Top author to judge short story contest

Award-winning novelist Eimear McBride has been named as judge of this year’s Wild Atlantic Words short story competition.

Eimear McBride is the author of four novels: A Girl is a Half-formed Thing, The Lesser Bohemians, Strange Hotel, and The City Changes Its Face. She held the inaugural Creative Fellowship at the Beckett Research Centre, University of Reading, resulting in the performance text, Mouthpieces. Her full-length, non-fiction work, Something Out of Place: Women & Disgust, was published in 2021. In 2022, she wrote and directed A Very Short Film About Longing (DMC Films/BBC), which was selected for screening at the 2023 London Film Festival. She is the recipient of the Women’s Prize for Fiction, Goldsmiths Prize, Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, Kerry Prize, and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

The Wild Atlantic Words short story competition is jointly sponsored by Bridge St bar and Mayo Books Press, with a first prize of €500, and second prize, €250. A reading and prize-giving ceremony will take place during the 10th annual Wild Atlantic Words festival this October. Entry forms, along with a full list of competition rules and regulations, are available on the festival’s website, www.wildatlanticwords.ie. The closing date for entries is Thursday, July 31, at 5pm.

Founded in 2016, the Wild Atlantic Words festival takes place every autumn in Castlebar, County Mayo. This year’s festival will run from Monday, October 6th to Sunday, October 12th and will once again see the welcome return of the Wild Atlantic Words Festival Dome at Bridge Lane in the town centre.

The Wild Atlantic Words festival was created to provide a platform for all literary activities celebrating the connection between the rugged Atlantic coast and the inspiration it provides for the creation of stories which help us to make sense of the world and each other. Previous guests have included former President of Ireland, Mary Robinson, plus a host of acclaimed national and international authors, including Sally Rooney, Katriona O’Sullivan, Donal Ryan, Billy Keane, Professor Diarmaid Ferriter, Dominic Price, Maureen Gaffney, Paul Brady, Michael O’Connor, John Healy and many, many more.