dylan

Garity

What Lies Within

M

Gethins

Buddies

Emily

Grabham

Christmas Magic?

Peter

Greenwood

Deliverance

Lauren

Guastella

To Brighten a Dull Wing

Ruth

Guthrie

Hello Hell

Maurice

Haeems

The Making of Him

Alice

Jolly

Foxholes

Seán 

Kenny

Everything Else Is Afterwards

Seán 

Kenny

Hi-Ho The Derry-O

Suzanne

McCourt

Hitch

Emma

Neale

Baby Heart

Giles

Newington

The Outsiders

Treasa

O’Brien

Standard Model

Fergal

O’Byrne

Coccinella magnifica

A F

Packer

ALL IT TAKES

Pat

Pickavance

Release

Stephanie

Pollock

Banana Taffy

Chad

Poovey

Helter Skelter

Julie

Rea

Readmission

Josephine

Rowe

Last Act

Natalie

Southworth

They Come to Me Now and Then in The Dying

David

Strickland

Burgundy Ridges

Matt

Surface

Yoyo

Carsten

ten Brink

Endangered

Roger

Vickery

Roofers

Roger

Vickery

Stay and Hold

Joshua

Wagner

The Parts He Missed

Joshua

Wagner

Last Year’s Fires

Andrea

Watts

Dog

James

Wilson

DELOREAN

Judith

Wilson

 

 


 

Long-list:

(alphabetical order)

There are 135 stories in the long-list. (There were 1,392 entries in total.)

 

Title

First Name

Last Name

Fur

Allegra

A Mullan

Hanna. With Two Ns.

Peter-Adrian

Altini

Before

Nancy

Antle

Borrowed Bones

Rita 

Ariyoshi

Confinement

Karen

Ashe

Binoculars

Alex

Baines

Tamara Ivanovna Talks to Herself

Jana

Bakunina

THE GLASS EATER

Erika

Banerji

How to rescue a cat

liz

barnard

The Martyr’s Brother

Paul

Bassett Davies

The Jewelled Sea

Paul

Bassett Davies

Eli, 2021

Mona

Becker

The Mourners

Donald

Berk

Mobile

Maryanne

Berry

MIORBHAIL

Alfreda

Black

Lovely Stars

Hayley

Blair

Poetry for the Epilogue

Kevin

Broccoli

Vietnam

Letty

Butler

Chains Like the Sea

Michael

Carragher

The Approximate Distance in
Light Years Between Us

Mike

Carson

Catch a ______ by his Toe

Stuart

Chapman

About the Cat

Ann

Collins

All Life’s Prizes

Jude

Cook

Hot Hex Summer

Laura

Cooper

Pomegranate

RAND RICHARDS

COOPER

The Names of those Lost

Craig

Cormick

Cailleach

Maureen

Cullen

Particles

Nina

Cullinane

Homeless Camping Jump

Annie

Dawid

Touch Pool

Brooke

Dunnell

Mending Wall

Mark

Edwards

Karma

Mark

Edwards

500 Internal Server Error

Nikki

England

Pivot

Jane

Finlayson

Souvenir

Thomasin

Finn

A Shrine for Justin

Mary

Fox

A Category of Kindness

Soma Mei Sheng

Frazier

How Many Feminists Does It Take
To Change A Lightbulb?

Helena

Frith Powell

The End of Pi

Andrew

Gardiner

Autophile

Dylan

Garity

Story of a Book

Paulo

Garnsey

My Sweary Neighbour

CJ

Garrow

Badly Drawn Girl.

Ruth

Geldard

What Lies Within

M

Gethins

Buddies

Emily

Grabham

Christmas Magic?

Peter

Greenwood

Deliverance

Lauren

Guastella

To Brighten a Dull Wing

Ruth

Guthrie

Hello Hell

Maurice

Haeems

The Deer

Andrea

Harper

untitled

Sarah

Harte

King of the Roads

Aaron

Hennessy

Paulina

Pamela

Hensley

Shelley, naked

Brian

Hill

Banana Bread

Rachael

Hill

A Man Who Has Com Through

Sean 

Hooks

The Old Snow Country

Mandy

Huggins

The Chef’s Suggestions

Roger

Jefferies

Someday Soon

Gregory

Jeffers

The Making of Him

Alice

Jolly

The Troop Leader

Brynne

Jones

The Bird Warden

Jupiter

Jones

Diamonds and Toads

Sara

Keating

Pupils

Tyler

Keevil

Foxholes

Seán 

Kenny

Everything Else Is Afterwards

Seán 

Kenny

Silence

Scott

Lambridis

Contrary Motion

Anna

Lawrence

Life in the Caged Jungle

BV

Lawson

Red Sun

Mary

Lewis

KILLING TIME IN ABERYSTWYTH

Emily

Macdonald

Absent Without Leave

Fiona J

Mackintosh

The English Opening

Camilla

Macpherson

Stella

Emma

Mather

The Democracy of Weather

Tracy

Maylath

The Weaver of Tales

Jillean 

McClory

Halley’s Comet

Victor

McConnell

Hi-Ho The Derry-O

Suzanne

McCourt

The Unexpected Challenge

Patrick

McCusker

Epilimnion

Alison

McGuire

Breakfast Like a Pauper

Naci

Mehmet

Breakfast

Naci

Mehmet

The Exorcism

Gillian

Metheringham

Knot Wood

Michael

Miller

The Turn

Philip

Miller

Memento Mori

Pauline

Milner

5, 4, 3, 2, 1

Konrad

Muller

Rats, Stars etc.

David

Murray

Hitch

Emma

Neale

Baby Heart

Giles

Newington

The Outsiders

Treasa

O’Brien

Standard Model

Fergal

O’Byrne

Borneo

Leanne

Ogasawara

“Maroons”

Alexander

Ortega

Coccinella magnifica

A F

Packer

Where the Women Are

Susan

Peet

The Longhouse

Nicholas

Petty

Odds

Nicholas

Petty

ALL IT TAKES

Pat

Pickavance

Release

Stephanie

Pollock

Banana Taffy

Chad

Poovey

Skokie

Janet

Price

The Other Side

Norah

Prida Bay

Helter Skelter

Julie

Rea

She Went There for the Weekend

Hannah

Retallick

The Tender Hand of Faith

John

Rex

Dirty Chicken & Rice

Simon

Roberts

Pipeline

Alex

Rourke

Readmission

Josephine

Rowe

A Parcel of Rogues

Kerry

Ryan

The Thing Adored

Hanako

Senzoku

White Gloss and Sheen

Hanako

Senzoku

The Watch Case

Hanako

Senzoku

Waiting For The Big One

Catherine

Shorr

Buried

emma

Shtanichev

A Weighty Issue

susan

smith

Last Act

Natalie

Southworth

KILL ALL SHAREHOLDERS

Jon

Stapley

They Come to Me Now and Then in The Dying

David

Strickland

Burgundy Ridges

Matt

Surface

Complete strangers

John

Taylor

Yoyo

Carsten

ten Brink

Licked

Rosalind

Thomas

Endangered

Roger

Vickery

Roofers

Roger

Vickery

Stay and Hold

Joshua

Wagner

The Parts He Missed

Joshua

Wagner

Last Year’s Fires

Andrea

Watts

The Flatlands

Tracey

Weddle

The Invisible One

Pamela

Wills

Dog

James

Wilson

DELOREAN

Judith

Wilson

Concerto in F Flat Minor for Oboe and Flute

scott

winkler

The Worst Story

Mat

Woolfenden

The Lonely Daughter of Fabio Penitente

Anna

Zaranko

 

 

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