Winners

Short-list

Long-list

 

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

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

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Winners

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

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

 

 

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Comments from judge, Tania Hershman

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

1^st prize:

Lover by Allegra Mullan

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

 

2^nd prize:

Empty Space by Justine Sweeney

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

 

3^rd prize:

Breath & Bone by Letty butler

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

 

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A LITTLE ABOUT THE WINNERS:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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Short-list:

(Alphabetical order: 30 stories)

 

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

 

 

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Long-list:

In alphabetical order (100)

 

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

 

Winners

 

 

 

Winners

Short-list

Long-list

 

On behalf of all of us at Fish, congratulations to all of you who made the long and the short-lists. 

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

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

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

 

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First Prize:

 

 

 

Second Prize:

 

 

 

Third Prize:

 

 

 

Honorary Mentions (no particular order):

 

My Dead Mother by Jo Stein

 

 

The Only Dalit in the Village  by Mohini Singh

 

 

Sore Winner  by David Ralph

 

 

Keeping Cool  by Linda Chase   

 

 

Lonely Meets Lonely  by Nicola Schofield     

 

 

Entropy  by Barry Brophy

 

 

Fiasco  by Rand Richards Cooper

 

 

 

SEAN LUSK’S COMMENTS on the ten winning stories:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

BIOGRAPHIES of Winning Authors

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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Short-list:

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

 

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

 

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Long-list:

(alphabetical order)

There are 99 stories in the long-list. 

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

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

 

 

 

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

 

 

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

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

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

 

On The Fish Anthology 2024:

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

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

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

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

 

MORE ABOUT THE ANTHOLOGY 

 

Winners

Short-list

Long-list

 

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Here are the winners of the Fish Poetry Prize 2024, selected by Billy Collins, to be published in the Fish Anthology 2024.

Below you will find short biographies of the winners and the Long and Short Lists.

From all of us at Fish we congratulate the poets whose poems made it here. There were 2,164 entries and competition was very tough.

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

 

 

FIRST PRIZE:

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

Read Winning Poem

 

SECOND PRIZE:

Writing About the Invisible by Mary K O’Melveny

 

THIRD PRIZE:

Early Tintoretto at the Accademia by Rosalind Brackenbury

 

 

 

HONORARY MENTIONS (In no particular order): 

A Clarification by Toby Litt

 

 

This poem asks where violence begins by Heidi Williamson

 

 

Small White Sphere by Philip Rösel Baker

 

 

Uncle Tony Fishing, Muckross Lake by Josh Geffin

 

 

Hearsay by Marion Quednau

 

 

Two Hours Before Lone Ranger by Kathy Clayden

 

 

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

 

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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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

 

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

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

 

 

Winners

Short-list

Long-list

 

On behalf of all of us at Fish, congratulations to all of you who made the long and the short-lists. 

Apologies for the delay in this announcement.

The 10 winners will be published in the Fish Anthology 2024.

The launch will be during the West Cork Literary Festival, Bantry, Ireland – 15 July. Venue: Marino Church, 6.30 pm. It is a free event and all are welcome.

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

 

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First Prize:

Second Sight by Alison Fields

 

 

 

Second Prize:

The Other Life by Eve Thomson

 

 

 

Third Prize:

Continuity Error by Ewan Gault

 

 

 

Honorary Mentions (no particular order):

 

Cargo by Cath Sampson

 

 

The Liberating Death of Freedom by Joshua Davis

 

 

The Nail House by Amanda Hildebrandt

 

 

My da’s a Hero by Laura Kyle

 

 

The Púca’s Share by Monica Corish

 

 

Polishing The Silence by Rowland Cooke

 

 

Derry Blue by Garret Dwyer Joyce

 

 

 

 

Sarah Hall’s comments on the ten winning stories:

 

Winner – Second Sight

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

 

Second Place – The Other Life

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

 

Third Place – Continuity Error

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

 

Runners Up:

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

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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

 

 

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Long-list:

(alphabetical order)

There are 134 stories in the long-list. 

 

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

Winners

Short-list

Long-list

 

From all of us at Fish, thank you for entering your flashes. Congratulations to the writers who  were short or long-listed, and in particular to the 11 winners whose flash stories will be published in the Fish Anthology 2024.

The launch will be during the West Cork Literary Festival, Bantry, Ireland – 15 July. Venue: Marino Church, 6.30 pm. It is a free event and all are welcome.

 

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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. 

 

 

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FIRST PLACE

Messiah: by Kate O’Grady

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

 

 

SECOND PLACE

Starship Borders General:  by Susan Shepherd

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

 

THIRD PLACE

 

Blue Moon Memory: by PS Duffy

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

 

 

EIGHT HONORABLE MENTIONS (In no particular order)

 

A Story in 300 Words :  by alfie lee

 

 

 

Coming of Age:  by Jo Nestor

 

 

 

THE Interrogation of Lauren Lundgren:  by Alan Falkingham

 

 

 

Pivot Point:  by Judith Brown

 

 

 

The Importance of Firm Upholstery: by Fionnula Simpson

 

 

 

I Follow: by Seamus Scanlon

 

 

 

Things That Hurt:  by Nicole Love

 

 

 

Blue Light:  by RJ Dwyer

 

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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

 

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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.

 

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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

 

 

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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

 

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)

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The 10 Winners:

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

 

FIRST

Chess with the Wehrmacht
by Rand Richards Cooper (USA)

 

SECOND

I Should Have held Him
by David Longstaff (UK)

 

THIRD

Before the Sun
by Daisy O’Clee (UK)

 

 

 

HONORARY MENTIONS (In no particular order.)

Train to Nowhere
by Sara Green (Australia)

 

 

The Mortal Shift
by Sylvia Torti (USA)

 

 

The Lone Ranger
by Kirsty Cockburn (UK)

 

 

Sketches of Spain
by Arthur Wright (UK)

 

 

These Shoes
by Gemma Green  (UK)

 

 

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

 

 

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.

 

 

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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

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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

 

Tuesday 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. 

 

Winners

Short-list

Long-list

 

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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. 

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.

 

 

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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