Announcing the Winners of the 2025 International Debut Novel Competition

The Irish Writers Centre is delighted to today announce the winners of the 2025 installment of its flagship annual literary initiative, the International Debut Novel Competition.

Each year, the competition awards twelve unpublished novelists with the opportunity to pitch their novels to world-class publishers and literary agents. This year, the centre invited submissions for the competition between 1 August and 14 September, attracting a record number of entries.

We are delighted to announce as our winners:

• Bronagh Slevin

Based between Ireland and Sicily for fifteen years, Bronagh Slevin is fascinated by what it means to live on an island. In her writing, she is devoted to unravelling the legacy left by little-explored areas of world events and how this impacts our small, interconnected personal lives. She also has a completed literary fiction manuscript set in Ireland, which was selected for Date with an Agent at Dublin’s Literature festival 2024. She is a member of online writing groups Being a Writer and Writers Ink where her work has benefitted from critique by Simon Trewin. She works as a language teacher and musician. Her album Rewilding, which explores identity and female desire, is due for release in early 2026.

• Catherine Godfrey

Catherine Godfrey hails from Armagh. She studied her undergraduate degree in Communication at Ulster University before studying novel writing through Curtis Brown. She is currently studying an MA in Creative writing. Her novel, A Trouble Shared is a retrospective love story that explores mental health, abuse and the butterfly effect the Troubles had on ordinary people’s lives. This novel was written in snatched hours whilst juggling three young children.

• Cian Hamilton

Cian Hamilton is a 34 year old Zimbabwean-born writer and filmmaker from West Cork, Ireland. Cian learnt his love of writing at a young age from his mother, Afric McGlinchey, who is a published author and an award-winning poet. Cian is a filmmaker by profession and runs his own video production company called Lost Studios. Cian’s most recent short film, Just Us, won the Best in Cork category award at the Fastnet Film Festival as well as being selected for multiple other prestigious film festivals. Whether it’s writing novels, screenplays or short stories, Cian’s whole life is storytelling.

• David McGrath

David McGrath has won several short story competitions, namely the Bryan MacMahon, Hastings, Bare Fiction and Brick Lane Bookshop. He has been shortlisted for Bridport, Manchester Fiction, London Magazine Prize and Edinburgh Prize. He has been published in The Stinging Fly as well as several other journals and anthologies. He has a short story in the current issue of Banshee. His novel, The Donkey Christ has received much praise in the drafting process. It has been described as wild, bawdy and delightfully blasphemous. It is irreverent cult fiction. David is from Wicklow but lives in East London with his 2 sons.

• Eoin McLaughlin

Eoin McLaughlin is a children’s author. His picture books have been translated into 29 languages and named ‘Books of the Year’ by The Irish Times and The Guardian. The Times called them, ‘an important historical record of the time’. Previously, Eoin was a Creative Director at Channel 4, where he worked on Derry Girls, the Paralympics and Bake Off. Before that, he assembled watches and repossessed televisions. He tried to be a bin man, but he got sent home because he was wearing the wrong shoes. Originally from New Ross, he now lives in Mauritius.

• Judith Pasztor Duffy

Judith Pasztor Duffy, originally from Hungary, moved to Ireland after graduating as a journalist. During a decade in Galway, she built a career in marketing before her work took her to the Middle East. A lifelong reader, Judith only began writing fiction in her late thirties, while caring for her first child. Upon completing Curtis Brown Creative’s flagship course, she was a runner-up in the I Am Writing contest and longlisted for the Blue Pencil Agency Pitch Prize. Set in a gated Emirati community, her domestic suspense centres on an expat mother befriended by an ominous neighbour. Judith lives in Abu Dhabi with her Irish husband and two third-culture children.

• Karla Hirsch

Karla Hirsch is a German-Romanian writer from Munich. Her short stories and poems are forthcoming or published in Southword, Four Way Review, Stand, Brink Literary Journal, trampset, The Four Faced Liar, The Madrigal, and others.

• Luke Brennan

Luke Brennan is a writer from Kerry. His work has previously appeared in Banshee and No Parties literary journals. He has an M.A. in Writing from NUIG. He lives in West Clare.

• Mary McKeone

Mary McKeone, previously a criminal barrister who juggled writing, work and motherhood, is currently reinventing herself. Hear the Curlew Cry is her first novel.  She is now working on her second, The Choice, which was shortlisted in 2024 for Mslexia, placed in the top 100 of The Bath Novel Award, and the top 6 percent of The Bridport Prize. In March 2025, she was also shortlisted for a Bridport Residency. Mary writes a blog, teaches creative writing in a local prison and divides her time between Manchester and Sligo. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Manchester Metropolitan University.

• Paul Jeffcutt

The Cut, Paul Jeffcuff’s first venture into novel writing, was selected by the Bath Novel Award 2024 for their Top 100 – out of 2452 submissions from 78 countries. The opening page of The Cut was chosen by Val McDermid for an anthology of opening pages of crime novels, Crimebits2, Black Spring Press (2025).  Paul has won 33 awards for poetry in competitions in Ireland, the UK and the USA. He has three collections of poetry: True, Eyewear Publishing (2025), The Skylark’s Call, Dempsey & Windle (2020) and Latch, Lagan Press (2010). His poems have been widely published in literary journals and anthologies. Paul is from Co Down, Northern Ireland.

• Sam Windrim

Sam Windrim is a working-class writer from Limerick City. In 2009, he self-published The Limerick Lexicon (the first ever dictionary of Limerick slang). With John Hyatt, he co-authored a book of poetry, art and essays, Ammemorium – a Forgotten Rebel’s Tale (Cornerhouse Press 2016). His short fiction has won both the Liberties Press Humorous Short Story Competition and the Bloomsday Prize. As well as being awarded residency at The UL Creative Writing Winter School, Sam has been the grateful recipient of an Arts Council Grant. He co-authored the play Seven Deadly Sins, produced by Bottom Dog Theatre Company in 2025.

• Stephanie O’Reilly

Stephanie O’Reilly is an Irish writer who has been longlisted for a TV series by the BBC and shortlisted for the RTÉ Short Screen Award. Years working as a doctor allowed Stephanie witness the highs and lows of human experience working with some of the most vulnerable and marginalised. Though Life is a Bicycle is a coming of age novel confronting addiction, poverty and gangland crime,  it is layered with humour, allowing kindness and ultimately hope to shine through. It was shortlisted for the IAMINPRINT competition (UK) 2025.

Huge congratulations to all our winners, from all of us here at the Irish Writers Centre.