The Frazzled Lit Short Story Award 2026
This year's judge will be bestselling author Donal Ryan!
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!
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.
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.
The full Rules and Terms & Conditions for the competition will be available very soon!
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