And wow, we made it!

This competition was in the making for a very long time. I first suggested it to Laura shortly after we published Issue 2. We dicussed it for a while, and agreed it would be a worthy project for us, to support as many writers as possible and to attract the very best talent to our door.

We were a little anxious, of course, because it’s quite an undertaking to run something like this, and to do so fairly and efficiently. Looks like we managed to do it, and to be honest, we couldn’t be happier with how it all turned out. That’s purely down to you guys, the writers who submitted to us, our allies and friends, and of course to Nuala O’Connor, our competition judge.

We thank you one and all!

Nuala made judging a priority over the last couple of days, and we are pleased beyond measure to bring you our winners, and those stories which Nuala most highly commends. We are immensely grateful to her for her support and encouragement!

We hope to have the special competition issue of Frazzled Lit ready for release in the next two to three weeks. It will include our winners, and a selection of our finalists, shortlisted, and highly commended stories. It’s going to be chock full of amazing pieces, so keep a watch for it!

Okay, that’s enough from me; here are the results!

First Place Winner

Second Place Winner

Third Place Winner

Nuala’s Highly Commended Stories

Today, we announce the final six stories we will be sending to Nuala O’Connor for selection of our three winners.

It’s been quite a journey to get here, for you and for us. Always, we endeavoured to be fair and balanced in our judgements, and Laura and I argued (in a nice way) over some choices. In the end, there was no argument over the six finalists.

These are the very best of the best stories we received, and from first to last line, they held us spellbound. We admired their polished prose, the strength of voice, the confidence evident in the writing, the sublime mastery of the craft.

In short, these are the stories that blew us away on first read, and we believe they are truly remarkable examples of the short story.

To the writers of these stories, we thank you for the gift of your writing. Your stories will be with Nuala O’Connor tomorrow morning!

The Frazzled Lit Short Story Award 2025 FINALISTS

Congratulations to all, and the very best of luck in the final!

About our competition judge, Nuala O’Connor

We’re huge Nuala O’Connor fans here at Frazzled Lit, and are immensely grateful for the support she has given us since our first issue. Her CNF piece, Life As Mask, Mask As Life featured in that issue, as did my thoroughly enjoyable interview with her about Seaborne, her latest novel. She is a writer of delicious prose, a remarkable poet, and a generous supporter of up-and-coming writers. We feel truly blessed to have her as our final judge in the competition.

Nuala O’Connor lives in Co. Galway. Her sixth novel Seaborne, about Irish-born pirate Anne Bonny, was nominated for the Dublin Literary Award and was shortlisted for Eason Novel of the Year at the 2024 An Post Irish Book Awards. Her fifth poetry collection, Menagerie, was published by Arlen House in spring 2025.

The standard of submissions to the Frazzled Lit Short Story Award 2025 was extremely high, and surpassed even our loftiest hopes for the competition.

Now we are excited and pleased beyond words to bring you the Shortlisted and Highly Commended stories.

In the context of a competition, what sets one story apart from others is sometimes indefinable, and is often more a matter of subjective opinion than objective evaluation. It might be a matter of voice, a surprising structure, an unusual choice of topic. In those very special stories we’ve encountered, we knew from the opening that we were in the hands of a skilled craftsperson whom we could trust to weave a tale around us. This is especially true of the stories listed below. They touched us deeply, and will stay with us for a long time to come.

To the writers, we want a say a huge ‘Thank you!’ for the experience.

Okay, let’s get to it!

The SHORTLIST

These ten stories are the cream of a very rich crop, and will appear in a special edition of Frazzled Lit, to be published soon after the announcement of winners.

Also, our six finalists will be chosen from the shortlist, and will be forwarded to Nuala O’Connor, who will select our three winners.

• A Fate Like Gallus’

• Amy’s Mom

• Flesh + Bone

• Gluebag

• Limbo Nights

• Modus Transvectio

• Silfra

• Slasher Dream #2

• The Bunker

• The Canal

HIGHLY COMMENDED

The twenty stories on this list are among the strongest we received. Writers, take a bow; you richly deserve it!

• An herbarium, to press and preserve words no longer

• Basslines of War

• CATFISH

• Dugout

• EXPERIENCE SHARING ACTIVATED

• Finding Voice

• Invisible Measures

• Lice-free

• Linger

• Menwith Hill

• Nothing Settles

• One Another's Forever

• Steaks

• Such wonders

• The Observable Universe

• This is the Thing

• Triptych

• Virtual Reality Is a lonely Place

• Young Enough

• Ziva

Huge congratualations to the writers of the above stories, to our longlistees, and to all those who submitted to the competition.

You enriched our lives in wonderful ways, and we will be eternally grateful to you for affording us the opportunity to appreciate the fruits of your literary talents.

We will announce the six finalists on August 6th!

We are delighted and honoured to bring you the seventy stories that made our longlist for the Frazzled Lit Short Story Award 2025!

Each of these stories moved us, challenged us, or touched us in some way, or were delivered in such an unusual and compelling voice that we had to include them. Some, we went back to read again and again.

There is so much more we could say, but let’s take a look at the list!

The Frazzled Lit Short Story Award 2025 LONGLIST

• A Creaking Ship Of Hope

• A Fate Like Gallus'

• Amelia

• Amy's Mom

• An herbarium, to press and preserve words no longer

• Barbed Wire

• Basslines of War

• CATFISH

• Cock Of The Walk

• Counting Down The Days

• Dog Person

• Dugout

• EXPERIENCE SHARING ACTIVATED

• Fade

• Finding Voice

• Finisterre

• Flesh + Bone

• Fluent

• Found Worthy

• Front Row Seat

• Gluebag

• God Speed

• Hangman

• Home

• How To Scale A Fish

• Hush Money

• Hymn of the Voiceless

• Invisible Measures

• It Depends On How You Look At It

• June Bank Holiday

• Last Days

• Let Us Not Admit Impediments

• Lice-free

• Limbo Nights

• Linger

• Madame Joy

• Menwith Hill

• Miriam and Edgar

• Modus Transvectio

• Mr. Ho's Long Shadow

• Nothing Settles

• Once Upon a Time in Suburbia

• One Another's Forever

• Silfra

• Slasher Dream #2

• Steaks

• Such wonders

• That'll Teach Him

• The Banana Factory

• The Bunker

• The Canal

• The Green Angel

• The Lost Language of Home

• The Man in the River

• The Observable Universe

• The Tribe Of Wounds

• The Unwanted Visitor

• The Wee Hours

• There is a Light

• This is the Thing

• Those of Us That Created Them

• Touching Life Lightly

• Triptych

• Twilight of the Gods

• Virtual Reality Is a lonely Place

• Walk in the Park

• What do Superheroes Do When It's the End of the World

• What I said to the journalist...

• Young Enough

• Ziva

Huge congratulations to the writers of these stories!

If you didn’t make the longlist, we can assure you that it was not because your story didn’t work or was not as good as the stories on the list. Our selection is entirely subjective, and we were hugely impressed by every story we received. The competition was very close, so please know that we valued your work, and are sure you will find the right home for it very soon!

Watch out for the announcement of shortlisted and highly commended stories, coming on August 3rd!

Well done to all!

We’ve now read all your amazing stories and are currently wrangling over the final decisions.

First and foremost, Laura and I want to say that it has been an absolute honour and a privilege to read your work, and we have enjoyed it immensely. Also, we had so much fun with this competition, and we are truly grateful to each and every writer who submitted their work to us.

We can honestly say that we have treated each piece with love and care, and even if your piece doesn’t find a home with us, we sincerely admired the skill with which it was crafted.

Thank you!

So, here’s the schedule of upcoming announcements:

July 30th: We will email initial responses to all entrants.

July 31st: Longlist will be available on this site.

August 3rd: Announcement of Shortlisted and Highly Commended stories.

August 6th: Announcement of Finalists.

August 7th: We will forward the final six stories to our judge, Nuala O’Connor.

That’s it for now.

Keep an eye on your emails on July 30th!

This is a very brief post to say:

Wow!

That was a total thrill-ride for us, watching all the submissions roll in over the last few days, and throughout June! We sincerely appreciate every single one of the stories we have received, and have already started reading them. There are some real gems in there, and some very courageous writing.

We’re seriously impressed, to be honest.

We hope to have everything read by end of July/early August, and expect to be able to release the longlist soon after. I can promise you that we will get it out as soon as we possibly can, because we know how hard it is to wait for news on a submission.

Mostly, what we want to say right now is a huge THANK YOU! to all the writers and allies who supported us through this endeavour. We love you guys, we really do!

Best of luck to everyone who entered the competition!

Jennifer & Laura

What, for us, makes a great short story, the sort that can win a major competition? It begins with your vision for the story, and how the voice communicates this to us in a heartfelt and confident way. It’s about heart – in fact, it might be ALL about heart – because when we read a piece of short fiction, what we really want is an experience. The very best stories will alter us in some tiny way, and perhaps make us look at the world a little differently.

Here are some examples from Issues 1 and 2 of Frazzled Lit:

No Thief by Mark Burrow

Rubble by Barbara Byar

Here We Go Again: A Listicle by Aisling Walsh

Boomerang Children by Matthew Dexter

Each of these stories has something that makes them original, and uniquely the author’s work. Probably no one else could have written these stories, though we may wish we had written them ourselves.

So that’s all a pretty tall order, and daunting when one faces a blank page. How then can we go about creating a very special story, and not be overwhelmed by the process?

Here are some of my top tips:

1. Write what’s in your heart, what you love and what you fear.

2. Don’t be afraid to experiment with new forms and character voices.

3. Accept failure as part of the process; the first draft is very rarely the final draft.

4. Make it yours; you are a unique individual who has lived a unique life. Draw on your experiences and your own being, and let it inform your prose.

5. Just write! Free writing is a great way to get started on a new story, and I frequently use it as a tool in my own writing.

6. Have fun, and play with the story! Writing is a gift, and we should at least try to enjoy and appreciate that we get to do it.

Now go, get writing!

The Frazzled Lit Short Story Award 2025 will be judged by Nuala O’Connor, and opens for entries on June 1st through June 30th 2025.

Nuala O’Connor lives in Co. Galway, Ireland. Her sixth novel Seaborne, about Irish-born pirate Anne Bonny, was nominated for the Dublin Literary Award and was shortlisted for Eason Novel of the Year at the 2024 An Post Irish Book Awards. Her fifth poetry collection, Menagerie, was published by Arlen House in spring 2025.

You can watch Jennifer's interview with Nuala in our Writer To Writer section.

Submit your short stories!

Rules and Terms & Conditions

The competition

1. The Frazzled Lit Short Story Award will be judged by international award-winning author Nuala O’Connor, who will pick the winners from the final six stories selected by Jennifer and Laura.

2. Prizes are as follows: 1^st prize, 1,000 euro. 2^nd prize, 500 euro. 3^rd prize, 300 euro.

3. All ten shortlisted stories will be published in a special edition of Frazzled Lit, and will be eligible for future Pushcart and Best Of The Net nominations.

4. The competition opens on June 1^st 2025.

5. The competition closes on June 30^th 2025.

6. All stories submitted to the competition will be blind-read by Jennifer and Laura.

Eligibility

1. This is an international competition, and is open to writers in every part of the world, but please note that all entries must be in English.

2. Writers submitting to this competition must be 18 years of age or over at the time of submission.

3. The entry fee must be paid for each story submitted.

4. Entries must not have been previously published or broadcast in any form, and must not have won any previous competitions.

5. As we will not be using our reading panel for this competition, members of our reading panel are eligible to submit to the competition.

6. This is an unthemed competition, and we are happy to read work on any theme and subject, provided it is not racist, homophobic, transphobic, misogynistic, ableist, or 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 not acceptable to us.

7. Stories generated using AI or for which AI has been used to help in their creation will be disqualified, and no refund of the entry fee will be given.

Your submission(s) to the competition

1. All submissions must be made via Duosuma, unless you have been awarded free entry to the competition.

2. There is an entry fee of 12 euro per story.

3. You may submit as many stories as you wish, provided the entry fee is paid for each story submitted.

4. All stories submitted to the competition must be in English.

5. Stories must be between 750 – 2,000 words, excluding title.

6. Stories should be in Times New Roman 12 pt, and either double or one and a half spaced.

7. The file name must be the name of your story, or if the story is untitled, the first 5 words from the opening line of the story. DO NOT include your name in either the story document or the document file name.

8. Simultaneous submissions are allowed, but please let us know as soon as possible if your story is accepted or shortlisted elsewhere.

9. You may provide a bio with your submission if you wish, but we won’t read it until winners have been selected.

Timing of announcements

1. We will announce the longlist by the end of July 2025 or earlier, the shortlist two weeks later, and the final six stories will be announced shortly thereafter.

2. Winners will be announced at the end of August, with prize money being sent out to the winners via PayPal within two weeks of the winners announcement.

Additional Terms & Conditions

1. While we hope it won’t be necessary, Frazzled Lit reserves the right to cancel the competition in the event that we do not receive enough entries to make up the prize fund plus costs. If we do cancel the competition, we will refund the entry fees for all eligible stories.

2. Frazzled Lit reserves the right to alter the rules and terms and conditions of the competition without prior notice, as the editors of Frazzled Lit deem necessary for the smooth running of the competition.

We are excited to tease some details of the Frazzled Lit Short Story Award 2025, which will open for entries from June 1st until June 30th, and will be judged by international award-winning Irish author Nuala O’Connor!

Nuala O’Connor lives in Galway, Ireland. Her sixth novel SEABORNE, about Irish-born pirate Anne Bonny, was published in April 2024 by New Island, and was shortlisted for Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards. Her novel NORA (New Island), about Nora Barnacle and James Joyce, was a Top 10 historical novel in the New York Times. She won Irish Short Story of the Year at the 2022 Irish Book Awards and is editor at flash e-journal Splonk.

You can watch my interview with Nuala in our Writer To Writer section.

The prizes for the competition will be as follows:

1st Prize: € 1,000

2nd Prize: € 500

3rd Prize: € 300

All ten shortlisted stories will be published in a special issue of Frazzled Lit.

There will be an entry fee of € 12 euro, necessary to make up the prize fund.

We appreciate that some writers who may wish to enter will not be able to afford the entry fee, so we are offering 20 free entries to low-income writers. Free entry is for one story only, and limited to one per applicant.

To apply for free entry, click on the button below (note that when all free entries have been awarded, the link will become inactive).

Apply for free entry

Short story entries to the award must be between 750-2,000 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, so long as they were not published.

Entries must be made via Duosuma, and all entries will be blind-read by Jennifer and Laura.

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 enjoy 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 not acceptable to us.

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

Frazzled Lit will not tolerate work that is generated by AI.

You may send any ENQUIRIES to frazzledlitmag@gmail.com