I’ve been very fortunate to meet Donal Ryan, our competition judge, a few times, and to have discussed his writing and mine with him. It’s spellbinding, honestly, to hear him talk about the craft of short and long-form fiction. His advice and suggestions are practical and applicable, and he is sincere and generous in his support of up-and-coming writers, including me.

So today, I asked Donal if he could send me his thoughts on the short story, and he was happy to do so. Below is the first extract. I’ll share more of Donal’s thoughts very soon!

Submit your stories!

I’ve written on this topic of struggle a few times in Frazzled Lit. Like Donal, my confidence sometimes vanishes, and I find each new sentence a trudge rather than a joyful exploration. In fact, I’m going through it right now, and wish I had an Anne Marie to tell me to pull my shit together, and keep things in perspective.

We all need cheerleaders from time to time, and that’s our job here at Frazzled Lit, to cheer on every artist we interact with, to celebrate their efforts and their work, and to create a safe and welcoming space for artists of every persuasion, from every part of the world.

So here’s Donal and the whole Frazz Team cheering you on today, regardless of how you may feel!

Get going, get that darned story written, and send it into the Frazzled Lit Short Story Award. We can’t guarantee you will win, but we do promise to treat your work with the love and respect, artist to artist, that it has earned and it is due!

Have you read Donal Ryan’s short story collection, A Slanting Of The Sun? If not, I most highly recommend it!

Here at Frazz HQ, the tea and coffee are brewing, and we are all revved-up for the arrival of the your stories in the Frazzled Lit Short Story Award 2026!

Here’s a quick recap of the details:

We are now open, and will remain open until midnight GMT on June 30th.

The competition is open to all writers, from anywhere in the world.

Stories must be between 750 and 2,000 words.

Prizes are as follows:

1^st prize: € 1,000

2^nd prize: € 500

3^rd prize: € 300

Submit your stories!

Frazzled Lit Short Story Award 2026 - Full Rules and Terms & Conditions

Our judge, Donal Ryan, has published seven number-one bestsellers, plus a short story collection. He has won many awards for his work, including the European Union Prize for Literature, the Guardian First Book Award and six Irish Book Awards, and has been shortlisted for many more, including the Costa Book Award and the Dublin International Literary Award.

He was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2013 for his debut novel, The Spinning Heart, and in 2018, for his fourth novel, From A Low and Quiet Sea. The Spinning Heart was voted Irish Book of the Decade in 2016.

In 2021 Donal became the first Irish writer to be awarded the Jean Monnet Prize for European Literature. His most recent novel, Heart Be at Peace, won both Novel of the Year and Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards, and was shortlisted for Novel of the Year at the Nero Book Awards. His work has been adapted for stage and screen and translated into over twenty languages.

Donal is an Associate Professor in the Creative Writing programme at the University of Limerick.

We can’t wait to see what you have for us!

Submit your stories!

Seamus Moran is a man of many talents: actor, director, playwright, novelist and short story writer. In his riveting performance of his story Finding Voice, which was highly commended in the Frazzled Lit Short Story Award 2025, we meet young JJ McHale, a boy with a golden voice, and follow him from his earliest days, through tragedy, to his awakening as a young man.

Seamus Moran is an actor, director and writer for stage and screen. He has written three plays, Have A Heart, Squinty, Dolly and Mick. Seamus wrote and directed three short films and a half-hour drama for TG4 entitled Síle. He began writing short stories at the start of this year and was longlisted for several prestigious competitions. ‘Finding Voice’ is the first of his stories to be published.

Seamus is available as a voice actor for readings of novels and short stories. If you have a request, please contact Frazzled Lit and we will forward it to him.

We’re closing in on the opening of the Frazzled Lit Short Story Award 2026, so I’m taking the time to look back at some of the outstanding stories from last year’s competition, and what made them special to us. Last week, we looked at one of last year’s finalists, The Canal by Seamus Scanlon. This week, I’m taking a look at EXPERIENCE SHARING ACTIVATED by Alison Langley, which was highly commended in the competition. Though this story didn’t make the final six, it is no lesser a story than those that did. In fact, it is one of my favourites from last year’s award, and became even more so when Alison provided a wonderful reading to accompany its publication in Issue 3.

In EXPERIENCE SHARING ACTIVATED, we enter a near future where consent is often assumed rather than given, and where technology has become so ubiquitous and invasive (not so very different to today, actually) that the private moments of the characters can be unwittingly revealed, and so make them vulnerable to public attack and ridicule.

This is a thoughtful and thought-provoking story, one which is active, energetic and propulsive. Through the protagonist’s journey, it challenges us to think about consent and digital privacy, and how much of ourselves we are willing to give to Big Data. Can we maintain our humanity, and our connection to those around us, while utilising new technologies? Are we in control, or have we ceded it to the devices we use? The narrative poses many such questions, and in this age of rapid advancement in AI and biofeedback technologies, they are entirely worth asking.

We start with a deliciously sensual opening.

There is much to admire in this passage.

I thought I was a goddess this morning straight away gave me an impression of who this narrator is - young, excited, modern, perhaps a little conceited, if not a little naive.

The prose situates me in the story, draws me into the intimacy of this couple’s bed, and sets the groundwork in stylish fashion. I know where I am, and why, and I know who I’m with.

We have a change in the status quo, the introduction of new technology. Good luck, old VRs, and thanks for last night, but we’re upgrading!

It also answers an important question: why is this story happening now?

This is sometimes overlooked in modern short stories, and though the consideration and answering of it is not always essential, it does tend to give a satisfying shape to a story and character arc by setting an identifiable starting point. Taking the reader on a journey from there, showing the change in the protagonist and their circumstances, then bookending the story with an equally clear end point, completes the protagonist’s polar transformation. They are not the same person they were at the beginning, and there is no going back to who they were because something fundamental has changed.

Next, we come to this wonderful line: We may never leave this bed.

It is simple, yet highly effective, and entirely in keeping with the narrator’s voice. It also does a lot of heavy lifting to show me what’s important (at this point in the story) in this couple’s relationship. We are in sensual territory, and if there is a fading to black, it is so well done that it paints fiery pictures in my imagination with the deftest of brush strokes.

Moving on, our narrator takes the walk to work wearing her new VR device, and is guided along the way by Gigi, who offers tantalising digital visions through the VR glasses. An accidental sharing of the display to all the other users of the device in the area causes a panic, and draws all manner of nastiness upon the narrator.

There is a great deal of breathless energy and momentum in this passage, and the writer does a great job of conjuring the environment and the driving emotions of this scene, and all the ones to follow. I sense the narrator’s panic, her pain, her confusion. This once-promising device has turned into a bane, and made her the victim of digital sadism.

I don’t want to give too much of this wonderful story away, so I’ll stop there and let you read or listen to it yourself. I strongly encourage you to do so, to linger with the characters and savour the sensual undertones. The beautiful ending is wonderfully done, and I finished reading the story with a sense of hope for us all.

Jennifer, co-Editor-in-Chief

Dazzle us in June!

The Frazzled Lit Short Story Award 2026 is open for submissions from June 1st to June 30th, and we feel hugely honoured to have twice Booker-longlisted and multi award-winning Irish author Donal Ryan as this year’s judge.

Donal Ryan has long been one of my literary heroes, and I’ve been most fortunate to meet him, and to have him read some of my work. His short fiction and novels are among the finest works ever produced by an Irish writer. He has published seven number-one bestsellers, plus a short story collection. He has won many awards for his work, including the European Union Prize for Literature, the Guardian First Book Award, and six Irish Book Awards, and has been shortlisted for many more, including the Costa Book Award and the Dublin International Literary Award.

He was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2013 for his debut novel, The Spinning Heart, and in 2018, for his fourth novel, From A Low and Quiet Sea. The Spinning Heart was voted Irish Book of the Decade in 2016.

In 2021, Donal became the first Irish writer to be awarded the Jean Monnet Prize for European Literature. His most recent novel, Heart Be at Peace, won both Novel of the Year and Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards, and was shortlisted for Novel of the Year at the Nero Book Awards. His work has been adapted for stage and screen and translated into over twenty languages.

Donal is an Associate Professor in the Creative Writing programme at the University of Limerick.

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Submit your stories!

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We can’t wait to see what you have for us!

We’re less than two weeks away from the opening of the Frazzled Lit Short Story Award 2026, so I thought it would be a useful exercise to reflect on some of the outstanding stories from last year’s competition, and what made them special to us. Last week, we looked at last year’s winning story, Limbo Nights by Gary Finnegan. Today, I want to look at one of our finalists, The Canal by Seamus Scanlon.

The Canal comes in at just 838 words, and what the writer manages to do in such a small space is breathtaking. An entire city is conjured, populated with a panoply of rich and flawed characters, and it is all done with prose that is gloriously clear and precise. We knew we were in the hands of a skilled writer when we read this opening:

The writer situates us immediately. We are in Galway, walking wet streets under dak clouds. The voice is clear and uncomplicated, as befits the young tearaway narrator, and it is also precise. The clouds aren’t just black, they are also heavy, and hang low over wet, shiny streets. I was immediately transported into the narrative world, to walk alongside the character, unsure of where he was taking me but assured that I was in the hands of a skilled storyteller. Two new characters are introduced then, Nancy and his mother. And here’s another invitation: we are entering into the quiet intimacy of their friendship, seen through the eyes of the narrator. Is there a hint of jealousy? I think there is, but also I find a sense of detachment coupled with despair. The narrator is illustrating how it is in his life, but we are still not entirely certain of how he feels about it.

Do the math is such a deft line, and acts as an invitation to the reader to enter this character’s world. We are not allowed to be passive here, rather we are asked to actively engage with the story, and to become a part of the narrative.

A few paragraphs on, we come to this:

This swaggering paragraph is executed with great skill, and delightfully deadpan humour. Mary has one hand, and her father was a butcher. The writer could have left it there, and perhaps it would’ve worked if he had, but the next line, I am just saying, is so appropriate to the narrator, and such a wonderful delivery of a dry punchline that it had me laughing out loud.

There is so much more to enjoy in this story, like this list of Nancy’s demands of the narrator.

I hope you will read The Canal, so I don’t want to give away the wonderful ending. I will say that in just over 800 words, Seamus Scanlon created what I rate as one of the very best short stories by any Irish writer, one worthy of the pen of Donal Ryan himself. The setting, the characters, the quiet desperation of the young narrator, are all illustrated with the panache of a skilled author, and with fine touches of humour. It is a marvellous story, and we feel very honoured to feature it in Frazzled Lit!

Jennifer, co-Editor-in-Chief

Dazzle us in June!

The Frazzled Lit Short Story Award 2026 will open for submissions on June 1st, and we feel hugely honoured to have twice Booker-longlisted and multi award-winning Irish author Donal Ryan as this year’s judge.

Donal Ryan has long been one of my literary heroes, and I’ve been most fortunate to meet him, and to have him read some of my work. His short fiction and novels are among the finest works ever produced by an Irish writer. He has published seven number-one bestsellers, plus a short story collection. He has won many awards for his work, including the European Union Prize for Literature, the Guardian First Book Award, and six Irish Book Awards, and has been shortlisted for many more, including the Costa Book Award and the Dublin International Literary Award.

He was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2013 for his debut novel, The Spinning Heart, and in 2018, for his fourth novel, From A Low and Quiet Sea. The Spinning Heart was voted Irish Book of the Decade in 2016.

In 2021, Donal became the first Irish writer to be awarded the Jean Monnet Prize for European Literature. His most recent novel, Heart Be at Peace, won both Novel of the Year and Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards, and was shortlisted for Novel of the Year at the Nero Book Awards. His work has been adapted for stage and screen and translated into over twenty languages.

Donal is an Associate Professor in the Creative Writing programme at the University of Limerick.

We can’t wait to see what you have for us!

With the opening of the Frazzled Lit Short Story Award 2026 being just around the corner, I’ve been thinking about form and function in stories quite a lot, and what it is that makes a story stand out in our submissions queue. Coupled with this are a number of submission deadlines I’m hoping to meet with some of my own work. I have two new short stories in progress, and am being very much guided by inspiration and my imagination, two curious creatures to work with, that are not always cooperative. Timid in nature, dreadfully skittish, they will sometimes scurry from the undergrowth of one’s consciousness and place a gift in our hands, while at other times, they take flight at the slightest move towards them. They can be encouraged, yes, but never tamed, and nothing draws them out into the open more than my willingness to enter their domain, and get dirty and sloppy and playful with them; scratch your imagination behind the ear, tickle inspiration under its chin, and they will love you for it! The gifts they offer can be abundant; other times they are cheap and plastic. Unpredictable, that’s their way, for they are as capricious as the weather. In any case, I feel we should be grateful to them for what we receive, and what we can create from their offerings.

I think and write about imagination and inspiration quite often, because I am curious about their natures, and how I can utilise them to create something from almost nothing at all. As writers, we habitually harness their energy to inform our work. Some skill is required, of course, but I feel that a great degree of this can be taught, encouraged, and learned. In the absence of anyone to encourage me, I must play this role myself, to which end I have a rotating screensaver text on my laptop. It reads:

Think wild and free!

This snappy slogan came to me while watching a documentary about Muppet-creator Jim Henson, a man whose mind was utterly unfettered. My slogan reminds me to set no limits on my imagination, to be feral and daring in my engagement with it, to roll around in the mud as I plunge into the deeper regions of inner space to envision what is possible with my craft. What I’m drifting towards, in my customary roundabout way, is that there are no limits to what we can do with our fiction, be it short or long form.

We can be bold, adventurous… audacious!

Practically, what does this mean for me, for you, and for us as editors who have the great pleasure of reading your submissions? Does it mean that stories must be experimental and weird, each one breaking new ground and fathoming the unfathomable?

No, it doesn’t mean that.

What I’m talking about here, and what moves us as humans and as editors, is emotive work that deals more with the micro than the macro, the small spaces in ordinary lives, the seemingly dull moments or spans of time that contain within them something extraordinary. Your story might cover an hour, a lifetime, a brief few seconds of a life. It might exist for no longer than a blink or a breath, or deal with entire generations.

Take a look at last year’s winning story, Limbo Nights by Gary Finnegan, for a great example.

Limbo Nights is the story of a bunch of young lads on a pre-college holiday. Through the lens of the protagonist, we grasp the impact of the characters’ life choices, their relational dynamics, the pressure they feel to be awarded a place on the course they desire, and the effects of familial pressure on the choices they make. Thanks to the writer’s skill, we are plunged headfirst into their crazy drunken world, and live through the pivotal moments of their holiday with them. These are ordinary young men at a crucial point in their lives, a point at which the writer allows us to be deeply touched by their humanity, to connect with them for the duration of the story and far beyond its last word, to experience what is extraordinary about them. It’s a simple story in many ways, but is audacious in its rendering. Gary held nothing back, and pulled no punches. In other words, he was courageous in his craft, and skilful in his delivery. Limbo Nights is an excellent story, and a most deserving winner of last year’s competition.

What about the language you use in your story? Must it be fancy and overly lyrical? No, and I urge you not to try to impress us with your linguistic verve. What really captures our attention is clarity and precision in prose, and authenticity of voice. How does your narrator/protagonist speak? If you can convey the tilt and tone of their voice, if you can stay true to it and to them, then we will be awed!

My final bit of advice is to write from your heart about what you love and what you fear. Be playful and energetic, be joyous in the act of creation. Nearly everyone can write a story if they set their mind to it, and every story we receive has the possibility of winning this competition. There are options other than winning, too. Fancy making the longlist or shortlist? How about our list of highly commended stories? Any and all of these possibilities are within your reach, and you can rely on our reputation as generous editors to get something from the competition, even if it’s only a tiered rejection. We want to make room for you, we want you to do well, so get writing, send us the best you have to offer, and we will treat it with the love and respect it deserves!

Can’t wait to see what you send us!

Jennifer, co-Editor-in-Chief

Dazzle us in June!

The Frazzled Lit Short Story Award 2026 will open for submissions on June 1st, and we feel hugely honoured to have twice Booker-longlisted and multi award-winning Irish author Donal Ryan as this year’s judge.

Donal Ryan has long been one of my literary heroes, and I’ve been most fortunate to meet him, and to have him read some of my work. His short fiction and novels are among the finest works ever produced by an Irish writer. He has published seven number-one bestsellers, plus a short story collection. He has won many awards for his work, including the European Union Prize for Literature, the Guardian First Book Award, and six Irish Book Awards, and has been shortlisted for many more, including the Costa Book Award and the Dublin International Literary Award.

He was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2013 for his debut novel, The Spinning Heart, and in 2018, for his fourth novel, From A Low and Quiet Sea. The Spinning Heart was voted Irish Book of the Decade in 2016.

In 2021, Donal became the first Irish writer to be awarded the Jean Monnet Prize for European Literature. His most recent novel, Heart Be at Peace, won both Novel of the Year and Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards, and was shortlisted for Novel of the Year at the Nero Book Awards. His work has been adapted for stage and screen and translated into over twenty languages.

Donal is an Associate Professor in the Creative Writing programme at the University of Limerick.

We can’t wait to see what you have for us!

In 2021, I interviewed Hattie Crisell, the producer and host of the podcast In Writing with Hattie Crisell. In each episode, Hattie, a writer, journalist, and contributing editor at Grazia magazine, interviews a writer about their creative inspiration and practice, often in the place where they choose to write. It’s well worth a listen if you haven’t already, with interesting insights from a range of perspectives, including but not limited to those of novelists, poets, screenwriters, journalists, and filmmakers.

The biggest takeaway for me, as a new writer listening to the successful creatives featured on the podcast, was simple: There are no ‘rules’. Every writer has a unique early writing life, a writing space and routine that reflect their individual quirks, and their own professional journey to where they are now. It’s less about right or wrong and more about what works for you.

On the surface, this may appear liberating. But for someone with oppositional tendencies like me, this creates an infinite plethora of choices to make, even before beginning to not put them into practice. Does a clear desk really equate to a clear mind? Or should I surround myself with ‘stuff’ to inspire my writing process? Should I listen to The Idles or write in silence? Get up early to write or stay up late? Free write or edit as I go? Plan or pounce? See what I mean. For someone who is still trying to figure out who she is as a human, let alone her identity as a writer, the endless choices are exhausting, leaving little energy to not implement them when decisions are made.

The truth is, I spend infinitely more time thinking about writing (the how, where, why, and when) and angsting about not establishing positive creative practices than actually writing.

There is a glimmer of hope.

Recently, I read Joan Didion’s essay On Keeping a Notebook, and it struck me that jotting down ideas in a notebook is the only constant in my writing practice. It has evolved by happy accident rather than design: I love notebooks with arty covers and the feel of writing on thick paper, and as a perimenopausal woman, I constantly forget things. For these reasons and because I do not write in a notebook as a matter of routine (yes, you’ve guessed it, I forget), this practice has not fallen foul of my oppositional tilt.

I use a new page for each entry. My story ideas often take the shape of a spider diagram, with the initial seed of inspiration at the centre and arms connecting to keywords related to characters, setting, tense, key questions, and anything else that comes to mind. This usually starts in a simple form and evolves over time with bursts of inspiration in the middle of the night, during a shower, or after a glass of vino or two, often spilling over to the next few pages. I prefer to sit with an idea and let it percolate until it takes a recognisable form in my mind before I start writing.

If you’d asked me before I wrote this article, I’d have bet you 50 quid that that’s all I use the notebook for. Well, let’s just say I’d be in my overdraft.

It turns out I’ve used it far more variedly over the years than I give myself credit for. Inspired by reading, I’ve jotted down examples of experimental story structures, subversive dialogue, and novel tense shifting, among other techniques; outlined a mini essay on my thoughts on experimentation and hospitality to adhere to when I write; listed magpied words or phrases that have been used in innovative ways as reminders of the electric possibilities of language; and even scrawled a couple of pages of free writing, which I would swear I don’t do but aspire to.

In this way, my reflection on my use of a notebook echoes Didion’s. Our notebooks do, indeed, ‘give us away’ because ‘the common denominator...is always, transparently, shamelessly, the implacable “I.”’

Maybe I’m not oppositional. Maybe I’m just scared.

Scared to commit fully in case I fall short. Scared to embrace my creativity because writing leaves me feeling exposed. Scared that I will fall into the trap of writing for other people, when it’s so important for me to do this for myself and for any external success to be an added bonus rather than intrinsic motivation.

There’s a lot for me personally to unpack here, but one thing is clear.

Without realising it, my notebook is my safe space. It’s where I store sparks of stories, explore ideas without inhibition or doubt, experiment with new techniques, and work out what matters to me as a writer, using it as a guide. The pages are often messy, which is a positive sign; when I’m stressed, I tend to make things look tidy to find some kind of order or control. I don’t draw because I am rubbish at it, but there are sketches for when words didn’t come fast enough. There’s a freedom, honesty, and energy that sometimes gets stifled when I come to write, as I subconsciously start to frame my words in relation to outside constructs. It’s my first album, unfettered and raw; some of my best work in terms of its potential.

In Didion’s words, ‘your notebook will never help me, nor mine you’, but talking about craft and its relationship with the psychology of writing helps. It creates community and connection and hope—three things we need to preserve in the world right now.

Kerry, Assistant Editor

In Mark Burrow’s highly commended story, we enter the gritty and troubled world of Jay, a young boy in an impoverished inner-city London school, where violence is normalised, and innocence is lost.

Mark Burrow has published a novella, Coo, which is about an alcoholic turning into a pigeon in a world where people turn into birds (Alien Buddha Press). His short stories have appeared in a range of titles, including AEOS Magazine, Punk Noir, Flight of the Dragonfly and Underbelly Press. He’s been nominated for a Pushcart Prize (by Frazzled Lit) and Best of the Net (prose and poetry). He lives in the south of England.

The Frazzled Lit Short Story Award 2026 will be judged by Donal Ryan, and will be open for entries from June 1st until June 30th 2026.

Submit your stories!

Rules and Terms & Conditions

The competition

Eligibility

Your submission(s) to the competition

Publication rights

Timing of announcements

Your data privacy

Additional Terms & Conditions

Submit your stories!

All submissions must be made via Duosuma.

You may send any ENQUIRIES to frazzledlitmag@gmail.com

The Frazzled Lit Short Story Award 2026 opens for submissions on June 1st, and this is your chance to get your work before Donal Ryan, one of Ireland’s greatest writers, a twice Booker-longlisted author of seven bestsellers, winner of multiple national and international awards, and one of the nicest guys one could ever hope to meet!

In the lead-up, I’ll be writing some posts about short stories, and what it takes to get noticed in the queue. Today, I’ll share some thoughts on what you ought not to do in your submission.

Everyone has their own style and ideas for how a story should be written, and we want you to write your story in your own unique way, so what I offer below should be taken as no more than suggestions. None of these items will kill your story (apart from the word count one), and they won’t exclude you from the competition. Nor will they mean you won’t make it to the final, but avoiding these things will certainly help your chances.

Remember, we are your cheerleaders, and we’ll be reading the queue with a view to accepting, rather than rejecting, your story. We want you to succeed, and what this article is really about is putting you in the best posssible position to do so.

At the end of this post, I include links to a couple of earlier craft articles that might be of interest.

And it almost goes without saying, but I’m going to say it anyway:

We can’t wait to see what you have for us!

Our competition judge this year is Donal Ryan.

Donal has published seven number-one bestsellers, plus a short story collection. He has won many awards for his work, including the European Union Prize for Literature, the Guardian First Book Award and six Irish Book Awards, and has been shortlisted for many more, including the Costa Book Award and the Dublin International Literary Award.

He was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2013 for his debut novel, The Spinning Heart, and in 2018, for his fourth novel, From A Low and Quiet Sea. The Spinning Heart was voted Irish Book of the Decade in 2016.

In 2021 Donal became the first Irish writer to be awarded the Jean Monnet Prize for European Literature. His most recent novel, Heart Be at Peace, won both Novel of the Year and Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards, and was shortlisted for Novel of the Year at the Nero Book Awards. His work has been adapted for stage and screen and translated into over twenty languages.

Donal is an Associate Professor in the Creative Writing programme at the University of Limerick.

1. Leading with rich (and pointless) descriptions

That’s not entirely awful (I just whipped it up, by way of illustration), but it needs to get to the point. What’s this story about? The first line, at least the first paragraph, can encapsulate the entire tale. Get us into the story, situate us, let us know what’s happening. Keep the prose active, especially at the start.

Having said that, a story opening like this can work if the details are relevant to the tale and the character. Does the garden, the sky, the view, really matter at this point? It sets the scene, but it would be better to start with the character rather than the setting.

2. Opening with dialogue

I’m not saying that opening with a passage of dialogue never works, but unless it’s done with great skill, I feel it’s best avoided. I don’t know who the characters are, I don’t care about them, and now the writer has to get me to care when both she and I are on the back foot.

What I’m really saying here is to not overdo it. Opening with a single line line of dialogue can work well, because it raises the reader’s curiosity. Two lines would be stretching it. Three? Well, now I’m lost!

Related to this are stories with too much, or mostly, dialogue. Again, unless it’s done with great skill, it’s a hard act to carry off.

3. Filtering

Using phrases like ‘He saw…’, ‘She thought…’, ‘He heard…’, ‘They noticed…’, all create psychic distance, and put a layer between us and the characters. They should be used sparingly, if at all. Mostly, they’re easy to eliminate.

For example:

‘She thought he would probably text her.’

becomes

‘He would text her. He had to.’

And:

‘She heard a rooster crowing in the distance.

becomes

‘In the distance, a rooster crowed.’

You can get more mileage by removing the filters. And by doing so, you bring the reader closer to the character and the action.

4. Lack of clarity

Subtlety is great, but don’t be so subtle as to confuse us. Ground us in the story. You might think we know what’s going on, but are you entirely sure?

This doesn’t mean you have to spell everything out (in fact, don’t do that), but you need to give us enough hints so that we can work out what’s happening, and to whom.

5. Blowing the ending

End well. A poor ending can ruin the experience of reading the story. We’ve stuck with it all the way, so reward us.

Call back to something at the start of the story, to give it a circular feel.

An open ending is fine.

A flat arc is fine too, but better if it ends with us knowing something new about the character.

6. Hammering home the theme

You might have a clear idea of what the theme is, but don’t tell us. Let us discover or intuit it, or decide for ourselves what the theme is. We might take an entirely different meaning from the story than you intended.

Mostly what we want is a feeling of what the story is about. A sense of it, rather than coming away from it and saying that the story was about grief, or hate, or revenge or whatever.

In most cases we would advise forgetting about theme. Just tell a good tale, and keep us engaged. If there’s meaning there, we will find it.

7. Poor presentation

Spelling errors, little attention to punctuation, sloppy presentation, all show a writer who doesn’t really care for their work. And if they don’t then why should we?

Having said that, we won’t reject a story purely on the basis of poor presentation or sloppy spelling. We understand and accept that not all writers are well-versed in how to present a story, and that spelling errors are unintentional, and may be (for example) due to a writer’s dylexia. So we’ll deal with poor presentation if we have to, and all I’m really trying to do here is to encourage you to read the guidelines and take as much care with your manuscript as you are able.

8. Ignoring the word count rule

Stories under 750 words or over 2,000 words will get an instant rejection. In submissions to issues of Frazzled Lit, we can be more flexible, but this is a competition, and there are rules. It wouldn’t be fair for us to give you a pass on blowing the word count when other writers have worked hard to stick to it.

We are excited to officially announce the Frazzled Lit Short Story Award 2026, which will open for entries from June 1st until June 30th, and will be judged by international award-winning Irish author Donal Ryan!

The prizes for the competition will be as follows:

1st Prize: € 1,000

2nd Prize: € 500

3rd Prize: € 300

All winning, finalist, shortlisted and highly commended stories will have the option of being published in Issue 5, our special competition issue of Frazzled Lit

There will be an entry fee of € 12 for one story, € 21 for two stories, and € 31 for three stories. These fees are necessary to fund the prizes, and cover costs.

We appreciate that some writers who may wish to enter will not be able to afford the entry fee, so we will offer 20 free entries to low-income writers.

Free entry is for one story only, and is limited to one per successful applicant

Entries to the award must be between 750 and 2,000 words, must be the author’s original work, must not have been previously published or broadcast in any form, and must not have won any other competition. Stories shortlisted in previous competitions will be acceptable, provided they were not published.

Entries must be made via Duosuma, using the link we will provide.

All entries will be blind-read by Jennifer, Laura, Kerry and Emily.

Winners will be selected by Donal Ryan from the six finalists.

Frazzled Lit reserves the right to cancel the competition in the event that we don’t receive enough entries to make up the prize fund and costs. If we cancel the competition, we will refund all entry fees received.

We are happy to read work on any subject, however Frazzled Lit will not accept work that is racist, homophobic, transphobic, misogynistic, ableist, or is hateful towards any person or group. Further, we do not wish to read anything that is gratuitously violent or erotic, or contains excessive gore. Animal cruelty of any sort is unacceptable to us.

It goes without saying, but we’re saying it anyway:

Frazzled Lit will not tolerate work that has been generated by AI, or for which AI has been used in any form to create it.

I’ve been going through this rather dull and unexpected phase for the last two weeks. Mostly, I think, because I have been working flat-out on so many projects for a sustained period of many months, and it has led me to this sort of hollowed-out place where I’m feeling uninspired and unmotivated. It’s also partly due to my obsession with the endless cycles of bad news from home and abroad. I’m not alone in this, and as much as we might try, it’s hard not to look at a train wreck, especially when the train is still moving. World events might take an even nastier turn than they already have, and I find myself checking the excellent and other major independent news networks every ten minutes to see if someone has started shooting nukes. It’s all so dreadfully depressing, and has taken a toll on my customary sunny-side groove.

I greatly dislike these doldrums in my creative ocean. During them, I tend to think that perhaps I’ve given my best and have nothing left to offer, and that the old magic has left me. Crazy, I know, but I do tend to obsess about these things, and the more I do, the worse it all seems. I should really just chill out and go with the flow, because nothing is more likely to strangle the free flow of inspiration than dwelling on how utterly uninspired I feel.

So I’ve been doing the things I can do; reading, perusing my catalogue of past work, submitting to opportunities, free writing, and playing more golf than is good for me - though whether there is such a thing as too much golf is debateable for this golf nut!

Perhaps you’ll identify with the above, perhaps not. I’m inclined to think that no writer fully escapes the doldrums, not even the greats. There was a time I thought I would never experience them, but then it happened. You see, it’s not so much about not being able to come up with new ideas (in fact, I probably have far too many of them, which is part of the problem), nor is it about not being able to write (I finished the first draft of a new novel last week, and did plenty of other writing, including penning two new flash stories). No, what it’s really about is my subjective assessment of the quality of the work I’m producing.

Literary quality is an esoteric concept, and in this regard, one person’s meat is another’s poison. Some may like a lot of action with little interiority, others may relish a deep dive into a protagonist’s soul. When it comes to language, it seems to me that plain fare is very much in vogue, while I prefer a lyrical and musical beat. Whatever your taste, I think we can all agree that what it all boils down to is telling a good story in an authentic and consistent voice, and doing so with varying degrees of clarity and precision. At the end of the day, though, I’m first and foremost writing a story for me, so it is my judgement of the quality of my piece that matters most.

Yours second, mine first. Sorry, I’m being selfish, but it’s just how it is.

So today, I started tinkering with a brand new story idea, did some brainstorming on it, and came up with some cool concepts and notions for its development. It has the potential to be a great story, I think, but it all depends on my execution of it, and for me, that further depends on me being able to at least glimpse the overall shape of the story, and to know the precise point in the arc where it starts. Also, what it starts with (action vs. introspection) and who it starts with (who the POV character will be). I don’t worry too much about where the story ends until I’m well into it, and even if I decided on a particular ending at the start of the project, it would very likely change before I got there, due to the inherent capriciousness of character and the habit of story arcs to find their own resolutions. It’s no harm to have a notion of an ending, though, to set a navigation marker for my journey.

At this point, I haven’t written a single word of the story, but that’s okay because I’m still in the ideas phase. I could be delaying the writing, for all the reasons I mentioned above. I’m also delaying because my protagonist is not yet talking to me, and until I hear her voice, I’m just whistling in the dark.

Looking back over some recent and not-so-recent stories, I noted the number of false starts I made on many of them. Sure, some came in a flash, and emerged fully formed in one or two bursts of frenetic tapping. Others toyed with me, dangling their pretty fruits before my eyes then pulling them away as soon as I reached for them. For those stories, the opening and protagonist’s voice emerged by seeking them through free-writing exercises, or walking around my kitchen as I tried to visualise scenes and fit into the character’s skin, all the while mumbling to myself. A voice recorder is a useful tool for such times, because nothing is more certain than me having a great idea and then forgetting what it was, two seconds later.

Record everything, that’s my policy, and back it up multiple times.

Trying to find a character’s voice, then, can be an instantaneous experience, or it can be one where the writer needs to dig deep, overcome frustration, and seek the gems that must surely be hidden in the striata of ideas. Personally, I prefer the first option, and it’s a wonderful experience when a character walks onto the stage and starts telling me their story. In truth, I feel I’m doing something wrong if they don’t magically appear, because I’m a writer and therefore I should be inspired at all times, right?

Nope. Wrong.

The myth that writing is easy can be a trap. I’m not saying it’s hard all the time, but if we’re being honest here, I think we can agree that there are periods when it is. Everything has its season, every story has its time. What’s important, I think, is that we cut ourselves some slack, allow ourselves the time to reflect and reload, and trust that everything is going to be fine. While waiting for this period to pass, I can go for a walk, knock a little white ball about with a stick, meditate, pray, and limit my intake of international news to the bare essentials. Then, when the time is right, I can permit myself to rediscover the joy of assembling words into neat sentences that form, as a whole, something truly magical.

Not resisting, that’s the trick, because resistance to ‘what is’ leads only to frustration.

Normal service will resume soon, and if experience has taught me anything, it’s that these doldrums are really growing pains, and can very often lead me to greater achievements in craft. In this way, I can reframe them as a gift, and embrace them as such.

Go on, create a little magic, and get ready to send it to us in June.

The Frazzled Lit Short Story Award 2026 will open for submissions on June 1st, and we feel hugely honoured to have twice-Man Booker longlisted and multi-award winning Irish author Donal Ryan as this year’s judge.

Donal has long been one of my literary heroes, and I’ve been most fortunate to meet him, and to have him read some of my work. His short fiction and novels are among the finest works ever produced by an Irish writer. Six finalists will have their stories put before him, from which he will pick the three winners, so send us your very best!

We can’t wait to see what you have for us!

This is more of a ‘fireside chat’ than an interview, a back and forth between peers.

We hope you enjoy it!

Seán McNicholl is an award-winning writer and GP from Armagh. He is the winner of the Hammond House International Literary Prize, and his work has been shortlisted for the CRAFT Short Fiction Prize, and longlisted for the Bridport Prize, the Fish Prize, the Hope Prize and the Bedford Prize.

His stories have appeared in Epoque Press, The Storms, Fahmidan, ANMLY, Frazzled Lit, and The Belfast Review. He is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee and has been nominated for Best of the Net and Best Microfiction.

Find out more at www.seanmcnicholl.com

In this session of Writer to Writer, Patrick Holloway dicusses THE LANGUAGE OF REMEMBERING (epoque press, 2025), his debut novel, with Jennifer.

Patrick Holloway is a prize-winning Irish writer of fiction and poetry. His debut novel, The Language of Remembering, was published in 2025 to critical acclaim. His second novel is forthcoming in 2027 with Eriu. His work appears in The Stinging Fly, The Moth, The London Magazine, Southword, The Irish Times and The Irish Independent. He is the winner of The Bath Short Story Prize, The Molly Keane Creative Writing Prize, The Raymond Carver Contest, The Flash 500, among others. He is an editor of the literary journal, The Four Faced Liar, and is the 2026 Writer in Residence in Maynooth University.

In this session of Writer to Writer, Irish author Barbara Leahy discusses REMBRANDT’S PROMISE, her fabulous debut novel, with Jennifer McMahon, our co-EIC.

Rembrandt’s Promise begins in 1642, during the Dutch Golden Age, and is inspired by the life and times of Geertje Dircx, a wronged woman who demanded justice. Geertje was Rembrandt van Rjin’s mistress after the death of Saskia, his first wife.

Barbara Leahy is from Cork. She was a winner of the Irish Writers’ Centre Novel Fair in 2023. Her short stories have won numerous awards, appeared in the Bridport Prize Anthology, the Bristol Prize anthology, and been broadcast on RTÉ Radio 1. Rembrandt’s Promise is her first novel.

How can I capture, for the second time, the essence of my time in Doolin? In my reflection on my first trip, I fell in love in Doolin, I pretty much nailed it, and it’s hard to find the words to describe this second literary adventure in Co. Clare. I shall try, though!

There’s something about the light - no, it’s the air, or the bracing thrust of the wind, or the music and thunder of the wild and white-capped Atlantic waves as they fold and roll down in the bay, thrashing against the shores of the shadowy stack of the Aran Islands set against a vivid and turbulent horizon. I don’t know what it is, or was, or forever will be about Doolin in Co. Clare, on the wild and rugged west coast of Ireland, that makes it such an inspirational haven for writers and poets and artists of all persuasions. Professor Sarah Moore Fitzgerald and I remarked upon it when we met in Hotel Doolin last Monday for the start of the University Of Limerick (UL) Spring Forward Creative Writing Programme, and neither of us could pinpoint precisely what it is, other than to say that there is some inherent alchemy to the place that calls out to the artist, and draws their greatest potential from deep within.

I’m not joking, and I’m not exaggerating. Go there and discover it for yourself, and you will find as we did that there is no better location on this good and kindly planet for a writer to be.

So I’m just back from my second outing with UL, for a writing intensive with a smaller group of participants. And this trip, I was there not only as one of the learners and writers, but also as a grateful and enthusiastic tutor and facilitator. A huge honour, I’m sure you’ll agree, especially when the roll of tutors included not only Sarah and multi-award winning author Donal Ryan, but also Fiona Scarlett, Sheila Killian, and Eoin Devereux.

No less impressive was the list of participants, which included many published authors, including well-known Irish crime writer Casey King, and Lauren Mackenzie, who was shortlisted for Newcomer of the Year at the Irish Book Awards in 2023. To be counted among them, and then to deliver a tutorial to the group, from the perspective of a literary journal editor, was an honour I will never forget.

We had splendid food courtesy of Hotel Doolin, were catered to by the wonderful staff who went to great lengths to ensure we were comfortable, happy, and well-fed (a special shout-out to Tracie, who did so much to help us, and to help me in particular), had mighty craic in the bar, and felt so at home that we didn’t want to leave.

The tutorials were incredible, and my mind is spinning on everything I learned. To listen to Sarah Moore Fitzgerald talk about writing is to have one’s mind expanded, one’s vision deepened, one’s creative boundaries pushed past their limits to an entirely new horizon, then beyond it again. And when Sarah teamed up with Donal Ryan for a joint tutorial, it was pure magic!

We were all there to learn from each other, so the tutorials were more interactive sessions than lectures, and were peppered with lots of questions, discussions and sidebars, with a free flow of ideas and concepts in both directions. These discussions continued during our beautiful meals and over drinks, and our evening salons and check-ins solidified our practice of what we had learned.

Wednesday night brought us to our open mic event, where we shared poetry and prose with each other, and the talent on display was breathtaking. There was laughter, there were tears, and there was pure joy in the togetherness of what had already become a tightly knit group of creatives. I will never forget the work I heard that night; it really was top class.

So here I am, back home again, dealing with the mundanities of ordinary life. I mean, I actually had to make my own breakfast this morning, and make my own bed! But I am altered, reinvigorated, still spellbound by that west of Ireland magic, and if I use only one tenth of what I learned in those four days, it will make me twice the writer I was before I went there.

To my fellow participants and tutors, to the wonderful staff of Hotel Doolin, and to Professor Sarah Moore Fitzgerald most of all, this humble wielder of the pen sends you her love and thanks you from the bottom of her heart!

In this moving and evocative story that seamlessly merges past and present, the author reveals a tale of enduring love and the memory of a passionate marriage.

Linda M. Bayley is a writer living on the Canadian Shield. Her work has recently appeared in voidspace zine, Five Minutes, BULL, Short Circuit, FlashFlood Journal, Underbelly Press, Stanchion, Does It Have Pockets, Roi Fainéant, and Tiny Sparks Everywhere, the National Flash Fiction Day 2024 Anthology.

Find her on Twitter and Bluesky @lmbayley.

Patrick Holloway is a prize-winning Irish writer of fiction and poetry. His debut novel, The Language of Remembering, was published in 2025 to critical acclaim. His second novel is forthcoming in 2027 with Eriu. His work appears in The Stinging Fly, The Moth, The London Magazine, Southword, The Irish Times and The Irish Independent. He is the winner of The Bath Short Story Prize, The Molly Keane Creative Writing Prize, The Raymond Carver Contest, The Flash 500, among others. He is an editor of the literary journal, The Four Faced Liar, and is the 2026 Writer in Residence in Maynooth University.

Laura and I always strive to make Frazzled Lit an exciting place to visit, and a happy home for your short stories, poetry, creative non-fiction and flashy tales. It’s important to us that we not only feature your work, but that we get it out to as many readers as we can. Also, we’re all about community here, so we’re keen to grow the Frazz Family. To achieve these goals, we’ll have some exciting developments coming your way soon!

The Frazzled Lit Anthology, Volume 1

I’m currently putting together an anthology of some of our favourite pieces from Issues 1-3, and hope to have it ready for publication by the end of April. It will be initially made available on Amazon as a Kindle ebook and a print-on-demand hardcopy. Later, I hope to get it onto other ebook platforms.

The Frazzled Lit Short Story Award 2026

Our very popular short story award will be back this year, with a total prize fund of 1,800 euro, and the option of publication for shortlistees, finalists, and winners.

We have another top judge lined up, none other than the award-winning and twice Man Booker-longlisted Irish author Donal Ryan!

Donal has long been one of my literary heroes, and I’ve been most fortunate to meet him, and to have him read some of my work. His short fiction and novels are among the finest works ever produced by an Irish writer, and we are hugely grateful to him for agreeing to be our judge this year.

The rules of the competition will be much the same as last year.

We’ll open for entries via Duosuma from June 1st to June 30th.

Can’t wait to see what you send us!

Frazzled Lit Issues 5 and 6

Issue 5 will publish around end of August, and will be made up of a selection of short stories from the Frazzled Lit Short Story Award 2026.

We hope to open for submissions to Issue 6 in either October or November, with publication of the issue in January 2027.

Expedited Responses & Feedback Options

We’re hoping, on a limited basis and our schedules permitting, to offer expedited responses and feedback on submissions.

There will be a small fee for these services.

Stay tuned for further updates on the above, and more!

IN THE DESERT is published on March 3rd, 2026, by Cowboy Jamboree.

It is available in U.S. at this link, and in Ireland and the UK at this link.

Irish readers can also get the paperback from O’Mahony’s Bookshop in Tralee, or from O’Mahony’s online store.

Barbara Byar is a working-class American writer living in Ireland for over 25 years with her two boys and two dogs. Her critically acclaimed, collection of stories: Some Days Are Better Than Ours (Reflex Press) was short-listed for the Saboteur Awards. Her short fiction has been published and prize-listed widely. including pushcart, best small fictions and best microfictions nominations. She was shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards Irish Short Story of the Year in 2023 and longlisted in 2021. A recipient of an Irish Arts Council Literature Bursary and an Agility Award, she is a previous novel fair winner and editor of the MOTEL anthology from Cowboy Jamboree Press.