08 December, 2023
Opportunities and Competitions December 2023
Photo credit: Kylemore Abbey Centre at Connemara (Co. Galway)
Each month we update our Competitions, Submissions & Opportunities webpage, along with our Bursaries & Funding, to ensure that we are connecting our writers with the best upcoming opportunities. Here are a few deadlines we wanted to highlight this December.
Submissions:
Channel
Deadline: 31st December 2023
As Ireland’s foremost environmental literary journal, Channel’s aim is to provide a home for Irish and international writing that contributes to building rich, mutually sustaining relationships between human beings and the natural world. They publish two issues every year and they are currently open for submissions for their 10th issue.
They publish fiction, non-fiction and poetry and currently they can offer a fee of €35 per printed page, up to a total maximum of €250 per piece and with a minimum fee of €50 for single-page works.
Competitions:
The Moth Poetry Prize 2023
Deadline: 31st December 2023
With a 1st prize of €6000 and three runner up prizes of €1000, the Moth poetry prize is one of the biggest prizes in the world for a single unpublished poem. On top of that the four shortlisted poems will appear in the Irish Times online.
There is no line limit and the poems can be on any subject. It costs €15 to enter one poem. This prestigious prize has been judged in the past by the likes of Nick Laird, Claudia Rankine and Nobel Laureate Louise Glück. This year’s judge is Hannah Sullivan.
Fresh Pages, New Stories: The 2023/24 Creative Writing Competition Supported by the All Ireland Scholarships
Deadline: 15th January 2024
This competition is supported by the All Ireland Scholarships. The overall prize fund is €4000 with a first prize of €2000 plus a place on the University of Limerick’s Winter School.
Previous winners include Alice Kinsella, author of Milk: On Motherhood and Madness.
They accept three types of entry: A) Fiction; B) Non-fiction; C) Op-ed each with a word limit of 2000 words.
From the Well Short Story competition 2024
Deadline: 28th January 2024
Cork County Council Library and Arts Service is accepting submissions to the From the Well Short Story competition 2024. From the Well is a long standing short story anthology published annually by Cork County Council’s Library and Arts Service. Twenty stories will be selected for inclusion in the 2024 edition of the From the Well short story anthology, while the winning story and two others will feature in the 2024 West Cork Literary Festival as part of the anthology launch event in Bantry Library within the festival dates of 12-19 July. The winning writer will be offered a place on West Cork Literary Festival’s three-day short story writing workshop. The tutor will be Jan Carson and the workshop will run from Monday 15 to Wednesday 17 July 2024.
Dingle Lit Short Story Competition
Deadline: 29th February 2024
The Dingle Lit Short Story Competition is open to all writers on the island of Ireland, writing in either English or Irish. Writers are invited to submit previously unpublished work. The competition will be judged by Nicole Flattery, Anna Stein, Camilla Dinkel, and Cathal Póirtér.
The word count is 3000 words and the prizes for this one are pretty exciting with a week long retreat up for grabs for the winners of both the Irish and English language categories.
Opportunities:
Landmark Productions: Theatre for One
Deadline: 18th December 2023
In summer 2024, Landmark Productions and Octopus Theatricals are join forces once again with Cork Midsummer Festival and Cork Opera House, to commission six emerging Irish playwrights to write original 5-minute plays. Each of the selected playwrights will receive mentorship from one of the following five playwrights: Marina Carr, Stacey Gregg, Emmet Kirwan, Louise Lowe, Mark O’Rowe and Enda Walsh. In June 2024, Theatre for One: This Ireland – twelve plays (six from the original writers and six from the public call-out) – will be presented together at Cork Midsummer Festival.
Selected playwrights will each receive a fee of €500. If the playwrights are not based in Cork, they will receive accommodation in Cork for 3 nights, a per diem of €35 for each overnight stay, and return economy-class rail travel (or its equivalent) within Ireland.
Irish Writers Centre Opportunities:
Northern Soul Roadshow 2024
Deadline 3rd January 2024
The Irish Writers Centre is delighted to announce the return of Northern Soul Roadshow (NSR) for 2024, a programme for emerging and professional writers based on the island or Ireland. Take part and develop your writing practice through a series of creative writing events and workshops featuring a wide range of NI writers. Curated and facilitated by Fiona O’Rourke, this programme is delivered across six online sessions and an in-person showcase event at The Linen Hall (Belfast).
IWC/Kylemore Notre Dame Residencies 2024
Deadline: 10th January 2024
The Irish Writers Centre is thrilled to announce a new partnership with Kylemore Global Centre under the auspices of Notre Dame University. Three writers will be awarded with a fully-catered five day residency opportunity from April 15th to 19th, 2024 in the beautifully restored Kylemore Global Centre on the grounds of Kylemore Abbey in Connemara (Co. Galway). One of the residency places will be reserved for a writer who may require wheelchair access and accessible toilets.
Please get in touch with Administrative Assistant Tom Jordan at tom@irishwriterscentre.ie if your organisation has a competition, submission, bursary or funding opportunity for writers that you would like us to include in our monthly round-up blog post.
