Dingle Lit Short Story Competition 2025

Submissions for the 2025 Dingle Lit Short Story Competition are now closed.

Di scover the 2024 winners and read their stories.

Prizes

There will be 1st prize, runner-up, and highly commended stories in both the Irish and English categories.

1^st Prize – €500

Runner-up – €250

Highly Commended – €100

In addition, we will publish the winners, runners-up, and highly commended stories on our website, and the winners will also be invited to the 2025 Dingle Literary Festival to read from their work.

Judges

This year’s guest judges are John Patrick McHugh, who will judge entries in English, and Éilís Ní Dhuibhne, who will judge entries as Gaeilge.

John Patrick McHugh is the author of the short story collection Pure Gold and the upcoming novel Fun and Games, to be published by 4th Estate in 2025. His work has appeared in The Stinging Fly, Winter Papers, Banshee, The Tangerine and Granta and been broadcast on BBC Radio3. He is the fiction editor for Banshee magazine.

Éilís Ní Dhuibhne is a prolific novelist and short story writer who has written in both Irish and English throughout the course of her award-winning career. Her body of work contains over 25 books, including the novel The Dancers Dancing, which won the Orange Prize for Fiction, and Twelve Thousand Days, a memoir. Her Selected Stories was published in 2017 by Dalkey Archive Press. A member of Aosdána since 2004, she is currently an ambassador for the Irish Writers Centre and President of the Folklore of Ireland Society.

Entry Guidelines

We will welcome stories in English and Irish.

The short story entered must be unpublished and not scheduled for publication in print or online. This includes personal blogs and self-published collections. Please let us know immediately if this changes by emailing shortstory@dinglelit.ie

The award is open to all writers who are resident on the island of Ireland at the time of submission.
Entries must not have been, by the date of submission, published or broadcast in any medium.
Stories submitted to other publications and competitions are acceptable. If your story is accepted, you must inform Dingle Lit immediately by email shortstory@dinglelit.ie, and will be withdrawn.
Entries must be typed, in font size 12pt, black, double-spaced, and single side (A4), and number your pages.
The maximum word count for entries is 3,000 words.
Please submit your Word document by email to shortstory@dinglelit.ie
No more than ONE story may be submitted by any entrant.
To ensure anonymity, please do not write your name or any other personal details on the manuscript. See the instructions below.
If your entry is long or short-listed by another competition or offered publication after you have entered the 2024 Dingle Lit Short Story Competition, you must let us know immediately by emailing shortstory@dinglelit.ie
The cover letter should be on a separate page to ensure anonymity. See the instructions below.
Please submit your name, address, telephone number, and email address separately under the heading
Your entry must be accompanied by a €15 fee. Entries without the fee will not be considered. The proceeds of the competition cover prize administration.
Payment can be made via PayPal via our website – see the button at the top of the page. Payment will NOT be accepted via cash or cheque.
Stories generated by AI will not be accepted. Non-fiction, essays, memoirs, graphic novels, or poetry will not be accepted.
The decision of the adjudicators is final. No editorial feedback can be provided on stories.
Only winners and runners-up will be notified directly.
The judges will not engage in any correspondence regarding their decision.
Dingle Lit reserves the right to select for publication and/or broadcast (including online) such entries as may be deemed appropriate, in any year.
Members of the 2025 Dingle Lit Festival Organising Committee are not eligible to enter the short story competition.
Stories cannot be altered or substituted after entry.
By entering the competition, you are accepting the rules of the competition.
The copyright remains the author’s but each author, in submitting their stories, consents to Dingle Lit publishing online and in print, or otherwise broadcasting, long-listed stories.

Instructions:

Pay the €15 entry fee using the PayPal button below
Email your entry to shortstory@dinglelit.ie with the following two attachements:

Attachment 1: the story for submission in a Microsoft Word document format. As the competition is judged anonymously, we request that you do not write your name or personal details anywhere on this document.

Attachment 2: cover letter (separate text document attached to the same email, not in the body of the email). The cover letter should include:

Your name
Story title
Email address
Email associated with your PayPal account (if different from your contact email address)
Phone number
Postal address
Image of PayPal receipt or the PayPal transaction ID number
How you heard about the competition
A brief bio (optional)

Your name must not be anywhere on your short story submission. If it is, your entry will be automatically disqualified (you will not be refunded or notified if this is the case, so please double-check your entry before uploading it).

15.00

Fee

Entries will be accepted from Sunday, December 1st, 2024, through to midnight on February 28, 2025.