Writing Competition 2024
Competition Winners 2024
Flash
1st Place: After My Father – Amanda O’Calllaghan
2nd Place: I Am Okay – Sian Quill
3rd Place: The Magic Word for Happy – Pauline Murphy
Memoir
1st Place: Shattered Light – Joanne Touhey
2nd Place: There is a Knot I hold Inside of Me – Bernadetter Hegarty
3rd Place: The Communion Dress – Sinead Ingoldsby
Short Story
1st Place: Stargazer Annemarie Lally
2nd Place: Daoine Gan Ti Ciara Brokerick
3rd Place: Kerplunked – Patrick Holloway
Poetry
1st Place: A Sailors Wife Sings Elgar and Takes a Bath – Esther Lay
2nd Place: Sleeping by the Coast – Sinead Griffin
3rd Place: Millefeiuille – Judy O’Kane
Shortlist 2024
Poetry
Accessible
A Pathway Home
A Sailors Wife Sings Elgar and takes a Bath
Boy in May, Men in June
I Live with Him in my Soul all the time
Maiden Mother Crone
Millefeuille
Revisiting Saint-Arnoult Alone
Sleeping by the Coast
To Know the Rain
Memoir/Personal Essay
A Boy’s Favourite Thing
Gie and Take
The Communion Dress
There is a Knot I hold Inside Me
A Little Murder
Learning to Make Fire
Shattered Light
One of those Days
Flash
Runners
The Breaker Boys
Application for an Entry Level Secretarial Job
There’s a Catch
After My Father
I am Okay
Earth Rest
Cathy’s Theory of Happiness
Lisa
The Magic Word for Happy
Short Story
Everything is in Place
Home Sick
Free Falling
Kerplunked
Stargazer
My Daily Undoing
True Crime Story
Daoine Gan Ti
Thicker than Water
Jack Tracy
Longlist 2024
Poetry
A Pathway Home
A sailors wife sings Elgar and takes a bath
Accessible
Bad Dream
Boys in May, Men in June
Curlew
Eel retreat at Lough Neagh
Enemy in the Woods
Every day’s a school day
Humble Pie
kitchen Utensils
I Live with Him in my Soul all the time
Last Night
Mad as a Lighthouse keeper
Maiden Mother Crone
Millefeuille
New Earth
Oars
Revisiting Saint-Arnoult Alone
Seior
WCNSF
Unravelling
Victim
Uncle Pat
Uncle Willie
Sinking
Sleeping by the coast
Unearthly
Sounds Like Home
To know the rain
Memoir/Personal Essay
A boy’s favourite thing
A little murder
A Place of Memories Hook Head
A portrait of a disease
Abnormal
Dover
Estranged Café
Give and Take
Learning to make fire
Long teeth and horns
Moonwalking
On Writing
One of those days
Reply to mam’s letter
River
Shattered light
Teachers open doors or do they?
The boy in the sink
The communion dress
The delicate balance lies between us
The Ogham stone
The surfers
There is a knot I hold inside me
Why Me?
Flash Fiction
Runners
Causeway
Laundry Card
The Breaker Boys
A Sound in Darkness
Application for an entry level secretarial job…
Collecting Stone
Pomegranate
Second Sight
The Bride of Arta
Cathy’s Theory of Happiness
Uinnseann
Spit Swallow
Carribean Hounds
Reunion
Lisa
Place Your Bets
The Magic Word for Happy
The Alcoholic
Smiling
There’s a Catch
The Wader
I am Okay
After My Father
Earth Rest
Dark Blue on Purple
The Memory of Bees
Short Story
Everything is in Place
Home sick
DNA
Folks like that
Printer Guy
Trying to get back to Pasadena
Falling
Death Toll
Default Mode
Little wishes
Kerplunked
The Last Post
Just Say the Word
Revelations
Stargazer
A Different View
The Irish Rover
Your Move
The Saddest Song
A Penny for Them.
My Daily Undoing
True Crime Story
Daoine Gan Ti
Safe
New Shoes
Alice in Edinburgh
Cruel Woman
The Vicars Secret
Secrets Never Hide the Truth from a Lie
A Good Man :
Thicker than water
Jack Tracy
Dante
The Evening Class
Something of herself
The Secret Bookclub
Precious
Brewery Town
The Doshmans and us
ashes to ashes dust to dust
Longlist 2024
Poetry
A Pathway Home
A sailors wife sings Elgar and takes a bath
Accessible
Bad Dream
Boys in May, Men in June
Curlew
Eel retreat at Lough Neagh
Enemy in the Woods
Every day’s a school day
Humble Pie
kitchen Utensils
I Live with Him in my Soul all the time
Last Night
Mad as a Lighthouse keeper
Maiden Mother Crone
Millefeuille
New Earth
Oars
Revisiting Saint-Arnoult Alone
Seior
WCNSF
Unravelling
Victim
Uncle Pat
Uncle Willie
Sinking
Sleeping by the coast
Unearthly
Sounds Like Home
To know the rain
Memoir/Personal Essay
A boy’s favourite thing
A little murder
A Place of Memories Hook Head
A portrait of a disease
Abnormal
Dover
Estranged Café
Give and Take
Learning to make fire
Long teeth and horns
Moonwalking
On Writing
One of those days
Reply to mam’s letter
River
Shattered light
Teachers open doors or do they?
The boy in the sink
The communion dress
The delicate balance lies between us
The Ogham stone
The surfers
There is a knot I hold inside me
Why Me?
Flash Fiction
Runners
Causeway
Laundry Card
The Breaker Boys
A Sound in Darkness
Application for an entry level secretarial job…
Collecting Stone
Pomegranate
Second Sight
The Bride of Arta
Cathy’s Theory of Happiness
Uinnseann
Spit Swallow
Carribean Hounds
Reunion
Lisa
Place Your Bets
The Magic Word for Happy
The Alcoholic
Smiling
There’s a Catch
The Wader
I am Okay
After My Father
Earth Rest
Dark Blue on Purple
The Memory of Bees
Short Story
Everything is in Place
Home sick
DNA
Folks like that
Printer Guy
Trying to get back to Pasadena
Falling
Death Toll
Default Mode
Little wishes
Kerplunked
The Last Post
Just Say the Word
Revelations
Stargazer
A Different View
The Irish Rover
Your Move
The Saddest Song
A Penny for Them.
My Daily Undoing
True Crime Story
Daoine Gan Ti
Safe
New Shoes
Alice in Edinburgh
Cruel Woman
The Vicars Secret
Secrets Never Hide the Truth from a Lie
A Good Man :
Thicker than water
Jack Tracy
Dante
The Evening Class
Something of herself
The Secret Bookclub
Precious
Brewery Town
The Doshmans and us
ashes to ashes dust to dust
Prizes
The winner of each category will receive a cash prize of €500 and a free weekend pass to Write By The Sea festival 2024.
All four winning pieces will be published in the winter issue of The Waxed Lemon Literary Journal.
The runners-up in each category will receive €300 and third place will receive €200.
Categories
There are four competition categories:
1. Fiction Short Story (maximum 2,500 words)
2. Flash Fiction (maximum 700 words)
3. Poetry (maximum 40 lines)
4. Memoir/Personal Essay (maximum 1,000 words)
The independent panel of judges will select the winners and each category winner will be invited to read their work at a public event as part of the festival.
Rules and Conditions
- Entries must be the original work of the entrant and should not have been previously published in any format, online or print, self-published or paid.
- Entries must be double-spaced in Microsoft Word, 12 point, Times New Roman font – please do not include images or coloured fonts – and should be saved as .docx or .doc documents. The name of the entrant should not appear anywhere in the document. (see Note A below).
- Entries must be submitted via the Online Entry Form on the Competition Page of the WBTS website, writebythesea.ie where entrants will upload their names and contact details.
- All entries must be in English.
- 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.
- Should your entry win a prize or be published elsewhere, please let us know so that we can remove it from the WBTS 2024 Writing Competition.
- The decision of the judges is final and no correspondence/contact will be entered into and no feedback will be given to individual entrants.
- Entrants should retain copies of their work as entries will NOT be returned.
- Committee members and relatives of committee members of the Write By The Sea festival, its agents, contributors or sponsors are not eligible to enter the competition.
- All non-winning entries will be deleted from our records after three months from the date of the announcement of the competition results.
Note A: It breaks our hearts when we have to disqualify entrants who break the rules. Sadly, each year we have to disqualify a significant number of the entries for disregarding simple rules such as not submitting text in double-spacing or including their names and addresses in the text of their submissions. Please remember to spell check and proofread your work. We look forward to receiving your entries and we wish you every success in the 2024 competition.
Timeline
- Saturday 9th March 2024 – submissions open through writebythesea.ie
- Friday 21st June 2024, competition closes at 11.59pm
- Friday 2nd August 2024– shortlist of the winning entry titles will be posted on the WBTS website, writebythesea.ie
- Sunday 1st September 2024 – winners will be notified by WBTS
- Each category winner will be invited to read their work at a public event as part of the festival.
- October 2024 – the winning pieces will be published on the WBTS website
