18 December, 2024
12 Aspiring Novelists Selected for the Irish Writers Centre Novel Fair 2025
We are thrilled to announce the twelve writers selected for Irish Writers Centre Novel Fair 2025. Congratulations to Ben Bland, Ciara Broderick, Jill Bronfman, Andrew Cunning, Stephen Doyle, Ronan Fitzgerald, Aidan Furey, Matthew Hornsby, André Mangeot, Amanda Moloney, Dónal O’Leary and Pauline Ryan. With a record number of submissions (546!!) to Novel Fair this year, we had the most competitive selection process so far.
About the award
Each September, we have an international call out for manuscripts from unpublished (and unsigned) novelists who are searching for a home for their novels. The twelve Novel Fair 2025 winners will be invited to participate in a two-day event where they will pitch their novels to national and international publishers and literary agents.
This competition has been a career-changing opportunity for writers across the island of Ireland and worldwide, with entries this year from 17 countries. Since its inception in 2011, 36 Novel Fair winners have published their debuts. Winners have gone on to win or be nominated for the Costa First Novel Award, The Rooney Prize, Irish Book Awards, Carnegie Award, The Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award, and many others.
“We can analyse fiction to almost pedantic levels if we choose, but really the simplest and profoundest compliment you can pay any writer is that you want to read more of what they have written. That’s true of every one of the 12 winners, and I for one cannot wait to see their books on the shelves, so that I can finally get to read their complete novels.”
Declan Burke, Novel Fair 2025 judge
With over 546 submissions, we had a record number of entries this year! Thank you to our five judges, Declan Burke, Roe McDermott, John Patrick McHugh, Lia Mills and Aiden O’Reilly who read each entry and selected the twelve winners, twelve runners-up and twelve highly commended.
Read about the winners
Ben Bland works in innovation and technology ethics, consulting on emerging tech issues all over the world. This experience fuels his writing, which blends speculative fiction and tech-thriller realism. Ben has authored and produced multimedia content that has been seen on the BBC, RTE and Sky, as well as various journals and conferences, and he has taught Technology Ethics at academic institutes from Tokyo to Tunisia. Hey Ma is Ben’s first novel. It is a wry, gritty take on the impact of powerful inventions in the hands of ordinary people. Ben was born in England and lives in Belfast, N. Ireland.
Ciara Broderick is a fiction writer from Galway, currently living and working in Dublin. Her work has appeared in New Word Order (2023), Trasna (2023/4), The Ogham Stone (2024) and Ragaire (2024). She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and placed 2nd in the 2024 Write By The Sea Festival Short Story Competition. In 2024, Ciara attended Cúirt International Festival of Literature as an Irish Writers Centre Young Writer Delegate and was a recipient of the Agility Award by the Arts Council of Ireland. She is currently working on a collection of short stories and her second novel.
Jill Bronfman’s work has been recognised in five literary contests and been accepted for publication in five collections and over thirty literary journals. She has performed her work in The Bay Area Book Festival, Poets in the Parks, The Basement Series, Page Street, and LitQuake, and had a story produced as a podcast.
Andrew Cunning is a writer and English teacher from Belfast, N Ireland. His writing on literature, theology and politics has appeared in academic journals, The Irish Times, Slugger O’Toole and Radio 4. Clara and Christina is his first novel.
Stephen Doyle is a writer based between Belfast and Paris. He is a medical doctor (MB BCh BAO Hons) and holds a PhD in Medical Education that heavily incorporates Lacanian Psychoanalysis. He is interested in the intersections between arts and culture and psychoanalytic thought and practice. He enjoys learning languages and is a musician and composer. Spirit of the Dead Watching is his first novel.
Ronan Fitzgerald is an Irish fiction writer living in London. He has an MA and an MFA in creative writing from Birkbeck, University of London. His work has been published in Short Fiction, Mechanics Institute Review, and Channel, plus shortlisted for the 2023 Bridport Prize.
Aidan Furey was a participant in the Irish Writers Centre mentorship programme in 2023. His work has appeared in various places including, The Tangerine, The Honest Ulsterman, Ireland’s Own and Boyne Berries. He holds a Creative Writing Degree from The Open University. He lives in Belfast with his wife and two daughters.
Matt Hornsby is originally from London but settled in Dublin. He is principally a writer of science fiction and fantasy, and has published short stories in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Uncharted and several other journals. He is also a graduate of the Odyssey Writers’ Workshop. Outside of writing, he works on environmental policy.
André Mangeot lives in Cambridge UK, combining a career in charity fundraising with his writing. To date he has published two books of short stories, three poetry collections and completed three novels, as yet unpublished. His work has appeared in The Spectator, New Statesman, Times Literary Supplement and won several competitions, including the 2019 Robert Graves Prize. For ten years he was a member of a poetry performance group, The Joy of Six, that appeared at many leading UK festivals. His submission to IWC Novel Fair, also shortlisted for The Literary Consultancy’s 2024 First Novel Prize, is a character-driven political/crime thriller focused on Romania’s accession to the EU, inspired by actual events.
Amanda Moloney is a writer from Limerick. She is a recent graduate of the Masters in Creative Writing programme at University of Limerick. Amanda was selected for the Freedom to Write Project in 2024, awarded by the John Hewitt Society and Irish PEN/PEN na hÉireann. Her work has appeared in Washing Windows IV and the Women’s Collective Untold Stories.
Dónal O’Leary is a writer and aspiring author born and raised in Dublin. He has a first-class honours BA in French and English literature from Trinity College Dublin. Currently, he is pursuing an MA in Identities and Cultures of Europe at the same university, having returned to Dublin after years spent teaching English in Paris. On God’s Naughty Step is his first novel and equal parts love letter and hate mail to the country of his birth. It follows the journey of a misery-seeking tourist who finds herself in the avant-garde penal colony of Céim Dána Dé, a reservoir of Ireland’s past and present vices with some local varieties of iniquity sprinkled in.
Pauline Ryan lives in Melbourne, Australia, with her partner and son. She has been highly commended in the Craft First Chapters prize and the Sean O’Faolain and Manchester short story prizes. She has received a Yaddo fellowship and won a WICE workshop scholarship.
To anyone who entered and didn’t win
“To anyone who entered and didn’t win, I promise you that there were so many entries that the judges were confident we would see published in the future – some that were already very accomplished, and some that had intriguing plots or gorgeous writing but just needed a bit more time and editing to be ready to progress. I have no doubt that for many of the writers that entered the Novel Fair, I will be seeing their work in the world in the future and I cannot wait to see how their stories unfold.”
Roe McDermott, Novel Fair 2025 judge
If you were not successful this year, we hope you are not discouraged. We wish your novel and writing career the very best.
How can I enter Novel Fair 2026?
Submit up to 10,000 words of your novel and 300 words of your project synopsis.
- The submission period runs from 1st – 30th September 2025.
Find out more about the Irish Writers Centre Novel Fair here.
