Read Extracts from Fish Anthologies.

Select the genre:

• Short Stories
• Flash Fiction
• Short Memoir
• Poems

 

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Fish Anthology Extracts to Read:

Short Stories  – 

 

Fish Anthology 2018: Clippings  by Helen Chambers

Fish Anthology 2017: Dead Souls by Sean Lusk

Fish Anthology 2015: The Pace of Change by Chris Weldon

 

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Fish Anthology 2017 – Extract from Winning Short Story

Dead Souls by Sean Lusk

It was at the Tolstoy house where we met. Rustling through the rooms I was conscious of the plastic bags covering my shoes. These were less a device to preserve the Tolstoy family’s carpets, which must have worn away long ago, and more a winter requirement to prevent the treading about of snow. My progress through the house was therefore accompanied by a noise which I found unaccountably embarrassing. Though I could see no other visitors, an amplified voice filled every space. A symposium was underway, a lecture on some aspect of Tolstoy’s life or writing, I assumed. Approaching the place from which the voice came I found myself in a large room where row after row of middle-aged Russians listened with solemn attention to a lecture being given by a professor. Her steely hair, pinned and buttressed into a small tower, tilted first one way and then the next as she spoke, as if she were a chess piece on an uneven board. None of them, I noticed, had plastic bags over their shoes.

Despite the walls lined with pictures, the sculptures of the author at work, despite his books, despite even the glass case with the ruby ring he had given Countess Sophia for transcribing and editing Anna Karenina, Leo was not there, and I found it hard to believe he ever had been. He had not liked his house in the city, had lived there on sufferance, and perhaps this accounted for his vacant spirit. I couldn’t read many of the Russian names below the photographs. After a day of museums the Cyrillic had worn me down. In the corner of each room a single panel about the size of a chopping board stood on a stand, carrying an explanation in English for what the room contained. I found myself competing for it with a woman in her late thirties. “I’m sorry, go ahead,” I said, gesturing towards the stand.

She took the board and smiled. She had short red hair and a cheerful confidence, as if she had known that the board was hers all along.

“Where are you from?” I asked.

“Germany.”

We went from room to room, once or twice taking an interest in the same object. After a while, exhausted by incomprehension and the rustling of my own feet I went down into the basement to collect my coat and scarf from the sombre cloakroom lady. The street was cold but welcoming. Turning I saw that the German woman was behind me, that she must have left just a moment after me. I considered slowing down, starting a conversation, even wondered if that was what she wanted. I glanced back once more and this time caught her eye, yet for some reason my recently liberated feet quickened their pace along Prechistenka Street in the direction of the Pushkin Museum.

The next day I found that I had the Gogol house to myself. Again, not a word of English was spoken, but here the burly women who guarded the door, looked after the coats and who dispensed tickets seemed eager to talk to me, heedless of my inability to understand anything they said. Once I had put plastic bags over my shoes I was ushered enthusiastically into the first of Gogol’s rooms, a vestibule where his or some other overcoat, perhaps Akaky Akakievich’s, hung. If it was poor Akakievich’s then it was a fiction, a coat that he had saved-up for so fervently that it had cost him his life. I reached out and brushed my hand across the wool, thinking how much less real it was than the imagined cloth. The warden touched my arm and spoke to me intently, her Russian words hovering in the air, waiting to be understood. She encouraged me onwards, into Gogol’s parlour, inviting me to sit on his chair. She pressed a switch and the lights dimmed. A sound of distant bells filtered into the room, and flames appeared to dance in the fireplace.

 

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Fish Anthology 2015 – Extract from Winning Short Story

The Pace of Change by Chris Weldon

Brendan soothed the horse by stroking under its jaw and the huge animal opened its mouth, allowing him to slide the bit in to the back of its teeth. He pulled the bridle over the ears and held firm on the reins as the horse jerked his head upwards. After a few moments it became still and then lowered its head to munch on the grass. 
‘Come up,’ said Brendan gently. ‘Come up out of that.’ 
He rubbed the horse’s nose and leant forward to buckle the bridle.  Taking the reins again he led the horse across the field towards a five bar aluminium gate. Set in a gap in the hedge, it offered a view across a narrow road and beyond to an oak lined avenue, the tree tops blurred by the Westmeath morning mist. He stopped and listened and the horse listened too, its ears moving like radars trying to pick up the direction of the sound, the sound of a motor car. It’ll be Kit Lee, thought Brendan. Kit was the only man he knew who owned a motor car, an old black one. 
At that time it was the only car around those parts, not that it was around that much. Kit spent an average of two out of three days at home in bed, convinced he had a fatal illness. One illness or another, it didn’t matter so long as it was fatal. When the due date for his death would pass Kit would get up and go about as if nothing had happened, which, of course, it hadn’t.  Brendan never tired of telling the story of the day when Kit stood at the counter in Briody’s shop in the village. 
‘“Twenty Sweet Afton is it, Kit?” says Mrs. Briody, reaching behind her to where the cigarettes were stacked on the shelf. “Ten,” says Kit.  “Ten?” says Mrs. Briody.  “The doctor gave me three feckin’ days to live and there’s two of them gone by already,” says Kit. “Ten will see me out, Mrs. Briody.”’ 
And Brendan would look around the bar to see who was laughing and to see if there was anyone who hadn’t heard it before.  Once a man had said that he had heard the same story down in Kerry but no more was said about that. 
There was a name for Kit’s condition but it kept slipping Brendan’s mind. Lots of things were slipping his mind these days: names, lots of things. He’d never married; said he hadn’t time enough for himself never mind a wife. 
The car went past, visible only for the second it took to pass the gate. It wasn’t Kit’s car. It was red and newer looking. Brendan had never seen it before and wondered who it could be. One of them fellahs down from Dublin, he thought. There were more cars in Dublin where they didn’t need them, of course, than anywhere out in the country. 
But it wouldn’t have been Kit, in any case, because Kit had taken to his bed the morning before with his latest fatal illness. Brendan had seen Tommy McCormack, the doctor, in Mullingar later that afternoon. He had taken the bus in to look at some cattle for Mr. Hope who owned the farm where Brendan worked when he was needed. The doctor was leaning against the top rail of the cattle pen in the street where the market had been set up. 
‘What’s up with him this time, Tommy?’ Brendan had asked. 
‘He has the plague,’ the doctor answered 
‘The plague?’ said Brendan. ‘We’re all doomed, so.’ 
‘I’d say we are,’ said Tommy. ‘I’ll just go in there, now, to the Bar and Grill, and take my last glass of Guinness. Will you send for the priest?’ 
‘I will,’ said Brendan, ‘after I’ve had a look at these heifers.’ The doctor walked across the street to the bar. As he opened the door the strains of ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ emerged and mingled with lowing of the cattle and the shouts of the farmers bargaining in the market.  Brendan shook his head and moved away down the street. 
Kit had never married either so, there they were, two old batchelors going about together, whenever Kit was about, anyway. Brendan with his weather beaten face, lean and wiry: Kit tall and pale, his jet black toupee perched on his head ‘Like a cat on a mantelpiece,’ said Mrs. Keogh in the post office. Brendan was older than Kit. He had been drawing his pension these three years and Kit still had a year before he could draw his. 
‘I’ll never get there,’ he would say. ‘I’ll never see the day.’ 
The only time their friendship was ever strained was that time twenty or twenty-five years before, he had lost track, when Brendan went over to England for the work. Kit’s older sister, Maggie, was living in Sheffield with her husband and Kit had written to her asking if she could find room in the house for Brendan so he could earn a bit of money on the roads over there. Maggie had written back and said she could but not for too long now, as her husband wasn’t too happy about it at all. So Brendan took the mail boat over to Holyhead and caught the train to Sheffield, changing at Crewe. Maggie had moved her two sons into one room and given Brendan the small bedroom. After he had laid his case on the bed he came downstairs to the cramped sitting room where Maggie’s husband Dermot was hunched in an armchair with his pipe and a paper. 
‘Good man,’ said Brendan. 
‘Mmmuhh,’ said Dermot without looking up. 
Dermot was from County Cork. Stocky and short, he either said nothing or spoke so fast, so passionately and for so long that he exhausted you. Over the weeks that Brendan was there he made the effort to break the ice with Dermot but he generally got the silence or, at best, the grunts.  He felt for Maggie. She was a handsome woman, a good mother, funny and warm. Any man would be glad of her but Dermot didn’t seem to have any appreciation of her at all. 
One afternoon Brendan was in the kitchen with Maggie. He couldn’t get a start on the roads that week and Maggie had offered to cut his hair. There was more of it then and it was a kind of reddy-brown. 
‘It’s falling in your eyes,’ said Maggie. ‘Sit down there and I’ll cut it for you.’ She leant over from behind him and placed a tea towel round his neck, tucking it into the shirt collar. He felt her softness and it stirred him. 
‘I remember you leaving home,’ said Brendan. 
‘That was twenty years ago.’ 
‘No! Twenty years?’ said Brendan 
‘Will you sit still,’ said Maggie. ‘I’ll be sticking the scissors in you.’
‘Twenty years?’ 
‘It was,’ said Maggie resting her hand for a moment on Brendan’s head. ‘It was 1913, just before the war. Some bloody great idea it was to come to Sheffield.’ 
‘Why did you do it?’ 
‘Dermot had work in the steel factory.’ 
‘Ah, sure Jaysus, Maggie, it’s not Dermot’s fault the war broke out.’ 
‘I know that,’ said Maggie quietly. 
There was a silence between them as Maggie clipped away with the scissors, carefully holding his ears down with her cool fingers while snipping around them. 
‘I was sorry to see you leave,’ said Brendan. 
‘You were not.’ Maggie laughed. 
‘I was so.’ 
‘Why would you be sorry to see me leave?’ 
‘Well there wasn’t exactly a crowd of good looking girls around the village in those days.’ 
‘Now stop,’ said Maggie. ‘Stop now. You mustn’t be saying those things.’ But although she was behind him he could sense that she was pleased and when her fingers came to rest gently on the back of his neck he felt a tingling and he knew they rested there longer than they needed to.  

 

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Fish Anthology Extracts to Read:

Flash Fiction – 

 

Fish Anthology 2021:  Both On and Off  by Jack Barker-Clark

Fish Anthology 2020:  Morning Routine<  by Kim Catanzarite

Fish Anthology 2019:  Teavarran  by Louise Swingler

Fish Anthology 2018:  The Chemistry of Living Things  by Fiona J Mackintosh

Fish Anthology 2017: Lost by Lindsay Fisher

Fish Anthology 2016: The Young Brown Bear by Julie Netherton

Fish Anthology 2014: A Theory of Relativity by Sally Ashton

Fish Anthology 2014: Juice Baby by Freda Churches

Fish Anthology 2011: The Long Wet Grass by Seamus Scanlon

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Winning Flash Fiction Story from the Fish Anthology 2021 – 

Both On and Off by Jack Barker-Clark

On the phone to your daughter all winter. On the power of attorney. On cloud cuckoo land. On the canal boat you once owned. On bravery. On ignominy. On trial. On fresh grapes. On the occasion of your birthday. On call if you need us. On amplification. On overreaction. On hold with the doctors. On display for one month only. On our best-case scenario. Onwards and upwards. On lovely shiny wet new grapes.

On modern medicine. On the contrary. On the one hand not so bad. On the other hand terminal. On assisted living. On your head be it. On the bedside table, there, next to your reading glasses. On increasing medication. On a tour of hospitals, West Yorkshire, the surrounding Humber. On the formal bed, writing down what the doctor had said. On dyschronometriaand cerebellar lesions. On lovely shiny wet new grapes.

On the ward. On the pillows inmates rest on. On-demand westerns. On John Wayne. On horseback. On purpose. On the bathroom floor with the shower gel. On the bathroom floor with the shower gel following a stroke. On disturbing volcanic dreams now. On canal boats choked with weeds. On holiday in 1972. On ghost trains. On beach towels. On lovely shiny wet new grapes.

On average twenty beats per minute. On life support. On your own. On top of the breadbin. On all sides surrounded. On the way. On the beach with Eleanor. On the borderlands. On the grass slopes. On and on. On Wednesday the 20^thMarch. On and on, and then suddenly off.

On behalf of those who knew him. On behalf of those who knew him best. On behalf of his grandson, unable to attend. On the TransPennine Express writing letters to his grandad who had died.

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Winning Flash Fiction Story from the Fish Anthology 2020 – 

Morning Routine by Kim Catanzarite

 

I opened a can of cat food and grabbed a saucer and one of the forks nobody likes and scooped out the food and gave the fat one the fork to lick and gave the kitten the full saucer and lifted their water dishes from the floor and filled them up and then turned the lights on in the living room and raised the blinds in the eating area and made my way to the fridge and put the bread in the toaster and grabbed the butter before tapping out the allergy medicine and her ADHD medicine and her other allergy medicine and pouring her glass of water. Then I put the kettle on and grabbed the brush and dustpan and picked up some mud that tracked in on her shoes the night before, and then the toast popped and I buttered it and she came in and said “good morning” and asked me if her socks matched her outfit and I said yes and she told me it was cold outside and that she was going to freeze her ass off at the bus stop if I didn’t drive her there, and I told her that she would live, and she breathed out a cloud of disgust and said that if the puddle down the road was enormous like it was the other day I would have to drive her because she couldn’t get around it, it was so big, and I stared at her and said nothing because that’s often the best response, and then she looked out the window and also said nothing, so I knew the puddle was gone.

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Winning Flash Fiction Story from the Fish Anthology 2019 – 

Teavarran by Louise Swingler

 

She can never believe how bright the gorse is, laid in great yellow arcs across the land. She breathes its coconut tang as she walks up the lane.

She can hear the gurgling veins of Scotland in the beck that runs in the ditch beside her. It’s twelve degrees here, cool after London’s twenty-four. The relief of it is a sensual chiding. She fits well here. Where does Thomas fit, though? You know I don’t do ‘green’, he says, whenever she asks him to come home with her.

She had wanted to come at Christmas, and in March.

A quad bike roars and she steps aside. Clumps of dock leaves are already growing back on the roughly-cropped verge. The one time he came, Thomas said these lanes ruined his suspension. He didn’t seem to realise how victorious this strip of tarmac is, checking the unstoppable push of the forest. But she knows it is but a temporary occupation. She enjoys this challenge to mankind’s arrogance.

Her father’s Highland cattle, flank deep, munch steadily through yellow rattle and buttercups. Two auburn calves are submerged like islands in an inland ocean of green, beige, purple, yellow. They raise their snubby noses, eyeing her. She thinks of Thomas, eyeing her as she left him at Luton Airport.

She looks across to the hills and the peaks behind them. The sky is a dull pearl, flat and quiet, and the morning mist has frozen into a row of frail tufts along the valley bottom, as if a steam train had recently departed.

She turns and stares into the calf’s swimming eyes, daring him.

‘If you don’t move before I blink, I’ll stay.’

Tick. Tock.

Her eyes begin to water. The calf remains still. Like a painting that Thomas can’t climb into. She blinks.

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Winning Flash Fiction Story from the Fish Anthology 2018 – 

The Chemistry of Living thing by Fiona J Mackintosh

The blue ones make me dream of thistles, make me loop-de-loopy, shaking bubbles from my wrists. The big yellow ones are slow-witted and tip me into drenching sleep at unexpected hours. The white diamonds have a certain easy charm, but it’s the tiny silver ones I like the best. In my cupped palm they roll like mercury balls, but in my head they fizz and dazzle, splintering into gaudy reds and greens. They’re the reason I can glide above the broken glass, put a soft hand on my husband’s shoulder as he tells our guests another story and nods to me to bring the coffee and dessert. Smoke coils beneath the lamp, softening the light. The faces round the table seem familiar, but I don’t know who they are, the men with bristled hair, the women oiled and shiny with cat’s-eye glasses and wet teeth. Mouths open, voices bourbon-loud with the looseness of late evening. The noise pulls close around my head like curtains as I rinse the dirty plates and spear a perfect sprig of mint in every peach sorbet. Against the backsplash, the pill bottles gleam, and I promise-touch each one for later. You and you and you. Through the window, just beyond the house-thrown light, a young deer stares at me with deep, black eyes. I see its dappled hide, a white stripe on its haunch that may or may not be a scar. I know at once it’s come to lure me out into the dark and unfamiliar, onto bleak, untrodden ground. I press my hands five-fingered on the window, and, when I wipe away the cloud my breath has made, the deer has gone like it was never there at all.

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Winning Flash Fiction Story from the Fish Anthology 2017 – 

Lost by Lindsay Fisher

 

She presses her face against the glass, as if it is possible, as if she could find a way through and not be in this world but in the world on the other side, everything polished and shiny and new there.

The man in the shop scowls at her and waves his hand towards her, as a man who would frighten chickens or cats from his garden, and he hisses at her through his teeth. All the men the same.

Her name’s Lynnell, and she is a tale of loss. Lost her would-have-been-husband to the war, years back, a black-edged letter she keeps tucked in beside her heart, paper soft as cloth and all the words fainter than whispers. A letter to tell her he was lost, but not before she found herself with a child growing inside her. Lost the child when it was born; taken from her rather than lost.

Lynnell lost her father and mother, too, all in the one year, the same year, except she knows where they sleep for the place is marked with a stone.

And lost her wits about the same time. Lost them and does not miss them now they are gone, for there’s a sort of freedom in everything these days; she moves from shop window to shop window, peering in through the plate glass, and she does not see the men on the other side with their black brows knitted and their shoo-away hands waving. And Lynnell looks for a hopeful way through the glass, for if only she could step through to the other side, then she might find everything she has lost waiting for her, that’s what she thinks – and everything there is polished and shiny and new if ever she did.

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Winning Flash Fiction Story from the Fish Anthology 2016 – 

The Young Brown Bear by Julie Netherton

 

Cuffed, cuffed, and cuffed again by She-bigger-than-me, who fed me and led me and then turned to me and cuffed again until I split.

Alone, along the brightly edge between the fishy wiggle wet and the soft brown tall green, standing on twos to reach for upbugs running along a log. Down on fours to roll boulders, opening dark to sniffle underbugs.

Away, across the shiny wet, a pack of people-persons all scooped together in a float. I stop and lift my snout to sniff and clickclickclick.

One little people-person between two bigger ones. Little pink snout in a little pink face. All else shiny fat shell, brighter than sundown. Pointing its cuff at me.

‘Look! Big teddy! Hello, Teddy,’ says Little He, and the sound wings across the wet like sunup song.

Little He clambers up the floaty side and as Big She reaches to cuff him, he tumbles into the wet, opens his bughole wide to splutter and wail. Big She and Bigger He howl and flail their cuffs.

Me curious.

Me thinking, stop Big She cuffing Little He.

Me thinking, I’ve never sniffed or peeped a people-person close.

Me thinking, Little He not bigger than me.

Just curious.

I amble-scramble across the loosely earth into the wet, feel the pull and cool. The floatman calls ‘Oy’ and the float’s throat roars as it spins. He lifts and points a shiny stick, longer and thinner than the clickclickclickers and with a sniffle hole at the end. Crackcrackcrack, bouncing sound around.

Hurt. Like being cuffed, but more. Wet around me like sundown and Little He’s shiny shell.

Should have trundled into the hidy green. Should have sat down against bugbark and snoozed. Should have stayed away like She-bigger-than-me made me before she cuffed me and left.

 

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Winning Flash Fiction Story from the Fish Anthology 2014 – 

A Theory of Relativity by Sally Ashton

I stand at the window of a railway carriage – Albert Einstein

Across from me on a train Albert sat facing backwards, a little table between us, his forehead pressed against the glass. His eyes flickered as if to count passing fence posts. At length he reached a small notebook from a chest pocket, placed it on the table, jotted something down. I tried not to stare, but couldn’t make out what he wrote even when I did. He smiled. May I trade seats with you for a while, my dear? What could I say? In spite of my motion sickness, I agreed. For one the train travelled a relatively straight path, plus his eyes were so kind and sad. He steadied my elbow until I was seated, took his seat, turned again to the window, again to his notes. Then I watched, as he had, the landscape recede, what I knew blurred in immeasurable distances. The sky lost light, Albert’s white head bobbed, and just before I slept a luminescent clock appeared in the sky, though now I see it was the moon itself wearing a clock face that watched us speed by, or did we too appear to be standing completely still?

 

 

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Winning Flash Fiction Story from the Fish Anthology 2011 – 

The Long Wet Grass by Seamus Scanlon

The resonance of tires against the wet road is a mantra, strong and steady.  The wipers slough rain away in slow rhythmic arcs into the surrounding blackness.  The rain falls slow and steady, then gusting, reminding me of Galway when I was a child where Atlantic winds flung broken fronds of seaweed onto the Prom during high tide.  Before the death harmony of Belfast seduced me. 

The wind keeps trying to tailgate us.  But we keep sailing.  The slick black asphalt sings on beneath us.  We slow and turn onto a dirt road, the clean rhythm now broken, high beams tracing tall reeds edging against the road, moving rhythmically back and forth with the wind.  No lights now from oncoming cars. 

We stop at a clearing.  I open the door, the driver looks back at me. The rain on my face is soothing.  The pungent petrol fumes comfort me.  The moon lies hidden behind black heavy clouds.  I unlock the trunk.

You can barely stand after lying curled up for hours.  After a  while you can stand straight.  I take the tape from your mouth.  You breathe in the fresh air.  You breathe in the fumes.  You watch me.  You don’t beg.  You don’t cry.  You are brave.  

I hold your arm and lead you away from the roadway, into a field, away from the car, from the others.  The gun in my hand pointed at the ground.  I stop.  I kiss your cheek.  I raise the gun.  I shoot you twice high in the temple.  The coronas of light anoint you.  You fall.  The rain rushes to wipe the blood off.  I fire shots into the air.  The ejected shells skip away.  

I walk back to the car and leave you there lying in the long wet grass.

 

 

Read Extracts from Fish Anthologies.:

Short Memoir – 

 

Fish Anthology 2018:  What Was Once A City by Marion Molteno

Fish Anthology 2017:  Pay Attention by Paul McGranaghan

Fish Anthology 2013:  Luscus by Maureen Boyle

 

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Extract from winning Short Memoir 2017 –

Pay Attention by Paul McGranaghan

 

Come and see.

Here is Spring Hill with its weirs of steps and tiers of streets. Their kerbs are green, white, and orange; yet this is not, nor ever has been, the Republic of Ireland. The sun is a spark in the clouds. See how the wind blows on it? Watch it. Watch it wax to a brilliant light. Look: Dandelions flare where they erupt from fissures in the paving. The bright buttons of daisies glitter across the common. We have been waiting for this. Can you see the removal van in the car park above our street? Can you see it gleaming?

Now look. The sunlight pushes away the rain and the workmen heave, shouldering the last of our furniture through the narrow door and up the wet steps to the van. That’s me, there. Can you see? There. That’s me, and my friends, and we’re following them. We want to go in the back of the van, sitting on the settee, but we aren’t allowed. It’s dangerous, they say; something might fall on us. I think of the bookcase with its glass panels and green and gold volumes of Charles Dickens toppling on top of me. Besides, my friends are staying behind and I am going to begin life as an outsider on the far side of town.

It is 1984. I am seven years of age.

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Extract from winning Short Memoir 2013 –

Luscus by Maureen Boyle

The eyes are lined neatly in wooden trays.  They are laid in grooves according to colour and there seem to be hundreds of them staring blind off velvet lining.  The velvet is deep purple – as though they’ve been laid there bleeding – but that is a fantasy and the velvet may be too.  It was, after all, a National Health clinic in the Royal Victoria Hospital in 1966 but my memory of it is blurred and mixed with winter darkness and the sense of a bazaar.  My parents have taken me first to the giant Woolworth’s store in the centre of Belfast to buy me a bright yellow rubber duck as a beacon of small light in my hands, distraction from the ordeal ahead and whether it is because this is my first remembered experience of looking out on the world with only half the light I’d had until then – all of that first trip to Belfast and to the clinic, is shrouded in the colours of the dark:  of rich mahogany wood, of the hunched  Victorian corridors of the children’s hospital, of shops with wooden counters and sweets in wood-cornered vats like coloured fish you had to scoop out into little brown bags for weighing; of dark polished doors and of rain. 
We were there to find me an eye and the man who would do this was Mr Lennox.  Apart from the trays of eyes, I remember little of that first visit but I would come to know his method very well over the next twenty years and would miss it when he finally retired.  He would begin by washing his hands very thoroughly.  And then he would simply sit and look at my one good eye, staring into it as if hoping to find a secret: the secret of its precise colour, of the size of the pupil, of the iris, the shades of the white, the shape of the eye and then the choosing would begin and that is where the perfectly-organised trays came into play.  He would begin to scan the strange spectrum – leaving the tray of browns that had at one side a disconcerting row of pink albino eyes, and the tray of greens and go instead to blue – the colour of my eyes and of my family’s.  He would gather up a range of them, like a boy lifting coloured marbles, and hold them, one at a time, not initially where my empty socket was, but at the side of the good eye, the better to do the matching.  And it seemed to me that the movement of his fingers, deftly moving the first eye chosen, back into his palm and another forward between thumb and forefinger, was done like a conjuring trick – a version of the one where an uncle takes a coin from the child’s nose or its ear – this kindly uncle was going to pluck me back an eye from his magic box of them.
We are here because I have recently had an enucleation – my left eye removed entirely after an accident. The word comes from ‘nuclear’ which means ‘kernel’ – the removing of the seed from the kernel – the eye thumbed out like a Brazil nut from its shell.  I’ll come to know these words too in the months and years ahead – the socket – like pocket – from which the eye has slipped, been picked; the sulcus, from the furrow of a plough, for the little groove between eyelid and eyebrow.  I remember nothing of the enucleation but I do remember the day I lost my eye – an odd idea – as if I’d been careless and left it somewhere or dropped it while playing. 
My parents were building an extension.  It was the early sixties, when people built their own houses or did things to them and we knew about plans and permissions.  The builder was from Strabane.  We lived outside the village of Sion Mills, in County Tyrone, a Mill village where my mother grew up, in a house on the Melmount Road in the townland of Liggartown and my mother and father were replacing the tiny scullery, which would then become the ‘back kitchen’, with  a big light kitchen that would have a massive orange formica table, around which we would all sit on high stools and a divider of shelves made of exotic bamboo for ornaments.  The sink would face the road, the main road between Derry and Omagh, and its big picture window would allow my mother to look out on the world as she did her chores, to see the buses passing at their regular times and later the soldiers set up check-points on the corner and beyond to the fields, the river and the mountains. 
On this day my sister, who is younger than me, is playing with me in the garden – there is a vast uncultivated meadow behind where the vegetables grow – it is a country site and too big for my father and grandfather to tend – where we like to play safaris, imagining ourselves ‘lost in the jungle’, when in fact we are hiding behind overgrown gooseberry plants and under the umbrella leaves of the  wild rhubarb.  But it begins to rain and so we take shelter in the garage which contains the overspill of the family house and good things to play with.  In later years, though I doubt it was ever said, I always saw what happened subsequently, as carrying a moral message of obedience – always do what you are told – my mother having called us in out of the rain – meaning come in to the safety of the house.  Instead we go to the garage – where we are not really supposed to play because of my father’s tools and garden weed-killers –  but I love the smell of creosote and the jam jars my father screws by their lids to shelves to hold all his different nails and twine.  We are playing with umbrellas in there.  My parents have a print of Renoir’s ‘Les Parapluies des Cherbourg’ in our living room – its colours all the greys and blues of Parisian rain.  The woman in the front of the picture though looks dry and carries an empty basket lined dark like a gaping hole.  A little girl stands by with a hoop.  The rain of this day is green in my mind, and rust-coloured from the gravel of the drive, as it runs down the slight slope from the garage, running down the fields in front of the house and down into the Mourne River.  But we are dry inside the garage and the rain is spectacle through the open doors – like the moment in White Christmas where the barn doors are opened behind so that the scenery is suddenly real.  There is an old white umbrella which I think may have been from my mother’s wedding, it has a frill and it seems sumptuous  and it too is forbidden for play because of the danger of its tip. And that day also in the garage is the builder’s equipment, stored there for the weekend.  There is a step-ladder.  My little sister climbs it to the top.  I am underneath looking directly up at her.  There is a trowel –  from the Old French word ‘truele’ – ‘a small tool for spreading plaster or mortar’ from the Late Latin ‘truella’ – ‘small ladle, dipper’ –‘ a stirring spoon, a ladle, a skimmer’.

*  *

It is a Saturday.  I know this because my father is at a cricket match.  I remember the imprint of one of my mother’s tea towels – as though it were a phantom imprint on the lost or losing retina – like the checkered cloth marks that were burned into Hiroshima  victim’s skin.  The tea towel, white with red stitching, is held to the eye from the moment I run into the new kitchen screaming, held by my mother, all the way to Derry in my uncle’s small, wine-coloured  Mini car, my uncle who is called to take me to hospital in Altnagelvin in Derry.  I think I remember the surgeons in green scrubs and the panic.  I think I remember being wheeled in a high-sided cot or bed.  I don’t remember pain. They remove the whole eye.  

(Complete Memoir in the Fish Anthology 2013.)

 

 

 

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Read from Fish Anthologies:

Poems – 

 

Fish Anthology 2024:  No, I Am Not a Robot (An Ekphrastic Poem of Sorts) by Brooke Herter James

Fish Anthology 2018: Vernacular Green by Janet Murray

Fish Anthology 2017: Paris, 13 November 2015 by Róisín Kelly

Fish Anthology 2015: Saint John’s Primary School Nativity. Nineteen Years On. 
by Tessa Maude

 

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Fish Anthology 2024 –  Winning Poem

No, I am not a Robot (An Ekphrastic Poem of Sorts)

 by Brooke Herter James

 

---

 

 

Fish Anthology 2018 –  Winning Poem

Vernacular Green

 by Janet Murray

(i.m Howard Hodgkin1932-2017)

 

Hodgkin sees common green

in privet, grass, chestnut husks

blown horsetail, chickweed

crushed under baby’s toe

scum on ponds―pond weed.

 

Not silver olive, willow spinning

green or white, imported

rhododendron, clunking monkey

puzzle tree. Exempt montbretia’s

erect leaves, circling

 

fiery tiger flowers, but if he glimpses

luminous green on the wing-tip

of an escaped parakeet, exposed

by pallid vernacular green, which

hides fairy wings sometimes,

 

in this moment he speaks

Indian green where a greener green

can be unleashed, somewhere between

emerald and jade, a brush dipped

in feathers round a teal duck’s eye.

 

---

 

Fish Anthology 2017 –  Winning Poem

Paris, 13 November 2015

 by Róisín Kelly

In the end, it’s like going to bed as usual

except we lie down side by side in the street

and the night sky is our ceiling, and blood

drifts away from us between cobblestones

like rose petals torn up and scattered.

 

I don’t mind that the last thing I’ll see

is a café window’s red-and-blue OPEN sign,

and a neon coffee cup with three white lines

that symbolise rising steam.

 

Or the lights in your eyes going out—

as if someone turned off the bedside lamp

in your mind—except your eyes are still opening

and opening, and I am frightened.

 

What were the last things they saw, those eyes?

A cathedral’s rose window, or a view

from a tower: grey buildings like soft birds

nestling to the horizon.

 

My hair on my back as I walked before you

down a flight of stone steps on a hill.

My face turned towards yours, moments ago.

 

 There’s a sound like fireworks, but the stars

are as colourless as the diamond rings

laid out in the jeweller’s window

that we stood shyly in front of last night.

Our mouths and blood were ringing with wine,

but what we dared to think went unspoken

and now it always will.

 

That sound—it’s like the sky tearing apart,

as loud as the gig where we had our first kiss.

It was a metal band in a tiny hot room

above a bar in our home city.

 

The musicians rolled their eyes and screamed

do you want more? The drummer played naked

and kept throwing his sticks in the air,

catching them perfectly every time.

 

The singer hated the bright spotlight on him

and we cheered when he wrenched it down.

How we craved the plunge into darkness,

the careless unscrewing of the moon.

 

---

 

 

Fish Anthology 2015 –  Winning Poem

Saint John’s Primary School Nativity. Nineteen Years On. 
by Tessa Maude 

The Virgin Mary lights a fag 
Behind the vestry door 
She’s pregnant for the fourth time 
At only twenty-four.

Herod dies in Helmand 
And Caspar deals in crack and 
Melchior rapes Gabriel 
And stabs him in the back.

The shepherds beat up Joseph 
And steal his mobile phone 
Miss Stevens gives up teaching 
And drinks and dies alone.

The Star stands by her lamp post 
And sore afraid acts tough 
By bridges and in doorways 
The Inn Keeper sleeps rough.

The mothers and the fathers 
The chief priests and the scribes 
Are gathered in the court house 
Where Balthazar takes bribes.

The Heavenly Choir disbanded 
And went their separate ways 
Three wise men went to Wandsworth 
The shepherds to The Maze.

A suicidal Jesus 
Curses God then leaps 
And in his stained glass window 
Saint John the Baptist weeps.

 

 

90 memoirs shortlisted
(780 memoirs submitted in total)

MEMOIR TITLE	AUTHOR
A Life in Dogs	Adrianne Aron
A Caseful of Ostrich Feathers	Aida Lennon
CHRISTMAS IS COMING	Alan Coley
We All Know Mr Jones	Alice Jolly
Kingsley	Amanda Bell
Black Ice	Amy Vander Els
Christmas Day in Dewsbury	Andrea Burn
The Precipice	Anna Bogdanova
Homeward Bound	Anna McGrail
‘Cause I knew I was loved	Anni Webster
Peter	Barbara Unkovic
A Boy is a Half-Assed Thing	Barry Troy
A Life Well Lived	Beryl Trebble
Where the Sun Comes up Like Thunder	Blair Bourassa
Just a Little Finger	Bridgett Kendall
Mother’s Bad Leg	Carol Kellar
Practicing doctors	Caroline Mawer
What if the Pastor’s Wife Wants to Quit?	Carrie Stephens
LEARNING TO LIE	Catherine Brophy
Symphony Date	Cathy Beres
From the Mockingbird’s Throat	Chris Carson
March	Chris RB Fay
Make You a Woman	Cynthia Stuart
The Torso and the Lotus	David Horovitch
The Bedrock of My Soul	Deborah Cameron
GOING UP CAMDEN	DICK JONES
´I can´t write about him´ – Writing in the Silences: Beckett, Grief and Art	Eamon Mc Guinness
Kibun	elizabeth browne
Getting Saved	Elizabeth Brunazzi
The Trail of Tears	Ewing Baldwin
The Hooded Man	Frances Kenny
FAMIGLIA	G.L. Sheridan
Motherland	Geraldine Anslow
Damage	Gerry Dorrian
Hanoi Jane	Jane Fraser
Love in a Camper Van	Jane Fraser
He Drove As Far As He Needed To	Jane Hacking
Burning Bridges	Janet Duignan
Riding Shotgun	Jeanne Martin
L’appartement de Mon Amie (My Girlfriend’s Apartment)	Jeffrey Koterba
Van Men	John Harris
DROWNING	John Wagner
Scatter Your Ashes with a Frisbee	Jordan Felker
The House	Julian Bentley Edelman
The Day Before Easter, 2013	Julian Bentley Edelman
The Girl Who Stayed	Kathleen Chaplin
The Girl Who Stayed	Kathleen Chaplin
The American Dream	Kathryn Shaver
Double Helix	Kirstan Hawkins
Weird Dirt	Lisa Grube
Up there	Lorna Thorpe
A Suitable Family	Louise Kennedy
Chapatis, Hunger, Tigers, and Liberation: a Pilgrim’s Tale	Madiha Bataineh
A Few Small Stones	marilyn ogus katz
Learning to walk in a man’s shoes	Marlene LEE
THE SOCKS	Marsha Mittman
The Schoolyard	Martine Fournier
The Dought Season	Mary Bilan
Unutterable	Mary Roberts
Who We Become	mary shannon
soul crows–a memory	michael casey
I am Made of This	Miriam Moeller
Rite of Passage	Natalie Ryan
Boys will be boys.	Nicholas Bowlby
On Seagull Street	Nicholas McLachlan
Dutch Scene Before Divorce	Nicola Waldron
Bittersweet Thursday	Ninette Hartley
No More	pauline rooney
Always With Us	Pavlina Morgan
Bloke to Bloke	Peter Tonkin
The One With the Personality	Phyllida Scrivens
An Immigrant’s tale	RASHMI PAUN
Sunday Dinner	Rhoda Wolfe
September Spam	Richard Holeton
Slivers and Fragments	Robert Little
Elysium	Robert Maxwell
Petty Crimes	Roberta George
Exposure	Ruth Heller
JOURNEYING SOUTH	Ruth Oliver
Porn	Saffron Marchant
Suitcase of Memories	Sandi Parsons
Dream Homes	Sandra Burdett
Saturdays	Sarala Estruch
Big Blonde With A Beehive	Sharon MaHarry
Yahoo	Stewart Ross Carry
Memories are Made of These	Sue Roff
The Christmas Story	Terese Brasen
Dear My Father	Una Mannion
The Onion Church	Una Mannion
Throat of Morning	Wendell Hawken

197 memoirs longlisted
(780 memoirs submitted in total)

MEMOIR TITLE	AUTHOR
My Life, The Movie	A.B. Chesler
Middle School Life	Abbie Tingstad
30-Dec	Abbie Tingstad
How to Save Comic in Times of War	Adnan Mahmutovic
A Life in Dogs	Adrianne Aron
A Caseful of Ostrich Feathers	Aida Lennon
CHRISTMAS IS COMING	Alan Coley
Saragh’s Diary	Alexandra D’Arcy
We All Know Mr Jones	Alice Jolly
The Fairy Child	Alison Walker
What Happened in Jamaica	Alyssa Kilzer
Kingsley	Amanda Bell
Black Ice	Amy Vander Els
Cows and Lies	Andre Hess
Christmas Day in Dewsbury	Andrea Burn
From the Head’s Office	Angus Walker
View Near the Borderline	Ann Thompson
The Precipice	Anna Bogdanova
Now gone home	Anna Hansell
Homeward Bound	Anna McGrail
A Gas Woman	Anne Griffin
A Ghost Itches	Anne Griffin
Culture Shock	Anne Stoddart
‘Cause I knew I was loved	Anni Webster
Nuns & Dinosaurs	Annie Lowney
The Outer Hebrides	Anthony Costello
The Dividing Line	April Darcy
Peter	Barbara Unkovic
A Boy is a Half-Assed Thing	Barry Troy
A Life Well Lived	Beryl Trebble
Red Brick	Betty Weiner
Rules to Survive Childhood	Billie Travalini
Where the Sun Comes up Like Thunder	Blair Bourassa
Just a Little Finger	Bridgett Kendall
The Skiles Junior High Blues	bruce wexler
Where Are the People?	Caitlin McGill
Dear Diary	Cal Bartley
Mother’s Bad Leg	Carol Kellar
Dorie Adams	Caroline Hume
Practicing doctors	Caroline Mawer
What if the Pastor’s Wife Wants to Quit?	Carrie Stephens
LEARNING TO LIE	Catherine Brophy
Non-Toxic	Catherine Coldstream
Mary	Catherine Conroy
Symphony Date	Cathy Beres
From the Mockingbird’s Throat	Chris Carson
CROSSING OVER	Chris Livingstone
March	Chris RB Fay
Beautiful Gardens	Christina Greeves
In Wales with Larry	Christopher North
Five Things That Terrified Me Abou Visiting My Grandparents	Ciara McVeigh
YOU’RE NEVER TOO YOUNG TO BE SCARED	Cindy Small
The Way We Were	Clarrie Pringle
Make You a Woman	Cynthia Stuart
Womb Dances	Dairena Ní Chinnéide
CYCLING IN ISRAEL	David Forest Hitchcock
The Torso and the Lotus	David Horovitch
The Bedrock of My Soul	Deborah Cameron
My mate came to see me	Debra Phillips
Pleasure	Deepak Singh
Mum in Memory	Denise Blake
GOING UP CAMDEN	DICK JONES
´I can´t write about him´ – Writing in the Silences: Beckett, Grief and Art	Eamon Mc Guinness
Kibun	elizabeth browne
Walter and Tatsy	Elizabeth Brunazzi
Getting Saved	Elizabeth Brunazzi
Bridge of Sighs	Elsbeth Collins
Funeral	Eugene McCarthy
The Trail of Tears	Ewing Baldwin
Blood Suckers	Frances Kenny
Hold Your Collar	Frances Kenny
The Hooded Man	Frances Kenny
FAMIGLIA	G.L. Sheridan
Where Things Are Kept No More	gabi burman
You in N’awlins Now Baby	Geraldine Anslow
Once upon a time there was a tavern	Geraldine Anslow
Motherland	Geraldine Anslow
Damage	Gerry Dorrian
Not the Journey We Were Expecting	Gordon Darroch
Where Black Rivers Meet	Gulara Vincent
Sage and Wisdom	Helen Hansen
Growing up in wrtime	Jackie Hinden
Death at Midnight	Jaimee Joroff
There Were Red Roses At The Gas Station	Jaimee Joroff
Fine Dining in Bartlesville	James Murtha
Kinsale Fishermen	James Murtha
My Road to Je Suis Charlie	James Yao
It Seems Like Yesterday	Jane Ashworth
The Jackalberry Tree	Jane Borges
Diamonds	Jane Borges
Hanoi Jane	Jane Fraser
Love in a Camper Van	Jane Fraser
He Drove As Far As He Needed To	Jane Hacking
Burning Bridges	Janet Duignan
The Duck	Javi Reddy
Riding Shotgun	Jeanne Martin
L’appartement de Mon Amie (My Girlfriend’s Apartment)	Jeffrey Koterba
THE CHRISTMAS CHICKENS	Jenifer Granger
Did You Pee	Jim McDonald
On the Run	Jo Fitzsimons
Van Men	John Harris
MY BROTHER’S CLOSET	John McCabe
DROWNING	John Wagner
Scatter Your Ashes with a Frisbee	Jordan Felker
The House	Julian Bentley Edelman
The Day Before Easter, 2013	Julian Bentley Edelman
Quietus	Julianna Holland
Core of My Heart	Julie Davies
The Baron	kate Biddle
The Miracle of Braile Street	Katherine Palmer
The Girl Who Stayed	Kathleen Chaplin
The Girl Who Stayed	Kathleen Chaplin
The American Dream	Kathryn Shaver
Double Helix	Kirstan Hawkins
Riding in Cars	Laura Lohnes
Salad Dressing	Lauren Foley
Kates Melodeon	Liam Cahalan
The Currency of the Ganges	Linda judge
Weird Dirt	Lisa Grube
I Am The Anti-Proust	Liz Gray
Up there	Lorna Thorpe
Mrs. Morrison	Louisa Byrne
A Suitable Family	Louise Kennedy
A Stitch in Time	Lydia Kann
Rocks	M McCutcheon
Chapatis, Hunger, Tigers, and Liberation: a Pilgrim’s Tale	Madiha Bataineh
Mabel’s chickens	Maeve Kolitz
A Few Small Stones	marilyn ogus katz
Me and Airports: AGP Malaga	Mark Blackburn
Com	Marked
Learning to walk in a man’s shoes	Marlene LEE
THE SOCKS	Marsha Mittman
The Schoolyard	Martine Fournier
The Dought Season	Mary Bilan
Children of Light	Mary Lou Shields
My Dad, Bull McCabe	Mary Mullen
Accidental Damage	Mary Roberts
Unutterable	Mary Roberts
Who We Become	mary shannon
soul crows–a memory	michael casey
The Brass City	Michael Dwyer
The last salmon fisherman on the Tamar	Michael Hooton
Dabbling Free	michelle brock
I am Made of This	Miriam Moeller
The Beginning	Mischa van den Brandhof
Rite of Passage	Natalie Ryan
Flame	Niamh MacCabe
The Lark Ascending	Niamh MacCabe
Boys will be boys.	Nicholas Bowlby
On Seagull Street	Nicholas McLachlan
Solent Ward	Nicki Heinen
Dutch Scene Before Divorce	Nicola Waldron
Bittersweet Thursday	Ninette Hartley
The Leaving	Nora McGillen
what’s your Angel name	patricia bradley
The Recipe Book	patricia Denny
No More	pauline rooney
GRANDMA and GRANDDAD CROPP	Pauline Steele
Always With Us	Pavlina Morgan
Bloke to Bloke	Peter Tonkin
The One With the Personality	Phyllida Scrivens
An Immigrant’s tale	RASHMI PAUN
America is for Lovers	Rebecca Ewan
Sunday Dinner	Rhoda Wolfe
September Spam	Richard Holeton
Slivers and Fragments	Robert Little
Elysium	Robert Maxwell
Petty Crimes	Roberta George
The Jewel Beach	Ruko Kitamaru
Exposure	Ruth Heller
JOURNEYING SOUTH	Ruth Oliver
If music be the food of love	ruth Skrine
Wings in a Life	ruth Skrine
The Workshop	Ryan Kramer
Porn	Saffron Marchant
Suitcase of Memories	Sandi Parsons
Dream Homes	Sandra Burdett
The Lifesaver	Sara Ballard
On Dad, Death, Denial, and Duty	Sarah Cunningham
Saturdays	Sarala Estruch
THE NASWAR BOX	Savi Fitch
Broken Roses	Seth Polley
Paradise Mislaid	Sharon Eckman
Big Blonde With A Beehive	Sharon MaHarry
Zambian Music	Sheila Crawford
The Call of the Peacock	Sherri Matthews
Aden	Simon Kensdale
Fifty Words for Love, in Swedish	Stephen Keeler
Yahoo	Stewart Ross Carry
Memories are Made of These	Sue Roff
Places	Susan Anmuth
Journey to Everywhere	Sylvia McGlynn
The Christmas Story	Terese Brasen
Found Soul	Tom Husband
Searching for Ruru	Tracy Brighten
Caught	tracy duvangel
Landscaping	Una Mannion
Dear My Father	Una Mannion
The Onion Church	Una Mannion
Throat of Morning	Wendell Hawken

90 memoirs shortlisted
(780 memoirs submitted in total)

MEMOIR TITLE	AUTHOR
A Life in Dogs	Adrianne Aron
A Caseful of Ostrich Feathers	Aida Lennon
CHRISTMAS IS COMING	Alan Coley
We All Know Mr Jones	Alice Jolly
Kingsley	Amanda Bell
Black Ice	Amy Vander Els
Christmas Day in Dewsbury	Andrea Burn
The Precipice	Anna Bogdanova
Homeward Bound	Anna McGrail
‘Cause I knew I was loved	Anni Webster
Peter	Barbara Unkovic
A Boy is a Half-Assed Thing	Barry Troy
A Life Well Lived	Beryl Trebble
Where the Sun Comes up Like Thunder	Blair Bourassa
Just a Little Finger	Bridgett Kendall
Mother’s Bad Leg	Carol Kellar
Practicing doctors	Caroline Mawer
What if the Pastor’s Wife Wants to Quit?	Carrie Stephens
LEARNING TO LIE	Catherine Brophy
Symphony Date	Cathy Beres
From the Mockingbird’s Throat	Chris Carson
March	Chris RB Fay
Make You a Woman	Cynthia Stuart
The Torso and the Lotus	David Horovitch
The Bedrock of My Soul	Deborah Cameron
GOING UP CAMDEN	DICK JONES
´I can´t write about him´ – Writing in the Silences: Beckett, Grief and Art	Eamon Mc Guinness
Kibun	elizabeth browne
Getting Saved	Elizabeth Brunazzi
The Trail of Tears	Ewing Baldwin
The Hooded Man	Frances Kenny
FAMIGLIA	G.L. Sheridan
Motherland	Geraldine Anslow
Damage	Gerry Dorrian
Hanoi Jane	Jane Fraser
Love in a Camper Van	Jane Fraser
He Drove As Far As He Needed To	Jane Hacking
Burning Bridges	Janet Duignan
Riding Shotgun	Jeanne Martin
L’appartement de Mon Amie (My Girlfriend’s Apartment)	Jeffrey Koterba
Van Men	John Harris
DROWNING	John Wagner
Scatter Your Ashes with a Frisbee	Jordan Felker
The House	Julian Bentley Edelman
The Day Before Easter, 2013	Julian Bentley Edelman
The Girl Who Stayed	Kathleen Chaplin
The Girl Who Stayed	Kathleen Chaplin
The American Dream	Kathryn Shaver
Double Helix	Kirstan Hawkins
Weird Dirt	Lisa Grube
Up there	Lorna Thorpe
A Suitable Family	Louise Kennedy
Chapatis, Hunger, Tigers, and Liberation: a Pilgrim’s Tale	Madiha Bataineh
A Few Small Stones	marilyn ogus katz
Learning to walk in a man’s shoes	Marlene LEE
THE SOCKS	Marsha Mittman
The Schoolyard	Martine Fournier
The Dought Season	Mary Bilan
Unutterable	Mary Roberts
Who We Become	mary shannon
soul crows–a memory	michael casey
I am Made of This	Miriam Moeller
Rite of Passage	Natalie Ryan
Boys will be boys.	Nicholas Bowlby
On Seagull Street	Nicholas McLachlan
Dutch Scene Before Divorce	Nicola Waldron
Bittersweet Thursday	Ninette Hartley
No More	pauline rooney
Always With Us	Pavlina Morgan
Bloke to Bloke	Peter Tonkin
The One With the Personality	Phyllida Scrivens
An Immigrant’s tale	RASHMI PAUN
Sunday Dinner	Rhoda Wolfe
September Spam	Richard Holeton
Slivers and Fragments	Robert Little
Elysium	Robert Maxwell
Petty Crimes	Roberta George
Exposure	Ruth Heller
JOURNEYING SOUTH	Ruth Oliver
Porn	Saffron Marchant
Suitcase of Memories	Sandi Parsons
Dream Homes	Sandra Burdett
Saturdays	Sarala Estruch
Big Blonde With A Beehive	Sharon MaHarry
Yahoo	Stewart Ross Carry
Memories are Made of These	Sue Roff
The Christmas Story	Terese Brasen
Dear My Father	Una Mannion
The Onion Church	Una Mannion
Throat of Morning	Wendell Hawken

197 memoirs longlisted
(780 memoirs submitted in total)

MEMOIR TITLE	AUTHOR
My Life, The Movie	A.B. Chesler
Middle School Life	Abbie Tingstad
30-Dec	Abbie Tingstad
How to Save Comic in Times of War	Adnan Mahmutovic
A Life in Dogs	Adrianne Aron
A Caseful of Ostrich Feathers	Aida Lennon
CHRISTMAS IS COMING	Alan Coley
Saragh’s Diary	Alexandra D’Arcy
We All Know Mr Jones	Alice Jolly
The Fairy Child	Alison Walker
What Happened in Jamaica	Alyssa Kilzer
Kingsley	Amanda Bell
Black Ice	Amy Vander Els
Cows and Lies	Andre Hess
Christmas Day in Dewsbury	Andrea Burn
From the Head’s Office	Angus Walker
View Near the Borderline	Ann Thompson
The Precipice	Anna Bogdanova
Now gone home	Anna Hansell
Homeward Bound	Anna McGrail
A Gas Woman	Anne Griffin
A Ghost Itches	Anne Griffin
Culture Shock	Anne Stoddart
‘Cause I knew I was loved	Anni Webster
Nuns & Dinosaurs	Annie Lowney
The Outer Hebrides	Anthony Costello
The Dividing Line	April Darcy
Peter	Barbara Unkovic
A Boy is a Half-Assed Thing	Barry Troy
A Life Well Lived	Beryl Trebble
Red Brick	Betty Weiner
Rules to Survive Childhood	Billie Travalini
Where the Sun Comes up Like Thunder	Blair Bourassa
Just a Little Finger	Bridgett Kendall
The Skiles Junior High Blues	bruce wexler
Where Are the People?	Caitlin McGill
Dear Diary	Cal Bartley
Mother’s Bad Leg	Carol Kellar
Dorie Adams	Caroline Hume
Practicing doctors	Caroline Mawer
What if the Pastor’s Wife Wants to Quit?	Carrie Stephens
LEARNING TO LIE	Catherine Brophy
Non-Toxic	Catherine Coldstream
Mary	Catherine Conroy
Symphony Date	Cathy Beres
From the Mockingbird’s Throat	Chris Carson
CROSSING OVER	Chris Livingstone
March	Chris RB Fay
Beautiful Gardens	Christina Greeves
In Wales with Larry	Christopher North
Five Things That Terrified Me Abou Visiting My Grandparents	Ciara McVeigh
YOU’RE NEVER TOO YOUNG TO BE SCARED	Cindy Small
The Way We Were	Clarrie Pringle
Make You a Woman	Cynthia Stuart
Womb Dances	Dairena Ní Chinnéide
CYCLING IN ISRAEL	David Forest Hitchcock
The Torso and the Lotus	David Horovitch
The Bedrock of My Soul	Deborah Cameron
My mate came to see me	Debra Phillips
Pleasure	Deepak Singh
Mum in Memory	Denise Blake
GOING UP CAMDEN	DICK JONES
´I can´t write about him´ – Writing in the Silences: Beckett, Grief and Art	Eamon Mc Guinness
Kibun	elizabeth browne
Walter and Tatsy	Elizabeth Brunazzi
Getting Saved	Elizabeth Brunazzi
Bridge of Sighs	Elsbeth Collins
Funeral	Eugene McCarthy
The Trail of Tears	Ewing Baldwin
Blood Suckers	Frances Kenny
Hold Your Collar	Frances Kenny
The Hooded Man	Frances Kenny
FAMIGLIA	G.L. Sheridan
Where Things Are Kept No More	gabi burman
You in N’awlins Now Baby	Geraldine Anslow
Once upon a time there was a tavern	Geraldine Anslow
Motherland	Geraldine Anslow
Damage	Gerry Dorrian
Not the Journey We Were Expecting	Gordon Darroch
Where Black Rivers Meet	Gulara Vincent
Sage and Wisdom	Helen Hansen
Growing up in wrtime	Jackie Hinden
Death at Midnight	Jaimee Joroff
There Were Red Roses At The Gas Station	Jaimee Joroff
Fine Dining in Bartlesville	James Murtha
Kinsale Fishermen	James Murtha
My Road to Je Suis Charlie	James Yao
It Seems Like Yesterday	Jane Ashworth
The Jackalberry Tree	Jane Borges
Diamonds	Jane Borges
Hanoi Jane	Jane Fraser
Love in a Camper Van	Jane Fraser
He Drove As Far As He Needed To	Jane Hacking
Burning Bridges	Janet Duignan
The Duck	Javi Reddy
Riding Shotgun	Jeanne Martin
L’appartement de Mon Amie (My Girlfriend’s Apartment)	Jeffrey Koterba
THE CHRISTMAS CHICKENS	Jenifer Granger
Did You Pee	Jim McDonald
On the Run	Jo Fitzsimons
Van Men	John Harris
MY BROTHER’S CLOSET	John McCabe
DROWNING	John Wagner
Scatter Your Ashes with a Frisbee	Jordan Felker
The House	Julian Bentley Edelman
The Day Before Easter, 2013	Julian Bentley Edelman
Quietus	Julianna Holland
Core of My Heart	Julie Davies
The Baron	kate Biddle
The Miracle of Braile Street	Katherine Palmer
The Girl Who Stayed	Kathleen Chaplin
The Girl Who Stayed	Kathleen Chaplin
The American Dream	Kathryn Shaver
Double Helix	Kirstan Hawkins
Riding in Cars	Laura Lohnes
Salad Dressing	Lauren Foley
Kates Melodeon	Liam Cahalan
The Currency of the Ganges	Linda judge
Weird Dirt	Lisa Grube
I Am The Anti-Proust	Liz Gray
Up there	Lorna Thorpe
Mrs. Morrison	Louisa Byrne
A Suitable Family	Louise Kennedy
A Stitch in Time	Lydia Kann
Rocks	M McCutcheon
Chapatis, Hunger, Tigers, and Liberation: a Pilgrim’s Tale	Madiha Bataineh
Mabel’s chickens	Maeve Kolitz
A Few Small Stones	marilyn ogus katz
Me and Airports: AGP Malaga	Mark Blackburn
Com	Marked
Learning to walk in a man’s shoes	Marlene LEE
THE SOCKS	Marsha Mittman
The Schoolyard	Martine Fournier
The Dought Season	Mary Bilan
Children of Light	Mary Lou Shields
My Dad, Bull McCabe	Mary Mullen
Accidental Damage	Mary Roberts
Unutterable	Mary Roberts
Who We Become	mary shannon
soul crows–a memory	michael casey
The Brass City	Michael Dwyer
The last salmon fisherman on the Tamar	Michael Hooton
Dabbling Free	michelle brock
I am Made of This	Miriam Moeller
The Beginning	Mischa van den Brandhof
Rite of Passage	Natalie Ryan
Flame	Niamh MacCabe
The Lark Ascending	Niamh MacCabe
Boys will be boys.	Nicholas Bowlby
On Seagull Street	Nicholas McLachlan
Solent Ward	Nicki Heinen
Dutch Scene Before Divorce	Nicola Waldron
Bittersweet Thursday	Ninette Hartley
The Leaving	Nora McGillen
what’s your Angel name	patricia bradley
The Recipe Book	patricia Denny
No More	pauline rooney
GRANDMA and GRANDDAD CROPP	Pauline Steele
Always With Us	Pavlina Morgan
Bloke to Bloke	Peter Tonkin
The One With the Personality	Phyllida Scrivens
An Immigrant’s tale	RASHMI PAUN
America is for Lovers	Rebecca Ewan
Sunday Dinner	Rhoda Wolfe
September Spam	Richard Holeton
Slivers and Fragments	Robert Little
Elysium	Robert Maxwell
Petty Crimes	Roberta George
The Jewel Beach	Ruko Kitamaru
Exposure	Ruth Heller
JOURNEYING SOUTH	Ruth Oliver
If music be the food of love	ruth Skrine
Wings in a Life	ruth Skrine
The Workshop	Ryan Kramer
Porn	Saffron Marchant
Suitcase of Memories	Sandi Parsons
Dream Homes	Sandra Burdett
The Lifesaver	Sara Ballard
On Dad, Death, Denial, and Duty	Sarah Cunningham
Saturdays	Sarala Estruch
THE NASWAR BOX	Savi Fitch
Broken Roses	Seth Polley
Paradise Mislaid	Sharon Eckman
Big Blonde With A Beehive	Sharon MaHarry
Zambian Music	Sheila Crawford
The Call of the Peacock	Sherri Matthews
Aden	Simon Kensdale
Fifty Words for Love, in Swedish	Stephen Keeler
Yahoo	Stewart Ross Carry
Memories are Made of These	Sue Roff
Places	Susan Anmuth
Journey to Everywhere	Sylvia McGlynn
The Christmas Story	Terese Brasen
Found Soul	Tom Husband
Searching for Ruru	Tracy Brighten
Caught	tracy duvangel
Landscaping	Una Mannion
Dear My Father	Una Mannion
The Onion Church	Una Mannion
Throat of Morning	Wendell Hawken

Judge Philip O’Ceallaigh has chosen the following stories to be published in the 2013 Fish Anthology.

First: Sally Franicevich – The Nut Machine

Second: Elaine McCluskey – Something Pretty Something Nice

Third: Jacqueline P. Haskell – One for Hello, One for Goodbye

Honorary Mentions:

Kirstin Zhang – In Their Song

David Lewis – Get, Get Over It

Jennifer Bailey – A Sense of Obligation

Katya Maddison – A Terrible Business

Robin Samu – Theft of Services

Monica Garvey – Thunderhead

Lucy Maxwell Scott – Misappropriation

 Submitting  –  Feedback  –  Editors  –    Fees  –  Testimonials

Fish offers a full Editorial Consultancy Service, providing writers with feedback on their current work in progress or completed manuscript. We offer consultancy on all genres and forms including the novel or novella, chapbooks, short story and poetry collections and narrative non-fiction manuscripts such as memoir and biography.

This service provides a flexible one-to-one opportunity to work  with an experienced editor in order to get the very best out of your writing. The same editor will remain with an author throughout the entire editing process providing guidance on specific or general aspects of the work as required. 

We also offer assistance for authors and poets who are intending to submit their work to an agent or publisher i.e. help with compiling a cover/query letter and accompanying synopsis.

N. B. If you require feedback on a shorter piece of work e.g. a Short Story (5,000 words or less), a Memoir (4,000 words or less), a Flash Fiction (500 words or less), or Poem (400 words or less), please see Critique Service. 
For guidance through the process of writing a body of work e.g a novel or collection, please see Mentoring Service.

 

 

Submitting Manuscripts

Our general submission guidelines are:-

Contact editorial@fishpublishing.com to discuss you particular requirements.

Submissions to the Editorial Consultancy Service is usually via email.

Submissions should include the following:

A synopsis of the entire project (350 words max) including whether the manuscript is complete or if only sample chapters are being submitted. The synopsis should include:

• Genre
• Structure/plot outline 
• Character outline 
• Intended audience
• Word count (estimate if it is unfinished)
• Outline of any specific areas on which you would like the editor to comment

If you are submitting a collection of short stories or poems, a synopsis is not necessary however mention of any overarching theme or subject matter would be helpful.

Personal cheques in your own currency should be made payable to ‘Fish Publishing’. Postal Orders are accepted from Ireland and the UK.

For more information please email editorial@fishpublishing.com

 

Editorial Consultancy Service Feedback – what you can expect

• To what extent has the writer achieved what was intended?
• Overall comment on the standard of the work and what needs to be done to bring it to a publishable standard, e.g. Is the beginning engaging? Does the story hold the reader’s attention throughout?
• Is the structure clear?, i.e. Are the component parts integrated?
• Is there superfluous material? If so, what can be cut without losing the overall impact?
• Is the writing convincing?, i.e. Is the language and style original? Is the prose fluent, accessible, clear? If it is obscure or challenging – does this work ? If strongly influenced by other writers – does this work?
• Is the plot well developed?, i.e. If the plot relies on tension is this handled effectively?
• How strong is the characterisation? This is especially important if the novel is primarily character driven rather than plot driven.
• Is the dialogue realistic? Is it easy to follow?If written in dialect or intended to evoke accent, how well has this been done and is it still intelligible to those unfamiliar with the accent?
• Does the ending work?
• Comments on the freshness and originality of the work both in and outside the chosen genre.

 

 

Fees: Editorial Consultancy Service

• Book Proposal Assessment for Publication – Agent query letter, sample extract (10,000 words) and one page-synopsis – £230
• First Chapter (or first 5,000 words) + 350 word Synopsis – £105
• Up to 10,000 words + synopsis – £185
• Up to 25,000 words + synopsis – £245
• Over 25,000 words.+ synopsis – £245 + £25 per additional 5,000 words
• Poetry and flash chapbooks and pamphlets – please email editorial@fishpublishing.com

*Above 100,000 words, Authors are invited to discuss the level of editorial support they require, so that a price based on total word count and editorial service level can be agreed.

Please note that prices are in sterling.
For all initial enquiries and for a price quotation on the work you require, contact the Editorial Consultancy Service via email: editorial@fishpublishing.com.

 

 

Editors: Editorial Consultancy Service

NOVEL, MEMOIR, SHORT STORY: Mary-Jane Holmes.

A Forward Prize nominee and Hawthornden Fellow, Mary-Jane has won the Live Canon Poetry Pamphlet Prize 2020, Bath Novella-in-Flash Prize 2020, the Bridport Poetry prize, Reflex Fiction and Mslexia Flash prize as well as the Bedford Poetry competition. She has also been shortlisted for the Beverley International Prize for Literature and longlisted for the UK National Poetry Prize. Mary-Jane’s poetry collection Heliotrope with Matches and Magnifying Glass is published by Pindrop Press. Her award-winning pamphlet Dihedral is published by Live Canon Press and her novella Don’t Tell the Bees, is published by Ad Hoc Fiction. Her Lockdown poem ‘Letter from Baldersdale’ joins 20 other poems in the National Poetry Archive on their 20^th anniversary. Her newest collection of Flash Fiction will be published by V press in 2021.

Her work appears in a variety of publications including Magma, Modern Poetry in Translation, Mslexia,  The Lonely Crowd, Prole The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Tishman Review, Barren, Spelk, Cabinet of Heed, Firewords, Flashback Fiction, Fictive Dream, and in anthologies including Best Small Fictions 2014/16/18/20  and Best Microfictions 2020.

She has an MA (Distinction) in Creative Writing from Kellogg College, Oxford and has been awarded an Arts and Humanities Research Council studentship to complete a PhD in poetry and translation at Newcastle University. UK

 

POETRY: Adam Wyeth was born in Sussex, England, in 1978 and has lived in County Cork, Ireland, since 2000. His critically acclaimed debut collection of poetry, Silent Music (Salmon Poetry, 2011) was highly commended by the Forward Poetry Prize. His collection of essays, The Hidden World of Poetry: Unravelling Celtic mythology in Contemporary Irish Poetry, which includes many poems by leading Irish poets, was published by Salmon in 2013.

Adam was a runner-up in the 2006 Arvon International Poetry Competition, a prize-winner in the 2009 Fish International Poetry Competition, commended in the 2012 Ballymaloe International Poetry Competition, and shortlisted for the Bridport Prize, 2013. His work appears in The Forward Book of Poetry 2012 (Faber, 2011), The Best of Irish Poetry 2010 (Southword, 2010), Landing Places: Immigrant Poets in Ireland(Dedalus Press, 2010) and Something Beginning with P (2004).

He has made two films on poetry, A Life in the Day of Desmond O’Grady, first screened at The Cork Film Festival, 2004; and a full length feature, Soundeye: Cork International Poetry Festival, 2005. Wyeth’s debut play Hang Up, produced by Broken Crow, has been staged at many festivals, including the Electric Picnic and the Galway Theatre festival. A member of Poetry Ireland’s Writers in Schools Scheme, Wyeth has been a creative writing workshop facilitator for ten years and has held workshops at many literary festivals all over Ireland.

 

 

 

Testimonials: Editorial Consultancy Service

. . . you were encouraging and helpful over recent years and I wanted to tell you that at last I’ve had a novel accepted.
Christine Holmes, UK

The Critique was excellent.  It was positive and affirming with plenty of very perceptive advice.  What gave me most satisfaction was that the editor really understood what I was trying to do.  Even if no one else ever reads this particular work, your editor’s sympathetic and constructive response has made the effort so far very worthwhile.  I look forward to further contact with Fish Publishing.
Jim O’Leary, Ireland 

I deeply appreciate the value of the constructive, positive ideas given. It has worked well.  Many thanks.  I am now tightening manuscript throughout to submit to publishers.
Hazel Menehira, New Zealand 

Golddust is all I can say!  Loved your comments, I see what you mean and am doing all you suggest. Thank you so much for your constructive, encouraging remarks
Laura Graham, Siena

I found the detailed Critique of my synopsis and first chapter immensely helpful and astonishingly insightful.  Despite the fact that this was a 5,000-word submission you seem to have an almost uncanny grasp of the way the characters develop.
Sion Scott-Wilson, Singapore 

I have finally worked my way through the critique your company recently forwarded, and wanted you to know how much I appreciate your editor’s wading through these eighteen chapters. The critique was both comprehensive and helpful. I agreed with and incorporated nearly every suggestion offered.
Although I only sent the first half of the novel for critique, the feedback was thorough enough that I felt sufficiently confident to send queries to several agents and publishers. If they aren’t interested, it won’t be because of Fish Publishing. Good job. 
Pat Shagoury, USA

Past Winners of  Fish Writing Contests.

Many of the authors who have their story published in the Annual Fish Anthology, have subsequently had further publications and even gone on to be house-hold names. Fish Writers. 

Here is a list of the overall winners. To find all of the authors published in Fish Anthologies, see Fish Books. 

 

Read Extracts from Fish Anthologies

 

Short Story Contest – Overall Winners

1996: The Stranger by Molly McCloskey (biography)

1997: Dog Days by Karl Iagnemma (biography)

1998: Scrap Magic by Richard O’Reilly

1999: From the Bering Strait by Gina Ochsner (read)

2000: Five O’Clock Shadow Kathryn Hughes 2001: Asylum 1928 by Maureen E. O’Neill (read)

2002: Franklin’s Grace by Catherine L. Dowd

2003: Feathers & Cigarettes by Andrew Lloyd-Jones (read)

2004: Spoonface by Freda Churches

2005: The Mountains of Mars by Marc Phillips (biography)

2006: Grandmother, Girl, Wolf by Katie Henderson

2007: A Paper Heart Is Beating, A Paper Boat Sets Sail by Kathleen Murray (read)

2008: Harlem River Blues by Julia Van Middlesworth

2009: Ten Pint Ted by Ian Wild (read)

2010: A Matter of Luck by Jane Camens

2011: The Space Between Louis and Me by Mary O’Donnell (read)

2012: Roommates by Linda Heurin

2013: The Nut Machine by Sally Franicevich

2014: Taylor Keith by David Butler

2015: The Pace of Change by Chris Weldon

2016: Frogs; The City by Aengus Murray

2017: Dead Souls by Sean Lusk

2018: Clippings by Helen Chambers

2019: Wakkanai Station by Richard Lambert

2020: 25:13 by Tracey Slaughter

2021: A Correspondence by Mark Martin

2022: The Days by Shannon Shavvas

2023: Vietnam by Letty Butler

 

Flash Fiction Contest – Overall Winners

2004: Countdown to Ecstasy by Adrian Wistreich

2005: Postcard From New York by Tom Murry
2005: Believe It by Brian Tiernan

2006: Out of Order by Clorinda Smith

2007: Skaters by Patricia Middleton

2008: Will we go on Ahead and Wait for You by Michael Logan

2009: In the Car by Bernadette M. Smyth

2010: Darling Mummy by Zoe Sinclair

2011: The Long Wet Grass by Seamus Scanlon (read)

2012: Serene Suburban Sunday by John Mulligan

2013: Jennifer’s Piano by Ken Elkes

2014: A Theory of Relativity by Sally Ashton

2015: Trashfish by Chloe Wilson

2016: The Young Brown Bear by Julie Netherton

2017: Lost by Lindsay Fisher

2018: The Chemistry of Living Things

2019: Teavarran by Louise Swingler

2020: Morning Routine by Kim Catanzarite

2021: Both On and Off by Jack Barker-Clark

2022: The Stone Cottage by Partridge Boswell

2023: First Steps in Probability by Susan Wigmore

 

Poetry Prize – Overall Winners

2006: The Siren Lovers by Richard Rudd

2007: The Island Grows on Me by Tim Lenton

2008: The Stolen Sheela Ni Gig of Aghagower Speaks by Jean O’Brien

2009: The Locksmith by Annie Atkins

2010: Limbo by Catherine Phil MacCarthy

2011: string theory by Ken Taylor

2012: What Remains by Martin Childs

2013: Against Forgetting by Andy Kissane

2014: Pacific Rim by Chris Andrews

2015: Saint John’s Primary School Nativity. Nineteen Years On. by Tessa Maude

2016: Death of a Refugee by Ciaran O’Rourke

2017: Paris, 13 November 2015 by Róisín Kelly

2018: Vernacular Green by Janet Murray

2019: Not My Michael Furey by A M Cousins

2020: Father by Peggy McCarthy

2021: Letter to Dowsie, from Roethke in Ireland by Greg Rappleye

2022: The Life Galleries, Kelvingrove by Susan Shepherd

2023: The Scene Without by Winifred Hughes

 

Short Memoir Contest – Overall Winners

2012: Music Today? by Stephen Policoff

2013: Luscus by Maureen Boyle

2014: In the Dark Garden by Kirstin Zhang

2015: Throat of Morning by Wendell Hawken

2016: The Way I Tell It by Angela Readman

2017: Pay Attention by Paul McGranaghan

2018: What Was Once A City by Marion Molteno

2019: Fejira // to cross by Bairbre Flood

2020: Buck Rabbit by Noelle McCarthy

2021: Blood and Roses by Mary E Black

2022: Thirteen Ways of Interrogating an Incident by Wally Suphap

2023: My Mother’s Daughter by Anneke Bender

 

Past Judges of Fish Publishing’s Story, Poetry and Memoir Contests. 

Since 1996, we have been joined by many successful authors, who have in common both wonderful talent and the desire to help aspiring writers. They have given their time generously, selecting stories or poems to be published in the Fish Anthology.

 

Past Judges:

1996: Roddy Doyle, Dermot Healy, Deirdre Madden.

1997: Joseph O’Connor, Jennifer Johnston, Emma Donoghue.

1998: Eamonn Sweeney, Pat Boran, Germaine Greer.

1999: Frank McCourt, Molly McCloskey, Alex Keegan.

2000: William Wharton, Julia Darling, Dermot Bolger.

2001: Kate O’Riordan, Merric Davidson, Antonia Logue.

2002: Christopher Hope, Mary Morrissy, William Wall.

2003: Pat McCabe, David Means, Geraldine Cooke.

2004: Hugo Hamilton, Roddy Doyle, Victoria Glendinning, Gina Ochsner.

2005: Julia Neuberger, Morgan Llywelyn, Frank Delaney, Dave Eggers.

2006: Michel Faber, Helen Garnons Williams, Karl Iagnemma, Gerard Donovan, Angela Jane Fountas, Leanne O’Sullivan, Michael McCarty.

2007: Michael Collins, Dame Fiona Kidman, Robert Richardson, Reginald Hill, Euan Thornycroft, Elizabeth Chadwick, Emma Darwin, Philip Gooden, Rita Ann Higgins, Robert Shaphard.

2008: David Mitchell, Carlo Gebler, Vanessa Gebbie, Michael Thorsnes, Keith Souter, Richard Lee.

2009: Colum McCann, Peter Fallon, Arthur Mathews.

2010: Ronan Bennett, Matthew Sweeney, John Hegley, Simon Munnery.

2011: Simon Mawer, Brian Turner, Chris Stewart.

2012: David Mitchell, Billy Collins, David Shields, Michael Collins.

2013: Philip O’Ceallaigh, Molly McCloskey, Peter Benson, Paul Durcan.

2014: Claire Kilroy, Dermot Healy, Glenn Patterson, Ruth Padel.

2015: Jennifer Johnston, Carmen Bugan, Bret Anthony Johnston, Nick Laird.

2016: Kevin Barry, Carlo Gebler, Nuala O’Connor, Dave Lordan.

2017: Neel Mukherjee, Vanessa Gebbie, Chris Stewart, Jo Shapcott.

2018: Billy O’Callaghan, Sherrie Flick, Marti Leimbach, Ellen Bass

2019: Mia Gallager, Pamela Painter, Chrissie Gittins, Billy Collins

2020: Colum McCann, Tania Hershman, David Shields, Billy Collins

2021: Emily Ruskovich, Kathy Fish, Blake Morrison, Billy Collins

2022: Sarah Hall, Tracey Slaughter, Qian Julie Wang, Billy Collins

2023: Sarah Hall, Sean Lusk, Kit de Waal, Billy Collins

2024: Sarah Hall, Sean Lusk, Michelle Elvy, Billy Collins

 

Thank you from Fish Publishing to all the past judges.

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Kurt Ackermann

Kurt Ackermann’s stories, memoir, magazine articles and opinion pieces have been published in North America, the UK and South Africa.

His recent story THE STAYING GROUND appears in the anthology From Jo’burg to Jozi: Stories about Africa’s infamous city published by Penguin Books in 2010. His short story (THE THEME FROM) LOVE STORY, earned recognition as a runner-up for the 2008 Fish One-Page Prize, and appears in the Fish Anthology, Harlem River Blues. He recently wrote several episodes for the SAFTA Award-winning television documentary series, A Country Imagined, about art, landscape and identity in South Africa, commissioned by the SABC and presented by Johnny Clegg. He is currently working on a 12 hour documentary film on apartheid due for release in 2014.

American by birth, Kurt has called South Africa home since 2000.

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Áine Greaney

Áine’s short story, The Drop Outs was published in The 2002 Fish Anthology.

County Mayo author Aine Greaney’s second novel, Dance Lessons (Syracuse University Press, 2011) will be released on April 1, 2011. The book is contemporary story of a transatlantic, American-Irish marriage and the lies and secrets that immigrants tell. Author, Erin Hart, describes the book as ‘a subtle and intriguing story about regret and redemption.’ Read more about Áine’s work on her website, www.ainegreaney.com

Here’s a little more about Áine:  Born and raised in County Mayo, Ireland, Áine Greaney is a writer and editor living on Boston’s North Shore. She is the author of the novel The Big House and the short story collection The Sheep Breeders Dance. In addition, she has written several award-winning short stories and numerous feature articles for the Irish Independent, The Fish Anthology, the Boston Globe Magazine, The Merrimack Valley Magazine, Creative Nonfiction, Books Ireland, Sunday Irish Tribune, Natural Bridge, Cyphers, IMAGE Magazine, the Literary Review, among others. She has also won or been shortlisted for a number of writing awards

Áine’s story, The Drop Outs, can be read in our Short Stories to Read Online pages

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Jo Cannon

In 2007 Jo Cannon’s story, Insignificant Gestures was published in the 2007 Fish Anthology. Encouraged, she began to submit more widely, and her stories have since been published in Cadenza, the New Writer, the Reader, Myslexia and Brand, among others.  Recently Jo’s work was included in the Route anthology, Book at Bedtime, andWillesdon Herald’s New Writing 4 and she was a Brit Writers Award finalist in 2010. Jo’s debut collection, also called Insignificant Gestures will be published by Pewter Rose Press in November 2010. In her other life Jo is a Sheffield G.P, married with two teenage sons.

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Natalie McNabb

Natalie McNabb lives and writes in Newcastle, Washington, USA. McNabb’s “Afters” was short-listed in the 2006 Fish Short Story contest and “ADHD: Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder” was a winner in the Fish June Micro-Fiction Showcase 2007. Her following publications included poetry and fiction for InterSECTIONS, Bricolage Literary and Arts Journal and Virtual Writer.  McNabb’s One Thumb Width Left of the Highest Oak Bough is currently available inEtchings 7 from Ilura Press. Forthcoming publications include a fictional piece, Revisions, for an anthology by Catalyst Book Press on the birthparent-parent-child adoption triad and View from a ’77 Chevy Scottsdale” which will appear alongside Joyce Carol Oates, Ha Jin, Peter Straub and James Frey in Robert Starwood’s brainchild, Hint Fiction: An Anthology of Stories in 25 Words or Fewer. The book is set for release by W.W. Norton & Company on November 1, 2010 and is now available at Amazon.com,BarnesandNoble.com or W.W. Norton & Company. A clip on the book and this shortest of short fiction forms is available at MSNBC.com. McNabb can be contacted via her website at http://nataliemcnabb.com.

 

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James Lawless

James Lawless was born in Dublin and divides his time between Kildare and West Cork. His short story, The Halloween Party, was included in the first Fish anthology,The Fish Garden, 1995. First novel, Peeling Orangespublished in 2007. A play, The Fall, was performed in the Source Arts Centre, Thurles, the same year. His story, Jolt, was shortlisted for the Willesden Prize and appeared in New Short Stories 1, edited by Zadie Smith (London/ New York,Willesden Heral, 2007). Awards include the Scintilla Welsh Open Poetry competition in 2002 and the Cecil Day Lewis Play Award 2005 for What Are Neighbours For? Most recent short stories, Brown Brick, in The Stinging Fly’s new anthology, Let’s be alone together, and The Kiss in Sunday Tribune’s New Writing Page (04-01-09). A second novel, For Love of Anna was published in 2009 as was his book on modern poetry, Clearing The Tangled Wood: Poetry as a way of seeing the world,  ‘ . . . a linguistic ballet, learned and lively on behalf of poetry.’ John Montague. James also writes book reviews for Laura Hird’s online New Review and for the Irish Times and The Stinging Fly magazine.

James may be contacted on Amazon.com at his writer profile page.

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Martin Malone

New Island has just published Martin’s collection, ‘Deadly Confederacies & Other Stories’ (2014). His short stories have been published on two occasions in Fish Anthologies. Black George in the 1997 Fish Anthology and Come to me Sweet Dementia in the 1999 Fish Anthology

Martin Malone is the author of five novels: Us (Poolbeg Press – winner of the John B. Keane/Sunday Independent Literary Award and shortlisted for the Irish Fiction Award 2001); After Kafra (Poolbeg Press – optioned for TV); The Broken Cedar(Simon & Schuster UK – IMPAC nominated); The Silence of the Glasshouse(New Island).

He is a winner of RTE’s Francis MacManus Short Story Prize and also of the K250 Killarney International Short Story Prize. Twice shortlisted for a Hennessy Award. Longlisted Sunday Times EFB Private Bank Short Story Award 2012.RTE Radio Drama has broadcast three radio plays. He has also written a memoir, ‘The Lebanon Diaries’.

Sunday Times EFB Private Bank Short Story Award 2012 longlisting. His first short story collection, ‘The Mango War and Other Stories’, appears in 2009. Stand UK (Leeds University) has accepted a brace of his short stories for publication in 2010. Currently reading for an M.Phil in Creative Writing at Trinity College.

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Wes Lee – Runner-up in The 2008 Fish Short Story Prize

Born in Lancashire, of Irish descent, Wes Lee emigrated to NZ with her parents as a child in the 70’s, and has spent her time living, travelling and working in both Hemispheres. She was a runner-up in the Fish Short Story Prize 2008. In the same year she won a number of awards, including, the Over The Edge New Writer of The Year Award, in Galway; The Short Fiction New Writers Competition (University of Plymouth Press); The Flosca Short Story Prize, judged by David Means; The Bronwyn Tate Memorial Award, in New Zealand, and was awarded 2nd place in The Kate Braverman Prize in San Francisco. Recent writing highlights include being chosen as a finalist for The Brit Writers’ Awards 2010, in London. Winning the 2010 Rodney Writes Premier Award, in New Zealand. Shortlisted for The Walter Scott Prize 2010, in London, (Salt Publishing); and The 2010 William Soutar Writing Prize, in Scotland, judged by novelist and short story writer Ron Butlin. She has been shortlisted for numerous short story awards, including The Brian Moore Short Story Award, in Belfast, and has been published widely in Literary journals and Anthologies. More information can be found at her website:  www.weslee.co.nz

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Marc Phillips – overall winner of the 2004 Fish Short Story Prize

Marc Phillips (Winner: Fish Short Story Prize 2004 with The Mountains of Mars and published in the 2005 Fish Antology), was named Notable Writer of the Year in 2004, and has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and inclusion in Best American Short Stories anthologies. In 2007, his “Caye Caulker Tides” placed in the Fish/Crime Writers Association Fish-Knife Award, and “Different Than Any Day So Far” received editor’s choice in the Raymond Carver Short Story Contest. He regularly publishes fiction, poetry, articles and essays in the US and abroad.

Telegram Books will release Marc’s debut novel, Fifty Stone Men, in the Spring of 2009 (edited by the Fish Editorial Service).

Seamus Heaney, Matthew Sweeney,  & the winner of the 11th Fish Short Story Prize Marc Phillips, after the launch of the Fish Anthology  at the West Cork Literary Festival 2005.

 

 

 

 

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Paul Blaney

Paul was a finalist in the 2003 Fish Short Story Prize, with his story Man In a Wardrobe. This was published in the 2004 Fish Anthology, Spoonface & Other Stories. His two most recent stories have appeared in the 2004 and 2005 anthologies from Biscuit Publishing. He has recently shifted his base of operations to New Jersey (which turns out to be much like The Sopranos) while continuing to co-organise Tales of the DeCongested www.decongested.com a monthly short story reading event at Foyles bookshop in London. Work goes on with his novel, Breeders, with frequent time-outs to make money and write short stories.

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Sarah Hilary

Sarah Hilary won the Fish Criminally Short Histories Prize in 2008 with her story about Lizzie Borden, Fall River, August 1892. Her short fiction can be found inSmokelong Quarterly, The Fish Anthology 2008, The Best of Every Day Fiction I and II, and in the Crime Writers’ Association Anthology, MO: Crimes of Practice. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2009 for her story, Flood Plain. In 2010 she was shortlisted and Highly Commended in the Seán Ó Faoláin contest. Sarah is currently working on a crime novel. Her agent is Jane Gregory of Gregory & Company

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Michele McGrath

Michele McGrath had her short story, Kilmainham Dawn published in the 2008 Fish Anthology. Her childeren’s book, A Night in the Manx Museum, was published by Lily Publications, 2008. Michele’s two stories, Son of Lir and Ghost Diaries are due to be published by Acorn Press in 2011

For more information on Michele’s work: www.michelemacgrath.co.uk

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Celia Bryce

Celia Bryce writes short stories and drama. Her short fiction has featured in Stand Magazine; The Cork Literary Review; and The Mail on Sunday amongst others. She has had a number of stories broadcast on Radio 4 and is a core fiction contributor to Women’s Weekly. Headlines and Other Growing Pains (Biscuit Publishing) is a collection of her short fiction and is due for publication in October 2005. Her radio play The Skategrinder (based on Skateblades published in the Fish Anthology 2000) won The Richard Imison Award, 2003. She has written drama for children, for medical education purposes and her short play, Magpies, was performed throughout the summer of 2005 at the Beehive Theatre, Dingle, County Kerry.

She has an MA in Creative Writing and was Writer in Residence for the MA 2003-2004 at Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne. She is currently working on a children’s novel.

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Cliff Chen

Stewed chicken with rice and peas, is how he’d describe his childhood in Trinidad. Formative and mouth-watering. Schooled in Ireland, where he took time out from a medical degree to begin writing seriously, he gained publication in Black Rose Issue 1 (1998), 3rd Prize in the Golden Pen Award (1999) and was published in the Fish 2002 Anthology (Rainflies).

His short story, Rain Flies was published in the 2002 Fish Anthology. He has also been short- and long-listed in other competitions; including Fish (2001, 2004) and the Irish News International Short-story competition (1999) He has written 2 novels and has just graduated with a first class Honours Degree in Psychology from Edinburgh University. (Together with a British Psychology Society prize for Undergraduate Psychology.) All Cliff’s stories now come with 10% extra psychoanalysis – free of charge.

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Polly Clark

She is a poet and the author of two poetry collections. Her second, Take Me With You, was published by Bloodaxe in November 2005 and was short listed for the TS Eliot Prize and is a Poetry Book Society Choice.

Since having her short story, At the Water Cooler, published in the 2004 Fish Anthology, she has been commissioned by Comma Press to write a series of linked short stories for an anthology which will be published in April 2006. To see more of Polly’s work go to her website: www.pollyclark.co.uk

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Linda Cracknell

Life Drawing launched my writing career – it was shortlisted for the 1998 Fish Short Story Prize but had to be withdrawn because it won the Macallan/Scotland on Sunday short story competition in 1998. It was my first published story. In 2000 it became the title story of my short story collection published by Neil Wilson’s 11:9 imprint which was shortlisted for the Saltire First Book Award. Since then I have written two plays for Radio 4, had a go at writing a novel (unfinished) and have nearly completed a second collection of short stories. From late 2002 to late 2005, I have been writer in residence at the poet Hugh MacDiarmid’s last home – Brownsbank cottage, south of Edinburgh. The writing life in its varying incarnations of readings, running workshops, and writing articles has also taken me to New York, Nairobi, and Norway!

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Selma Dabbagh

For me, it all started with Fish.

Fish published the first piece of fiction I wrote, Aubergine, in the2004 Fish Anthology, having been selected as a Finalist for the 2003 Prize. I was a Finalist (and Editor’s Choice) with Fish the following year with Beirut-Paris-Beirut and published in the2005 Fish Anthology. Fish also nominated this story for the Pushcart Prize. That year English PEN selected me as their nominee for the David TK Wong Prize for Short Fiction 2005. My work has also appeared in Qissat, Short Stories by Palestinian Women J. Glanville (ed.) (2006, Telegram) and several of my stories are scheduled to be published in anthologies in 2007, including the British Council publication New Writing 15 M. Gee and B. Evaristo (eds.) (forthcoming June 2007, Granta).

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Paul Bassett Davies

Paul was shortlisted for the 2004 Fish Short Story Prize and the One Page Story Prize. Both his stories, Tommy the Voice and Imaginary Friend for Hire, feature in the2005 Fish Anthology. He recently wrote the screenplay for the feature animation film The Magic Roundabout and is currently writing the screenplay for a film starring 1960’s counterculture heroes, The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, featuring Fat Freddy’s Cat. Paul founded the Crystal Theatre, acclaimed for pioneering multimedia work in the 1970s and 80s. Two of his one-man shows were Perrier Award finalists at the Edinburgh Festival. He has written for television, radio and the stage, directed stage productions, short films and music videos, and been a radio producer. He was the vocalist in punk band Shoes For Industry. He has also worked as a minicab driver, a gardener, and a DJ in a strip club. He is a ventriloquist with his own doll (Sailor Boy).

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Carys Davies

Carys Davies won second prize in the inaugural 2002 Orange/ Harpers&Queen short story competition and second prize in the 2005 Asham Award. She was a runner-up in the 2005 Bridport Prize and in the 2006 Fish Short Histories Competition.

Other stories were short-listed for the 2005 Fish Short Histories Competition and the 2006 Fish One-Page Prize.

Her stories have appeared in prize anthologies, in ‘The London Magazine’ and in various U.S. literary magazines. Her first short story collection, ‘Some New Ambush’ is due out in October from Salt. ( www.saltpublishing.com ).

She lives in Lancaster with her husband and four children.

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Katy Darby

What Katy did next … Since coming third in the Fish Short Story Prize 2003, Katy has placed in several more short story and poetry competitions, including the Royal Society of Literature’s V.S. Pritchett Prize, and has had her stories published in Carvezine (Sepia, www.carvezine.com, January 2005 issue), Pulp.net (The King of Hearts, www.pulp.net, June 2005 issue) and the New Writer magazine. Samuel French have also published two of her plays, Open Secrets and Half-Life. She begins an MA in Creative Writing (Prose) at the University of East Anglia in September 2005, where she will hopefully complete her second novel.

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Stephanie Dickinson

She has lived in Iowa, Wyoming, Texas, Louisiana and now in New York. Her poetry and fiction appear in Cream City Review, Green Mountain Review, Chelsea, Descant, Sub-Terrain, Fourteen Hills, Nimrod, Iron Horse Review, Inkwell, Ontario Review, Water Stone, Columbia Journal, McGuffin, among others Along with Rob Cook, she publishes and edits the literary journal Skidrow Penthouse.

Her Half Girl recently won the Hackney Award (Birmingham-Southern) for best unpublished novel of 2002. It will be published this year by Spuyten Duyvil. Fire Maidens was third place winner in Fish Publishing’s 2004 short story contest, and published in the 2004 Fish Anthology SWINE PRINCESS was a finalist in Fish’s 2005 first novel contest. In October her story A Lynching in Stereoscope will be reprinted in BEST AMERICAN 2005 NONREQUIRED READING edited by Dave Eggers.

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Mia Gallagher

Mia Gallagher was delighted that her story, Found Wanting, was included in the 2002 Fish Anthology as Editor’s Choice – and even more delighted the following year when, All Bones, was chosen as a runner-up and published in the 2003 Fish Anthology. Since then she’s had another story featured in Carve Magazine and in November 2004 secured a deal with Penguin Ireland for her first novel, HellFire – due to land on all good bookshelves in September 2006. Most recently she won the Start Chapbook Fiction competition; three of her stories (including All Bones) will be published in a limited-edition volume in October 2005. Mia is now working on her second novel.

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David Gardiner

My story Letting Go was the second prize winner in 2001 and published in the 2002 Fish Anthology. It centred on a confrontation between an elderly former Nazi war criminal and a man who had dedicated his life to hunting him down, for reasons that turn out to be more complex than they at first appear. Being among the prize winners affected my life in two ways. Firstly there was the social and personal side. It led to my “coming out of the closet” as a writer, meeting other writers, making acquaintances and forming friendships, and gaining the confidence to think of myself as one of the worldwide community of people afflicted with this compulsion to tell stories. This began at the award ceremony in Bantry, but continued into my week at Anam Cara and my life in London afterwards. It changed my self-image and gave me the permission to take myself a little more seriously as a writer. Secondly, and consequently, other people began to take my writing more seriously, and at the beginning of this year the small press publisher Bluechrome/Boho in Bristol accepted for publication a collection of twenty-three of my short stories under the title The Rainbow Man and Other Stories. Reviews for this collection have been very positive, but sales have been slow. Everybody tells me that it is almost impossible to sell short stories, but that is what I actually want to write.

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Vanessa Gebbie

Published in The 2009 Fish Anthology with her short story The Return of the Baker, Edward Tregear, in The 2007 Fish Anthologywith her short story Words from a Glass Bubble and in the 2006 Fish Anthology with her one-page story Simon’s Skin.

Vanessa Gebbie won Second Prizes at both Fish and Bridport in 2007. Her First Prizes include Per Contra (USA), The Daily Telegraph, Willesden Herald, Guildford Book Festival, The Paddon Award and Cadenza Magazine.

Her short stories have been widely published, anthologised, translated into several languages, broadcast on BBC radio and handed out on London Underground.

She has won awards for flash fiction, and regularly judges literary short fiction competitions.

Her debut collection is Words from a Glass Bubble (Salt Publishing 2008). A collection of flash fiction, Mood Swings is forthcoming in 2009.

Vanessa is contributing editor for a forthcoming guide on writing short fiction. All the aforesaid either to, for, by, with or from Salt Publishing.

She says: “Nothing packs quite the same punch as well written short short stories. Their potential to amaze both writer and reader is immeasurable.”

Other competition successes include First Prizes in the 2007 Paddon Award at Exeter University, (Judge Rory MacLean), Willesden Prize 2006 (Judge: Zadie Smith), Asham/Charleston Small Wonder Festival Slam 2006, Guildford Book Festival/BBC Southern Counties 2006 (Judges: Jane Wenham-Jones and Elizabeth Buchan), Cotswold Prize 2005 (Judge: Katie Fforde), Cadenza Magazine 2005,. and Runner Up Prizes in Fish One Page 2006, Flashquake 2007, Good Housekeeping Magazine 2004 and 2005 (Judge: Alexander McCall Smith). Her work has been long listed for The Bridport Prize, short listed twice for the Fish Short Story Prize, and for the Asham Award. It won a Highly Commended Prize in the London ‘Writers of the Year Competition’ 2006. She teaches Creative Writing, and particularly enjoys working with those on society’s margins. She has her own magazine for writing by those whose lives have been touched by addiction, atwww.tomsvoicemagazine.com .

Her first novel has this in common with the Alpine black salamander, African and Asiatic elephants, Baird’s beaked whale and the white rhinoceros: record-breaking gestation. Vanessa’s novel, “The Coward’s Tale” (written in Ireland at Anam Cara over 4 years) was published by Bloomsbury UK in Nov 2011 and  Bloomsbury USA in the spring of 2012.

For further information: www.vanessagebbie.com

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Jules Horne

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Karl Iagnemma

was overall winner of the Fish Short Story Prize 1997 with his story Dog Days which was the title story of The 1997 Fish Anthology. His book of short stories, On the Nature of Human Romantic Interaction, was published in 2003 by the Dial Press. The book’s title story is currently being developed as a feature film by Warner Brothers Pictures. Karl’s short stories have received numerous awards, including the Paris Review Plimpton Prize, first place in the Playboy college fiction contest, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. His writing has appeared in Tin House, SEED, One Story, and Zoetrope, and been anthologized in the Best American Short Stories, The Best American Erotica, and Pushcart Prize collections. Karl currently works as a research scientist in the mechanical engineering department at the M.I.T. He’s completing a novel about an ill-fated scientific expedition to upper Michigan in the 1840s. He is currently one of the judges of the Fish Short Story Prize 2005

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Rosemary Jenkinson

Since being published in The Fish Anthology 2003 with her short story The Backroom Rebellion, Rosemary Jenkinson has had a collection of short stories published, Contemporary Problems Nos 53 & 54, by Lagan Press in 2004 and has been commissioned to write a play for Rough Magic Theatre Company. She has also, fortunately, broken free of the Civil Service.

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Ann Jolly

I’ve continued to be involved as a writer in various prisons – Dartmoor, Winchester, Lewes and Wealstun where there is a culture of poetry and people create whole worlds with no more than pen and paper and what is inside their heads – as all writers do. With the prisoners we uncovered raw truths, mined lived-in lives and explored what it is like to hit rock bottom and come up again. This work confirmed for me that writing is liberating and an agent of transformation.

I’ve also taught creative writing in two local universities but mostly, I’ve been writing my own stuff, some short stories and, of course, The Novel.

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Rory Kilalea

Rory has written in a desultory and sometimes compulsive fashion since he was a kid some unmentionable years ago. He writes poetry (finally published) short stories, (published) plays (performed), films (some made), radio scripts (dreadful) and anything that tries to make money, but never really does. He thinks that he may have it cracked with his novel called the ‘Disappointed Diplomat’. This novel may get him arrested for innuendo, depravity, slander and general self-abuse. He has also written a series of children’s folkloric books, which are not selling well at all. When people actually do read his work, they feel pity and give him awards- twice the Caine Prize for African writing and of course the Fish nomination, which he was hoping to win because he was in overdraft. He didn’t. But the Fish nominated story ‘Zimbabwe Boy’ launched Rory’s flaccid career, and it has been on the BBC as a radio play, and also at the African Festival in London and then moved to the National Theatre in 2005. .But it got him into terrible trouble , because as our president Mugabe has said on numerous occasions, Zimbabwe is the only country in the world where there were no homosexuals until the filthy white colonialists came and infected them with their depravity and things like that. Now, in-between his languishing in prison (with other depraved black dissenters who remember our president from his heady days of same sex incarceration),he teaches literature, writing and drama. The reason is simple – he is too old to be a rent boy. Even Fish asked him to teach writing in 2005, but there has been a terrible silence ever since then. He also directs theatre- the latest being the fabulous financial loss with five star reviews at the Edinburgh Festival called Sing! Zimbabwe. He is thus re entering the Fish Prize and offering 45% of the prize money to the judges as an incentive. Which comes to the kernel of this man. When he is serious and depressed, he writes deeply meaningful stories ranging from gender discrimination, sex and African farmers who have been thrown off their lands because they did not like the blacks. When he has taken his pills, he writes stories about black farmers who do not like the whites and throw other black farmers off their land. He can be witty, sensuous, rude and he is normally ejected from parties for drinking too much. He is rather a weird chap, but than no Zimbabweans are normal.

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Val G. Lee

I live and write in Hastings. This autumn I have a novel published by Onlywomen Press called Diary of a Provincial Lesbian’, which reflects my life on the south coast. I also write a regular column for the lesbian magazine, Velvet, and poetry and fiction reviews for Diva’. I’ll be reading and running writing workshops at the Proudwords Festival in Newcastle and the York Lesbian Arts Festival in October. www.vglee.co.uk

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Pam Leeson

Since being published in the Fish Anthology, From the Bering Strait in 1999, I have won the BBC Alfred Bradley Award for radio writing with the play There’s Me, David, Chelsea, Charlene, Scott and Bianca. It was broadcast in the same year. In 2001 had the play The Unbearable broadcast by BBC Radio 4 and again by BBC Radio 7 in 2005.

In August 2005 my play A War in the Morning was put on at the Royal Exchange Studio in Manchester as part of their new writing season Blue. This was one of the monologues for which I received an Arts Council bursary to write a collection. I’ve almost finished writing them and will soon be looking to get them published. The joys! Still writing poems and stories and plays and half a novel. (Oh what Id give for the other half!) Still very pleased and proud to have been in a Fish publication. Merci.

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Lily Mabura

Lily Mabura is a Kenyan writer currently pursuing a PhD in Fiction and Africana Literature at the University of Missouri-Columbia, USA . Her story “Man in Ultramarine Pajamas” was a runner-up in the 2006 Fish Short Story Prize and will be appearing in the 2007 Fish Anthology. Several of her short stories have appeared or are forthcoming in literary journals like PRISM international, Wasafiri , and G21 – The World’s Magazine . Other publications include a novel, The Pretoria Conspiracy (Focus Publishers, Nairobi , 2000), and three children’s books: Saleh Kanta and the Cavaliers (Phoenix Publications, Nairobi , 2005), Seth the Silly Gorilla ( Phoenix , 2002), and Ali the Little Sultan (Focus, 1999). She is currently seeking an agent and publisher for her first short story collection Sweet Sugarcane Secrets.

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Sheila MacAvoy

Born in New York City, a descendent of Famine Irish peasants who hit the Big Apple in the 1850’s; educated in local schools, eventually earning a Law Degree. Worked in Los Angeles, California, as a lawyer in the aerospace industry by day and wrote fiction by night, a thoroughly schizophrenic existence. Published here and there, including appearance in the 1998 Fish Short Story Prize collection as a choice of the editor and their Short Histories Anthology, All the King’s Horses. Exit Aerospace. Some stories are forming a chrysalis which, if subjected to the right temperature and humidity, should morph into a Gold Rush saga, told through its many dreamers, past and present. View from work table is of the pink and white sandstone Santa Barbara Mission, a mile and a half distant, set against the chaparral of the coast range.

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Phillip MacCann

Phillip has been a critic for the Guardian and The Spectator. His writing has one a number of prizes including the Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize for travel writing. He wrote about Finland where he worked for the British Council. His highly acclaimed short-story collection, The Miracle Shed, received the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature and he was selected by The Observer as one of the twenty-one writers of various disciplines from across the world, for the new millennium.

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Marie MacSweeney

Published in various outlets throughout Ireland including The Sunday Tribune, Stet, Drumlin, Phoenix Irish Short Stories (1998) and Fish Publishing (1996). Prize-winner in many national competitions and won the Francis MacManus Short Story for Radio award in 2001 with a story called Dipping into the Darkness.

In May 2004 I published a collection of short stories Our Ordinary World and Other Stories. My first poetry collection, Mother Cecily’s Music Room was published by Lapwing, Belfast in May 2005. Louis and Louise Was shortlisted in the Fish Short Story Prize 1996 and published in the Anthology of that year, The Stranger and Other Stories.

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Molly McCloskey – Winner of the Inaugural Fish Short Story Prize

Molly McCloskey was born in Philadelphia and grew up in Oregon. She moved to Ireland in 1989. Having spent ten years on the west coast of Ireland, she now resides in Dublin. She is the author of two critically acclaimed short story collections – Solomon’s Seal (Phoenix House, 1997), and The Beautiful Changes (Lilliput Press, 2002). Her short stories have won a number of prizes, including Ireland’s RTE/Francis MacManus Award and the inaugural Fish Short Story Award. She was also the recipient of the Ireland Fund of Monaco’s bursary and was Writer-in-Residence at the Princess Grace Irish Library in Monaco. In 2009, she was shortlisted for Ireland’s Davy Byrne Short Story Award. Her first novel, Protection, was published by Penguin in 2005. Novelist Colum McCann called Protection “Funny, intelligent, empathetic and disquieting all at once, Protection is a fascinating debut novel. A comic dissection of contemporary Ireland from one of our finest writers.” The novel and the two collections of stories have been translated into German and are all published by Steidl. While living in Ireland, she has worked as a free-lance journalist, fiction writer and creative writing teacher, and is a regular contributor to the Irish Times and theDublin Review. In 1996, she co-founded, with two other women, the Sligo Rape Crisis Centre. From 2006-2007, she worked in Kenya for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs for Somalia. She is currently completing a non-fiction work on schizophrenia and the family, and is Writer Fellow at Trinity College Dublin for the 2009/2010 academic year.

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Morgan McDermott

A 2004-05 Illinois Arts Council Fellow in Prose, Morgan McDermott’s fiction has most recently won awards from the literary magazines Meridian, Swink, Speakeasy, The Bellingham Review, Phoebe, and a grant from the Association of Writers and Writing Programs. His story Tow was a finalist in the 2003 Fish Short Story Prize and was published in the Fish Anthology of that year, Fathers and Cigarettes & Other Stories. It also received the Dana Award for Short Fiction and will appear in issue #41 of the journal StoryQuarterly.

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Andrew McIntyre

Originally from Scotland, Andrew spent the first six years of his life in Johannesburg, South Africa. Educated at numerous boarding schools, he attended universities in Britain, Japan, and the United States. He holds masters degrees in Economics and Comparative Literature.

Having travelled for much of his life, working at various times as a lecturer, sailor, construction worker, bookseller, and chocolatier, he currently resides in San Francisco. His story, Wet Dreams of a Dirty War, was published in the 2002 Fish Anthology. He has published stories in several magazines, most recently in The Taj Mahal Review, The Copperfield Review, Penny Dreadful, Pindeldyboz, Babel, and Gold Dust Magazine.

Andrew’s short story collection, The Short, The Long and The Tall, was published by Merilang Press.  The collection includes Snuff, the sequel to Dirty War, which was a prize winning story in Gold Dust Magazine.

The Short, The Long and The Tall on Amazon.com

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Kath McKay

‘Kath Mckay’s story ‘Bus’ appeared in the 2005 Fish anthology. Since then  she has had a fan letter, published poetry in magazines and anthologies, been shortlisted in two poetry competitions, given performances with a graphic artist, reading her stories and poems on the subject of teeth (once to an audience of dentists), been rejected for a job she decided she didn’t want, and a large grant she did. She has continued to mentor African writing students online (www.crossingborders-africanwriting.org <http://www.crossingborders-africanwriting.org> ) and continued to craft short stories while devouring them alongside crime novels. Her collaboration with Yorkshire and Finnish writers on the theme of Water ( Interland ) www.intland.net <http://www.intland.net>   will result in a Smith-Doorstop publication in 2006.

The Fish anthology did not change her life. But that weekend in West Cork had a luminous quality . She took an old friend to the launch. The friend, bowled over by the Staircase to the Sky, and swans on Bantry Bay, said ‘I thought the Fish anthology would mean three people in the back room of a pub. This is Something Else’. Frank Delaney commented that everything about the Fish competition had the quality of ‘grace’. As a lover of Flannery O’Connor stories, Kath is deeply interested in this quality. And knowing that some people thought she could write a half decent story did renew Kath’s confidence and faith in pursuing her passion for short stories. She has written enough stories for a collection. Now she just has to persuade a publisher ‘.

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Geraldine Mills

Since 1997 when I was short-listed for the Fish Anthology ‘ Dog Days and Other Stories’, I have been swimming in a more favourable current. I am learning to avoid those monofilaments of doubt that are forever trying to ensnare me, and am getting my work to a more mainstream audience. Born in Galway , I moved to the east coast and lived there for 20 years before returning to the place where I was spawned, near the River Corrib. I now write both Poetry and short stories and have been published nationally and internationally. My poetry has been awarded such prizes as the Allingham Poetry Award, the Poem for Peace Award, the Scottish International Poetry Award. The Cork Literary Review Prize for Poetry, the Dublin Libraries Award among others. Bradshaw Books Cork has published my two collections of poetry, Unearthing your own (2001) and Toil the Dark Harvest (2004) As wells as being shortlisted for the Fish Prize, my short stories have won the Moore Medallion, The North Tipperary Award, the South Tipperary Award (three times) Aspire Prize and have been three times shortlisted for the Francis Mc. Manus Award, awarded second place in 2004. I was the Millennium winner of the Hennessy Tribune Emerging Fiction Award and overall winner of the New Irish Writer Award for the story ‘Lick of the Lizard’ which is the title of my first collection of short stories recently published by Arlen House in which my ‘Fish’ story is included. I was awarded a Tyrone Guthrie Bursary from Galway County Council in 2003 and my poetry has been part of a multi- media exhibition in collaboration with artists Joan Hogan and Denise Hogan. My novel ‘Closet full of Hats’ was short-listed for the ‘Sitric Win a Book Deal’ 2004. The rising tide brought my monologue “This is From the Woman who Does” across the Atlantic to Cape Cod where it was premiered at the Provincetown Theatre Playwrights’ Festival 2004. I am a regular contributor to RTE and Lyric FM. Still a small fish in a big pond but managing to keeping afloat.

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Tom Murray

Being joint winner with  ‘Postcard from New York’ of the 2005 One Page Story competition gave me the opportunity of spending a great couple of days at the West Cork Literary Festival.  Recently  I’ve had a short play performed at the Arches Theatre in Glasgow, and have just being appointed joint writer in residence to Galashiels Academy.  I continue to co edit the Eildon Tree magazine, the literary magazine from the Scottish Borders.  My writing is divided between prose and drama, and putting together a collection of poetry hopefully to be published next year. Take a look at my website www.tommurray.org

Tom’s story can be read in our Short Stories to Read Online pages

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Gina Ochsner – Winner 1999

Gina won our 1999 Short Story Prize. You could enter the 2005 – Details on ourWriting Contests page So much has happened since 1999 when I sent that story into the Fish prize contest. And so much of it has happened as a result of being published with Fish. In fact, my agent, Julie Barer of Barer Literary, found From the Bering Strait while trolling about and contacted Clem, who then put us in touch. Julie and I have been working together ever since and last May she sold the collection People I Wanted to Be to Houghton Mifflin and then again to Portobello Press in London. Right now I’m at working on a longer piece, a novel, and I am wavering between utter excitement and terror. Right now excitement is winning out, but there are days when I look in the mirror with horror and ask myself “what am I doing??” That’s when I take a coffee break and maybe tinker with a short story, and then when I’m feeling more courageous, I go back to the novel.

Gina’s winning story can be read in our Short Stories to Read Online pages

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Shereen Pandit

Awards: Booktrust London (winner 2004) Commonwealth Broadcasting Association (runner up 2003) Fish Publications (runner up 1999) Wordsworth magazine (winner 1997) Young Writer magazine (2000 and 2001)

Short Stories published in magazines including: Sable, Wordsworth, The Interpreter’s House;  Young Writer; The Stinging Fly ;  Lexicon ; First Word; Exiled Writer Short Stories published in anthologies: Lines in the Sand ((Francis Lincoln Publishers), Pretext (Pen & Inc Publishers), From the Beiring Strait and Other Stories (Fish Publishing) Forthcoming in 2005: contributions to Freedom Spring and Whose Britain? Membership of Writers’ Organizations: African Writers Abroad PEN Writers in Prisons Committee Exiled Writers Ink!

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Rob Pateman

Rob has recently landed a two book deal at Orion. Details here.

Rob was born and grew up in Harold Hill, near Romford in Essex in 1962 although he now lives and writes in Kennington, south London. For nearly twenty years Rob has worked as an advertising copywriter but has long harboured dreams of shedding the ‘copy’ and just being the writer. He has written umpteen stories, fairy stories and poems some of which made it out of the door and into various competitions. His joint second place in the 2005 Fish One Page Story Competition is the first time his work has got anywhere; inclusion in the 2005 Fish Anthology, The Mountains of Mars & Other Stories, is also his first time in print. This success has given him the confidence to revisit a novel he’s had stashed in a draw for the last two years and which one day, he’d like the people at Fish to give the once over. Away from the keyboard (as he often is alas) Rob is mad about tennis and dogs and revels in his quiet nights in with Boosie and Bella and all the other ghosts and shadows.

I was lucky enough to be one of the runners up in your very short story competition back in 2005, and was included in the anthology that year. I even got a name check in the Editor’s intro!

It was my first competition success, my first experience of having a story published, my first experience of reading my work publicly – and my first trip to Ireland.

My success with Fish gave me the confidence to keep writing – and to try my hand at something longer. Skip ahead a few years (and skip over a few practice novels) I finally got an agent, Oli Munson at Blake Friedmann. He has just got me a two book deal at Orion. Details here.

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Deirdre Shanahan

Prior to my story “The Removal Man” being published in Dog Days [ Fish Anthology 1997] I had work in several journals including Passport and in the U.S. The Massachusetts Review, Iowa Woman, and The Southern Review and The Cimarron Review who featured several short stories as part of an international section. I had won a major Eric Gregory Award for a collection of poetry, “Legal Tender” subsequently published by Enitharmon Press. I had read at Listowel Writers’ Week and at Cuirt Festival, Galway . One of my stories won The Irish Post/B.I. Competition, judged by Shane Connaughton. I had also published a story in the anthology “Well Sorted” from Serpent’s Tail and been shortlisted for the London Short Story Competition judged by Blake Morrison and Marina Warner. A radio play, “Prussian Blue” was broadcast on RTE, directed by Aidan Mathews.

Since being published in the Fish Anthology I have gone on to have stories published in several other collections, including the Phoenix Anthology and the Kerry Anthology and to have poetry published in the Radio Waves Anthology, The White Page Anthology and “In Parallel” In 2005 I won a major award From Arts Council England and in 2006 was once again invited to teach on the Scriobh Summer School at Metropolitan University, London

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Sarah Weir

Sarah has been published in literary magazines in England , New Zealand , Canada and Australia . She has been editor’s choice for the Fish competition twice and won two short story competitions in New Zealand . She has also had four stories broadcast on Radio New Zealand . Currently she is working on a novel. A brief visit to New Zealand became a twelve year stay when she was waylaid by an unexpected holiday romance. The prominence of the short story in New Zealand allowed her to develop her writing. She works as a psychotherapist and lives in a crook of the Thames with her partner and two children

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Adrian Wiestrich

Since my One Page story appeared in the 2004 Fish Anthology, I’ve been very busy with the launch of Kinsale Arts Week 2005, which took place in July. We also helped launch the Kinsale Anthology, which was published in July by Anam Press. All in all, the festival was a great success and we’re just starting work on the 2006 events. Unfortunately, the creative writing group I was involved with has folded and I have certainly missed the structure of writing every week for the classes. Business at Kinsale Pottery is moving more towards weekend leisure breaks, and this means working most weekends, but as with most artistic careers, we have to take what we can get when it comes our way.

Robin’s story can be read in our Short Stories to Read Online pages

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Robin Winick

Since Mrs Purvis was published by Fish in 2000, one of my stories was published on Carve’s Web site two years ago. I have not been published since -although I was for the third time a finalist in a Glimmer Train contest. Not only am I slow to send out stories but also my last four stories probably have been too political (though not didactic) for most literary magazines here. My anger at the Bush Administration (completely out of control) is permeating my life and my writing. I actually sit down at the computer to write a story, knowing, as I write, that it will not be published; yet the writing process has been cathartic and I enjoy it immensely. Fish publishes wonderful anthologies, and I shall continue to enter its contests. Robin’s story can be read in our Short Stories to Read Online pages

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Jacqueline Winn

Jacqui Winn’s short story “Salt and Pepper” appears in the 2006 Fish Publishing Anthology “Grandmother, Girl, Wolf”. Since she started writing short story seven years ago, her work has been published in a number of anthologies and literary magazines in Australia . She has won over 70 awards in Australian literary competitions. In August 2006, a collection of Jacqui’s stories, entitled “Once More With Feeling” was published by Ginninderra Press. All of the stories have won national literary awards over the past few years and several have been published in other anthologies and magazines.

Jacqui has written and produced several stage plays and acted in various stage and television productions. She also writes stage and screen plays on commission. She is also in constant demand to speak and run workshops on various aspects of writing and performance.

Although Jacqui was born in Londonderry , N. Ireland , she has lived in Australia since the age of ten and currently lives on a farm on the mid-North Coast, where she and her husband Brian run a small herd of Hereford cattle.