Competitions, submissions and other opportunities
The latest writing competitions and submissions windows for writers.
Deadline: 29 May 2025
Annaghmakerrig Residencies 2025
The Irish Writers Centre is delighted to announce five new residencies at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Annaghmakerrig, Newbliss, County Monaghan. We are offering five writers a one-week stay at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in August 2025.
These residencies are created and funded by the Irish Writers Centre in partnership with the Tyrone Guthrie Centre.
This is an open call for all writers, both emerging and established who are over 18 years of age and resident on the island of Ireland. Accepted forms of writing: Fiction, creative non-fiction, children’s/Young Adult fiction and poetry.
More Information here:
irishwriterscentre.ieDeadline: 30 May 2025
Carlow County Council – Writer in Residence 2025
Carlow County Council is currently seeking a writer-in-residence to work with them in a local context. The residency will focus on the development of a writer’s collective for County Carlow, and will take place over the period July – September 2025 (with the possibility of extension).
Applications are welcomed from established writers working in any of the following genres – fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama, and spoken word.
The available fee is €5,000 (inclusive of materials, expenses and any other related costs).
More Information here:
consult.carlow.ieDeadline: 31 May 2025
Fiction Factory Short Story Competition
Fiction Factory is currently seeking original short stories (max. 3,000 words in length) for its annual short story competition. Winning stories will be published on the Fiction Factory website, as well as in a planned anthology (to be published at a later date). Entries should be formatted as a Microsoft Word document and can be submitted directly via the Fiction Factory’s email address (words@fiction-factory.biz).
Accepted forms: Short story.
Prize: 1st place £500.
Entry fee: £7 (£13 for 2 stories, £18 for 3 stories).
More Information here:
fiction-factory.bizDeadline: 2 June 2025
Freedom to Write Project 2025
The John Hewitt Society and Irish PEN/PEN na hÉireann are delighted to announce the Freedom Project 2025, a joint creative writing project that will support twenty up-and-coming writers resident on the island of Ireland to work with experienced writers and other professionals to build on their achievements.
This award will run from June 2025 – October 2025 and will include:
- Four workshops at three different regional venues
- Attendance at the John Hewitt International Summer School 2025, including: B&B for seven nights; free access to all events, and enrolment in three, two-hour advanced creative writing workshops
- Sculpting and editing training
- An event to showcase work to other writers
See the John Hewitt Society’s website for further details.
More Information here:
johnhewittsociety.orgDeadline: 2 June 2025
The Stony Thursday Book – 50th Anniversary Edition
The Stony Thursday Book is seeking submissions from local, national and international poets for its next issue, to be published in Autumn/Winter 2025. This year’s editors will be founding poets John Liddy and Jim Burke, to mark 50 years since the founding of the book. Writers are invited to submit up to three poems either in .doc or .pdf format. All work must be previously unpublished. Texts in other languages are welcome, and if poets wish to send an accompanying English translation they may.
Accepted forms: Poetry.
Entry fee: None.
Contributor’s fee: None.
More Information here:
limerickarts.submit.comDeadline: 6 June 2025
Teacher Artist Partnership+ Scheme, 2025/26
The Department of Education is currently seeking expressions of interest for the Teacher Artist Partnership+, a new partnership scheme providing creative practitioners with practical training on how to deliver in-person workshops in primary schools and special schools (with a guaranteed residency to follow). The scheme will involve:
- TAP+ Summer Course running 1st to 5th July 2025 in your local Education Support Centre
- Fully paid training to support creative practitioners to work in primary and special schools
- TAP+ in-school residencies
- Bringing learning into practice through creative partnership with teachers and children
- Funded 20-hour residencies in the school year 2025/26
- Access to the BLAST register of creative practitioners to deliver in-school residencies
Selected participants will receive €150 per day over the 5-day summer course training (€750 in total), plus lunch and travel, as well as a fee of €1,100 (inclusive of €200 for travel) to carry out a 20-hour residency.
Expressions of interest are to be sent to the director of your local Education Support Centre no later than 5pm on Friday 6th June 2025. Expressions of interest should be in the form of a letter of max. 600 words, accompanied by a CV or short bio with links to images or samples of relevant work.
More Information here:
www.esci.ieDeadline: 6 June 2025
Write By The Sea Writing Competition 2025
Write By The Sea Festival is currently accepting entries to its annual writing competition. Writers can apply in any one of four categories (fiction, flash fiction, poetry and non-fiction/memoir), with a cash prize of €500 and a free weekend pass to the Write By The Sea Festival 2025 available in each. See the festival’s website for full details.
Accepted forms: Short Story: max. 2,500 words; Flash Fiction: max. 700 words; Poetry: max. 40 lines; Personal Essay/ Memoir: max. 1,000 words.
Prize: The winner of each category will receive a cash prize of €500 and a free weekend pass to the Write By The Sea Festival 2025.
Entry fee: Entrants can submit as many entries as they wish at €10 per entry, or enter 3 pieces, in the same or different genres, for €25.
More Information here:
writebythesea.ieDeadline: 8 June 2025
Small Sparks Programme 2025
Leitrim County Council and Local Enterprise Office are currently seeking expressions of interest for a new residency programme pairing professional artists with local businesses (specifically Soul Space, the Landmark Hotel and the Central). The residency will last for approximately 10 days over three weeks, and can be taken in one block or spread over a longer period as agreed between the artist and company. If the artist and company wish to continue working together following Small Sparks, they can apply to undertake a more long-term 6-month artist-in-residence programme thereafter.
Interested artists should register their interest via the form on Leitrim County Council’s website.
Artist fee: €2,000.
Materials budget: €500.
An additional budget (up to €500) is available to cover accessible needs where required.
More Information here:
www.leitrim.ieDeadline: 8 June 2025
Tintreach: The Smashing Times Arts and Literary Journal
Smashing Times International Centre for the Arts and Equality is currently seeking submissions for the July 2025 edition of Tintreach: The Smashing Times Arts and Literary Journal. The theme for this edition is ‘Voices of Peace’. Submissions can relate to peace – or its antithesis, war – be they in the psychological, familial, social, or political realm. The one requirement we have is that submissions do not in any way actively promote or encourage violence or war.
Accepted forms: Short stories, poetry, articles, plays, screenplays, essays.
Contributor fee: Featured artist €50; other artists €25.
Entry fee: None.
See Smashing Times’ website for full details and word limits.
More Information here:
smashingtimes.ieDeadline: 14 June 2025
DLR County Council Arts Office Nature and Place Project 2025
Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council Arts Office is currently seeking applications from professional artists for a project that responds to the public forests in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County (DLR). This opportunity is for temporary works which will take place between September and November 2025 and is open to artists working in any medium (special interest will be paid to audio-based, lens-based and literary/performance-based projects).
The budget for the project is €10,000 (including VAT). An extra budget of up to €2,000 may be available for creating outputs that can continue to engage the public after the project ends.
See DLR’s website for full details.
More Information here:
www.dlrcoco.ieDeadline: 30 June 2025
The Four Faced Liar Competition Issue
The Four Faced Liar is currently seeking submissions for its upcoming ‘competition issue’. Writers can apply in any one of the following four categories, each of which will be judged by a special guest writer: short stories (judged by Roisín O’Donnell), poetry (judged by Micheál McCann), non-fiction (judged by Tim MacGabhann) and flash fiction (judged by Cathy Sweeney). Each selected piece will be published in Issue 4 of the Four Faced Liar.
See the Four Faced Liar’s website for full details on word limits and how to submit.
Prize: 1st prize €500; 2nd prize €300; a number of highly commended writers will receive a prize of €200 for short stories/non-fiction and €100 for poetry.
Entry fee: €12.
More Information here:
www.the4facedliar.comDeadline: 30 June 2025
The Frazzled Lit Short Story Award 2025
From 1 June until 30 June, Frazzled Lit will be accepting submissions of original short stories (750-2,000 words) for its annual short story competition. Entries must be made via Duosuma, and will be blind-read by Jennifer and Laura from Frazzled Lit. The overall winner will be chosen by Nuala O’Connor (author of Nora [2022] and Seaborne [2024]). All ten shortlisted stories will be published in a special issue of Frazzled Lit.
Accepted forms: Short stories.
Prize: 1st prize €1,000; 2nd prize €500; 3rd prize €300.
Entry fee: €15 (twenty free places available to low-income writers).
More Information here:
www.frazzledlit.comDeadline: 30 June 2025
Heroines Anthology / Heroines Women’s Writing Prize
Heroines Anthology publishes literary writing by women. The anthology focuses on telling women’s lost history, untold stories, and myths, fairy tales, folklore or legends reimagined from the perspective of their women characters.
The special theme for the next edition is witchcraft: from the history of witches and witch trials, to medicine women, mystics and herbalists, spells and enchantments, shapeshifters and familiars, covens, hags, crones and sabbats. They welcome writing on witchcraft as the old religion, remembered or imagined, and the depiction of witches in fairytale, folklore, literature and film (both good and bad) across cultures.
Anthology copies can be ordered at a 10% discount. All submissions are considered for the Heroines Women’s Writing Prize.
Prize: First prize receives $500. The first prize may be won by either a poem or a piece of short fiction. All short-listed entries will be published in Volume 6 of the anthology.
Entry fee: $15 per poem.
More Information here:
www.writingtheheroine.comDeadline: 30 June 2025
The Moth Short Story Prize 2025
The Moth Short Story Prize is an international prize open to anyone from anywhere in the world, as long as the story is original and previously unpublished. The winners are chosen by a single judge each year, who reads the stories anonymously. Previous judges include Ottessa Moshfegh, Kevin Barry, Mark Haddon, Ali Smith and Sarah Hall.
Accepted forms: short story (3,000 word limit)
Prize: 1st prize €3,000; 2nd prize a week at Circle of Misse plus open travel stipend; 3rd prize €1,000.
Entry fee: €15 per story.
More Information here:
www.themothmagazine.comDeadline: 30 June 2025
Poetry Ireland Review
Poetry Ireland Review is currently seeking submissions for Issue 146, guest-edited by Rooney Prize-winning poet Stephen Sexton. Of his approach, Sexton says, ‘For Poetry Ireland Review 146, I invite poets new and established to send poems that surprise and delight in their turns and tones. Alongside those full of the mischief of midsummer, the folkloric, the fanciful, I welcome poems of skeptical magic and ordinary (and extraordinary) humanity: poems of the personal and the political, elegies and laments, war poems and love poems.’
Accepted forms: Poems, and proposals for articles and interviews, from Ireland and abroad, in Irish or English.
Contributor fee: €100 minimum.
More Information here:
www.poetryireland.ieDeadline: 30 June 2025
The Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize 2025
The 2025 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize is currently open for entries. The prize supports writers who have not yet published a book-length work, with no limits on age, gender, nationality, or background. The sixteenth edition of the prize also welcomes entries in translation – across all three categories – for the first time since the prize was founded by Dr. Susheila Nasta.
Prize: £1,000 in each category (fiction, life writing, poetry) and publication in Wasafiri’s print magazine.
Entry fee: Single entry £12, double entry £16. Subsidised entry also available.
More Information here:
www.wasafiri.orgDeadline: 30 June 2025
Southword Creative Non-Fiction Award 2025
Southword is currently seeking submissions of original, previously unpublished works of creative non-fiction for a new, annual non-fiction award. The competition will be judged by Southword’s poetry editor, Patrick Cotter, and is open to writers working in the fields of memoir, innovative essay-writing, or a mixture of both. Submissions are to be made in either .doc, .rtf or .odt format and can be submitted up to 30 June.
Accepted forms: Creative non-fiction.
Prize: 1st prize will receive €1,000 and publication in Southword; eight runners up will receive €400 and publication in Southword.
Entry fee: €20.
More Information here:
munsterlit.ieDeadline: 30 June 2025
Wells Festival of Literature’s Creative Writing Competitions
Wells Festival of Literature is currently seeking entries to its annual writing competition. Entrants can apply in any of the following four categories: short stories, books for children, open poetry, and young poets. A total of £5,000 will be given out in cash prizes, with £100 reserved for a local writer in each category.
Accepted forms: Short stories, poetry, children’s books.
Prize: Various.
Entry fee: £6 per submission.
More Information here:
wellsfestivalofliterature.org.ukDeadline: 4 July 2025
The Hubert Butler Essay Prize 2025
The Hubert Butler Essay Prize was founded to encourage the art of essay-writing with a European dimension, and to expand interest in Butler’s work. The subject for this year’s prize is: “‘Men must endure / Their going hence, even as their coming hither’ – King Lear. Have we no more active rights over life, birth and death?”
Accepted forms: Essays/non-fiction.
Prize: €1,500 first prize; two second prizes of €500.
Entry fee: None.
More Information here:
www.hubertbutleressayprize.comDeadline: 31 July 2025
Fiction Factory Poetry Competition 2025
Fiction Factory is currently seeking poems (max. 40 lines in length) for its annual poetry competition. Winning entries will be published on the Fiction Factory website, as well as in a planned anthology (to be published at a later date). The overall winner will receive £100, feedback on five poems, and an hour-long mentoring session. Entries should be formatted as a Microsoft Word document and can be submitted directly via the Fiction Factory’s email address (words@fiction-factory.biz).
Accepted forms: Poetry.
Prize: 1st place £100.
Entry fee: £5 (£9 for 2 poems, £12 for 3).
More Information here:
fiction-factory.bizDeadline: 31 July 2025
The Hope Prize 2025
The Hope Prize is an international writing competition open to writers aged 18 and over from anywhere in the world. Stories should align with the core themes of hope, courage, and resilience, as personally experienced or imagined by you, the writer. The competition is limited to prose stories only – either fiction or narrative nonfiction (including memoir). It does not cater to poetry, essays, or academic writing.
Accepted forms: Short stories/narrative non-fiction.
Prize: 1st prize $10,000 AUD; 2nd prize $2,000 AUD; 3rd prize $1,000 AUD. All highly-commended and winning entries will be will be published in an anthology by Simon & Schuster Australia.
Entry fee: $20 AUD (30 June); $30 AUD (until 31 July).
More Information here:
www.thehopeprize.comDeadline: 31 July 2025
Wild Atlantic Words Short Story Competition 2025
The Wild Atlantic Words Festival is currently seeking submissions of original short stories for its annual short story competition – this year, to be judged by award-winning novelist Eimear McBride. Stories can run up to 3,000 words in length and should be submitted as a .pdf via the Wild Atlantic Words website.
Accepted forms: Short stories.
Prize: 1st prize €500; 2nd prize €250.
Entry fee: €10.
More Information here:
www.wildatlanticwords.ieDeadline: 15 August 2025
Tyrone Guthrie Centre Bursary Awards for Children’s Books Artists in 2025
Children’s Books Ireland and the Tyrone Guthrie Centre are pleased to announce an opportunity for Irish Children’s books artists and illustrators to avail of a week-long residency, to take place between 3rd and 10th November and 17th and 24th November 2025
- One bursary is on offer to support an upcoming, unpublished, aspiring Irish children’s author
- One bursary is on offer to support an emerging artist, published but in their early career
- One bursary is on offer to support a children’s artist published in the Irish language, at any stage in their career
- The additional bursaries are on offer to support mid-career artists
More Information here:
childrensbooksireland.ieDeadline: 28 August 2025
The 2026 V.S. Pritchett Short Story Prize
The Royal Society of Literature is currently seeking entries of original, previously unpublished stories between 2,000 and 4,000 words in length for its annual V.S. Pritchett Short Story Prize. The competition, now in its 25th year, will be judged by writers Kirsty Gunn, Anjali Joseph, and Tom Vowler. For full details see the RSL’s website.
Accepted forms: Short stories.
Prize: £1,000 and publication in the RSL Review.
Entry fee: £8 per entry (fifty free places for low-income writers).
More Information here:
rsliterature.orgDeadline: 29 September 2025
Mount Stewart Global Plant Networks Creative Residency
The National Trust and the Historic Houses Global Crossroads project are delighted to announce the Mount Stewart Global Plant Networks Creative Residency, the first of two major artist residencies due to take place in historic National Trust properties in 2026.
This Creative Residency will develop new work inspired by the global histories of the plants, trees and shrubberies that make Mount Stewart famous. Developed by Lady Edith Londonderry following the First World War, the gardens are home to flora from across Asia, Europe, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, which have thrived within Mount Stewart’s sub-tropical local climate.
Applications are open to artists working in any medium. The appointed creative resident will engage in a six-week residency from May to June 2026 based at Mount Stewart.
See website for details on how to apply.
More Information here:
treatiedspaces.comOpen from 31 July to 30 Nov 2025
Anthology Creative Competitions 2025
Six new writing competitions have just opened at Anthology, with various deadlines starting 31 July 2025. Check out each one individually on their website.
Prizes range from €300, €500 and €1000 with entry fees starting at €10/12.
Short story: https://anthology-magazine.com/awards/short-story-competition/
Poetry: https://anthology-magazine.com/awards/poetry-competition/
Flash Fiction: https://anthology-magazine.com/awards/flash-fiction-competition/
Travel Writing: https://anthology-magazine.com/awards/travel-writing-competition/
Personal Memoir: https://anthology-magazine.com/awards/memoir-competition/
Nature Writing: https://anthology-magazine.com/awards/nature-competition/
More Information here:
anthology-magazine.comDeadline: Ongoing
Guernica: A Magazine of Global Arts & Politics
Founded online in 2004, Guernica is an award-winning 501(c)3 non-profit magazine focused on the intersection of arts and politics. A home for incisive ideas and necessary questions, Guernica publish memoir, reporting, interviews, commentary, poetry, fiction, and multimedia journalism exploring identity, conflict, culture, justice, science, and beyond. They offer honoraria of $50 for poetry, $100 for original essays, and $150 for original fiction and for reportage/journalism.
More Information here:
www.guernicamag.comDeadline: Ongoing
PN Review
PN Review considers submissions in hard copy form only (unless you are an individual subscriber to the magazine, in which case electronic submissions, word files rather than PDFs, will be considered). Writers wishing to send work should familiarise themselves with PN Review. Submissions should generally not exceed fifteen double-spaced pages of work (prose) or four poems/five pages (verse in English or translation). Copies of the original texts should accompany translations where possible. We discourage simultaneous submissions. Writers wishing to propose projects should send a synopsis and covering letter, with sample pages, having first ascertained from the website that the kind of proposal is suitable for PN Review.
We publish no short stories, children’s prose/poetry and very little non-poetry related work (academic, biography etc.) at the current time. We are not considering fiction in English or in translation at this time.
More Information here:
www.pnreview.co.ukDeadline: Ongoing
The Poetry Review
The Poetry Review, founded in 1912, is the magazine of the Poetry Society, UK, and has a long-standing policy of publishing the very best work by new, up and coming poets, and established poets. All submissions are read by the editor and considered on an equal basis. Unfortunately, due to the volume of submissions we receive, we cannot offer any individual criticism. Our aim is to accept or reject work within three months – but please read, and follow, the submission guidelines below, in order to facilitate our response.
More Information here:
poetrysociety.org.ukDeadline: Ongoing
The Dublin Review
The Dublin Review welcomes submissions of fiction and non-fiction previously unpublished in the English language. We do not accept poetry submissions. We especially encourage submissions from members of groups traditionally underrepresented in literary magazines and other cultural forums.
