It has been a great joy for us to bring you the second successful year of the Frazzled Lit Short Story Award. Last year, Nuala O’Connor picked the winning stories, and this year we of course had Donal Ryan. Two years, two stellar judges, and a host of wonderful stories.
I’d love to talk about the importance of competitions in a writer’s development, and in particular the role they played in helping me hone my craft… but I’ll save it for another day, because this is the day when we announce the winners of the Frazzled Lit Short Story Award 2026, and those finalists for whom Donal had sincere and thoughtful comments on their work.
Every one of the stories listed below is a treat, and each writer has, by their mastery of the craft, earned their place. We will publish these stories, along with a selection of the Shortlisted and Highly Commended stories, in Issue 5 of Frazzled Lit, which we plan to launch on Sunday 6th September.
For now, let’s put our hands together for these writers, and offer them our sincerest congratulations!
FIRST PLACE
THE SHOE FACTORY
By Laura Carroll
Donal Ryan said:
“This is as perfect an explication as I’ve ever encountered of a human processing through unbearable pain. The narrator, as aware and immersed as they are in the minutiae of their surroundings, the tiny textures of the quotidian, is disconnected from the world. Their anhedonia extends from a malfunctioning coffee machine, to the victims of an accidental fire, to their own monstrous uncontroverted grief. The reader is conditioned from the opening lines to expect an act of intervention or even heroism, but finds the narrator by the story’s end lying on their back imagining themselves grasping flying planes. I think this story is magnificent.”
SECOND PLACE
BIKER JESUS
By Barbara Byar
Donal Ryan said:
“I once heard someone say that the trouble with freedom is that it gives people freedom to be assholes. I think assholes will be assholes regardless of the level of permissiveness of the society in which they live. The mother in this story is one, and her leather-coated, biker-booted beau is her antithesis in his ordinary decency. The child at the story’s heart is in mortal danger. She woke in me as she struggled in the water and through her fever the same level of desperate worry as the child in Emma Donoghue’s Room as he smuggled himself, rolled in carpet, from captivity. The closing passage is profoundly sad, and written beautifully, as is the entire story; it is restrained, subtle, elegantly drawn, but it aches and pulses with emotion.”
THIRD PLACE
GONE ARE THE DAYS
By Séan Cunningham
Donal Ryan said:
“This story will be so relatable to so many parents of adult children. The father’s annoyance at his ‘long, hairy yoke’ of a 25 year old son; the emotional ferment between them developing to something close to hatred, before revealing itself to actually be unarticulated love and concern, is wonderfully evoked. The narrative voice is pitch-perfect, as is the author’s capture of the sometime awkwardness of male communication and the tender roughness between the pair; I could feel exactly what this father felt, and this departing son.”
Donal’s decisions were not easy by any means. Three other finalists were under consideration, and though they didn’t win a prize, they were close to doing so. Donal sent us some wonderful comments to share with these super-talented writers. Here they are, in no particular order:
45 PROVIDENCE SQUARE
By E L Faull
Donal Ryan said:
“This a beautifully composed and chillingly disquieting story. Again we have a child in danger, and adults responding inappropriately. There are echoes for me of Mary Gaitskill and Kathy Acker in the author’s cold appraisal of sexual impulse and the perilous liminality between predation and seduction. The reader wants to scream at Aunt Ronnie, ‘Don’t fucking say that to the child, just keep her away from Cooper, he’s a scumbag!’ This level of engagement and immersion is testament to the writer’s skill. Brilliantly done.”
SONG OF A BLACK SWAN
By Ellen Ní Chonchúir
Donal Ryan said:
“The intimation of trauma propels the reader through this oblique, elliptical story, which is very cleverly constructed: set within a series of moments during a drinking session we are offered a fractured but luminous vision of the narrator’s roiling interiority. Their impulsive desire to return from the lavatory and To go back outside now and … to grab him and pull him and have him … nibble, then—to nip. Sink my teeth into the meat and bite it clean off… can be interpreted as a desire to return experienced pain, or to violently unshackle themselves from the burden of bad friends, who allow them to be denigrated and disrespected. There’s a moment of triumph for the reader in Kate’s scraped knee in the closing scene, but of course the narrator has caused herself pain in the inflicting of it; the reader hopes her cycling away is symbolic of her escape from her joyless congresses.”
LAMINGTONS IN NINE PIECES, SCATTERED
By Amanda O’Callaghan
Donal Ryan said:
“This is a beautifully observed and very skilfully written story. The inciting trauma is alluded to briefly, subtly and incredibly powerfully. I tried something similar once with a crash scene and didn’t manage to incise with the same razor-edge as this writer does. For all of the obliqueness of the narrator’s confrontation of their trauma, and the sometimes jocosity and buoyancy of their tone, the central image of the scattered lamingtons and the girl’s vanished words from her moving lips sears into the reader’s consciousness. Powerful and beautifully done.”
SINCERE CONGRATULATIONS TO EACH OF THESE WRITERS, FROM EVERYONE HERE AT FRAZZ HQ, AND HUGE THANKS AND APPRECIATION TO DONAL RYAN FOR MAKING THIS YEAR’S COMPETITION SO SPECIAL!
WATCH OUT FOR ISSUE 5 ON SUNDAY 6TH OF SEPTEMBER!
Congratulations to the winners!
Congratulations to the winners - and to Frazzled lit🎊🎉