The Frazzled Lit Short Story Award 2025
Open for entries on June 1st
We are excited to tease some details of the Frazzled Lit Short Story Award 2025, which will open for entries from June 1st until June 30th, and will be judged by international award-winning Irish author Nuala O’Connor!
Nuala O’Connor lives in Galway, Ireland. Her sixth novel SEABORNE, about Irish-born pirate Anne Bonny, was published in April 2024 by New Island, and was shortlisted for Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards. Her novel NORA (New Island), about Nora Barnacle and James Joyce, was a Top 10 historical novel in the New York Times. She won Irish Short Story of the Year at the 2022 Irish Book Awards and is editor at flash e-journal Splonk.
You can watch my interview with Nuala in our Writer To Writer section.
The prizes for the competition will be as follows:
1st Prize: € 1,000
2nd Prize: € 500
3rd Prize: € 300
All ten shortlisted stories will be published in a special issue of Frazzled Lit.
There will be an entry fee of € 15 euro, necessary to make up the prize fund.
We appreciate that some writers who may wish to enter will not be able to afford the entry fee, so we are offering 20 free entries to low-income writers. Free entry is for one story only, and limited to one per applicant.
To apply for free entry, click on the button below (note that when all free entries have been awarded, the link will become inactive).
Short story entries to the award must be between 750-2,000 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, so long as they were not published.
Entries must be made via Duosuma, and all entries will be blind-read by Jennifer and Laura.
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 enjoy 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 not acceptable to us.
It goes without saying but we’re saying it anyway:
Frazzled Lit will not tolerate work that is generated by AI.
You may send any ENQUIRIES to frazzledlitmag@gmail.com