From the Well 2025 Short Story Competition Open for Submissions

Text which reads from the well short story competition on a green background

Cork County Council’s Library and Arts Service is accepting submissions to the ‘From the Well’ Short Story competition 2025. ‘From the Well’ is a long-standing short story anthology published annually. Now in its 21st year, it continues to provide an opportunity for writers in the short story genre to have their work published.

The competition invites entrants to submit a short story of no longer than 2000 words. Twenty stories will be selected for inclusion in the 2025 edition of the short story anthology. Selection will be based on the quality of writing, structure, and suitability to the anthology. The judge will read the stories without knowledge of who the writer is in order to have a fair process. 

The winning story and two others will feature in the 2025 West Cork Literary Festival as part of the anthology launch event in Bantry Library.  The winning writer will be offered a place on a short story workshop at West Cork Literary Festival with tutor Ross Raisin, between the 16th and 18th of July, and will receive a €250 contribution towards accommodation. 

Mayor of the County of Cork, Cllr. Joe Carroll welcomed the opening of submissions saying, 

This competition is a fantastic opportunity for writers to showcase their talent and have their work published and promoted by Cork County Council’s Library and Arts Service.  I strongly encourage all aspiring writers to take part and share their stories with us.

This year entries will be blind selected by Patrick Holloway, an Irish writer of fiction and poetry and editor of the literary journal ‘The Four Faced Liar’.  Mr. Holloway has won the Bath Short Story Award, The Molly Keane Creative Writing Prize, The Flash 500 Prize, The Allingham Fiction contest and was the recipient of the Paul McVeigh Residency in 2023. His work was previously published in ‘From the Well’ in 2023, and appears in The Stinging Fly, The London Magazine, Poetry Ireland, The Moth, Southword, The Ilanot Review, Carve, The Irish Times and The Irish Independent. The Language of Remembering, Patrick’s debut Novel, will be published this year.

Conditions of entry and details for online applications are in the link below from today and will close at 5.00pm on Friday the 28th of February 2025.

For further information about the competition, contact Cork County Council’s Arts office by emailing arts@corkcoco.ie(link sends email)