RTÉ SHORT STORY COMPETITION 2023: SHORTLIST ANNOUNCED
RTÉ SHORT STORY COMPETITION 2023: SHORTLIST ANNOUNCED
WINNERS TO BE ANNOUNCED AT SPECIAL LIVE EVENT AND LIVE ON RTÉ RADIO 1 ON FRIDAY 27th OCTOBER
INFO: www.rte.ie/writing
TICKETS: https://www.paviliontheatre.ie/events/view/arena-short-story
FOLLOW: #rteshortstory
Image features 2022 winner, Brendan Killeen for ‘Big Why, Little Why’ along with last year’s judges.
RTÉ has announced details of the ten exciting new stories which have been shortlisted for the RTÉ Short Story Competition in honour of Francis MacManus 2023, from more than 1,700 entries.
The judges were writers Ferdia MacAnna, Kathleen MacMahon and Claire Kilroy.
Talking about this year’s stories on behalf of the judges, Kathleen MacMahon said that the stories “were a delight to read and a testament to the great Irish tradition of storytelling. There were stories that surprised us, stories that made us laugh, and stories that took the form in a new and exciting direction.”
The 2023 shortlist (in alphabetical order, by title) is:
- Artificial Intelligence for Psychotherapists, by Ilona Adams
- Breathe, by Robin Livingstone
- It All Began with the Turlough, by Caoimhín Gaffney
- Mr Hoo, by John O’Donnell
- Off Season, by Jamie Samson
- On Craigavon Bridge, by Peter McCauley
- Tessa and Vivianne, by Julie Cruickshank
- The Turkish Rug, by Natalie Ryan
- The Warbler, by Caitríona McArdle
- You, by Nadine O’Regan
(Details on the writers and their stories are included below. along with the RTÉ Radio 1 broadcast schedule)
The stories will be available to read on rte.ie/culture from the weekend of 14th – 15th October, and broadcast at 11.20pm each night on RTÉ Radio 1 from Monday 16th October as part of Late Date with Cathal Murray and Fiachna Ó Braonáin. Readers on this year’s series include Marty Rea, Aaron Monaghan, Janet Moran, Elaine O’Dwyer and Camille Lucy Ross.
The stories will also be regularly featured on Arena with Seán Rocks, leading up to this year’s live Arena/ RTÉ Short Story Awards evening which takes place at 7pm on Friday 27 October in the Pavilion Theatre, Dún Laoghaire, Co. Dublin. On the night, we’ll hear from our judges, Claire Kilroy, Ferdia MacAnna and Kathleen MacMahon, the shortlisted writers and each of the stories in live performance before the judges award their top prizes.
Tickets are available at: https://www.paviliontheatre.ie/events/view/arena-short-story.
The winning writer will receive €5,000, while the second and third placed writers will receive €4,000 and €3,000 respectively. A further seven runners-up will receive €250 each.
Sarah Binchy, series producer said: “There’s a freshness, assurance and playfulness to these writers’ treatment of their diverse stories of innocence and experience, loss and longing and sharp alertness to the natural world. We’re looking forward very much to sharing the shortlist on air with our listeners – as brought to life by our talented actors– ahead of the finale in the Pavilion, where we’ll hear a flavour of all the stories in live performance, gain insights from the judges on the short story form, and find out who’s won the top prizes.”
Set up in 1986 to honour writer and broadcaster Francis MacManus, the RTÉ Short Story Competition has been a critically important launch pad for new and emerging writers in Ireland. Past winners and shortlisted writers include Claire Keegan, Danielle McLaughlin, Anthony Glavin, Chris Binchy, Nuala O’Connor, Liz Nugent, Colin Walsh, Stephen Walsh, Austin Duffy and Sarah Gilmartin.
For more on the RTÉ Short Story Competition, see www.rte.ie/writing.
ABOUT THE 2023 SHORTLISTED STORIES AND THEIR AUTHORS
The broadcast schedule, as part of Late Date with Cathal Murray and Fiachna Ó Braonáin, nightly (except for Saturday 21 October) at 11.20pm starting Monday 16 October is:
- Monday 16 Oct: The Turkish Rug, by Natalie Ryan, read by Andrew Bennett
- Tuesday 17 Oct: Tessa and Vivianne, by Julie Cruickshank, read by Janet Moran
- Wednesday 18 Oct: Off Season, by Jamie Samson, read by Rory Nolan
- Thursday 19 Oct: Breathe, by Robin Livingstone, read by Marty Rea
- Friday 20 October: It All Began with the Turlough, by Caoimhín Gaffney, read by Aaron Monaghan
- There will be no story broadcast on Saturday 21st October
- Sunday 22 October: You, by Nadine O’Regan, read by Kathy Rose O’Brien
- Monday 23 October: Artificial Intelligence for Psychotherapists, by Ilona Adams, read by Camille Lucy Ross
- Tuesday 24 October: On Craigavon Bridge, by Peter McCauley, read by David Pearse
- Wednesday 25 October: Mr Hoo, by John O’Donnell, read by Emmet Farrell
- Thursday 26 October: The Warbler, by Caitríona McArdle, read by Elaine O’Dwyer
The Turkish Rug, by Natalie Ryan
“The rug was delivered the fortnight after Samuel returned from Istanbul. He’d extended his business trip layover to visit the ancient city, taking the weekend to absorb its history and culture, to soak and be scoured clean in its baths. Helen had encouraged him to take the extra time. She’d wanted to rest on holidays nowadays, didn’t fancy going here, there and everywhere. The Canaries would do her from now on…”
Natalie Ryan was born in Ireland, but spent her childhood in Ghana, West Africa. After an MA in Creative Writing at UCD, she won the Bryan MacMahon Short Story Award at Listowel Writers’ Week (2011). A Words Ireland 2020 mentee, she has been shortlisted for The Hennessy (2015/2021) and previous Francis MacManus (2011) awards and published in The Stinging Fly Magazine and All Over Ireland, a 2015 Faber and Faber anthology. She has a boutique in Greystones but lives in Dublin with her husband and their three boys.
About the story: Natalie says: “The catalyst was the image of a half-rolled Turkish rug that I saw in a bedroom once. I work in retail, the fitting room can be like the confession box, and I was struck by the amount of women—specifically the boomer generation—struggling to adjust to recently retired partners and these same partners trying to reconcile life without the identifier of work. I’m interested in the power dynamics of relationships and how they evolve, or don’t, over time. The rug also served to represent we choose to reveal of ourselves to the world and what we roll up tight and keep hidden.”
She adds: “At the Cúirt festival in April, rather maudlin after a slew of rejections, I told a writer friend that I was going to try one more story and if it wasn’t published, I would throw the towel in and have a clean house and a to-list that would actually get done. After a few days of literary immersion, I returned to real life and suburbia and this story insisted on being written. The house remains in squalor!”
The Turkish Rug by Natalie Ryan will be read on air by Andrew Bennett.
*****
Tessa and Vivianne, by Julie Cruickshank
“On an early morning trip to the bathroom I saw my mother standing beside the window in her bedroom. She had been dead for three weeks by then.
She wore the outfit she had been buried in, a turquoise peacock patterned caftan she had made herself, with a matching bandana, arranged to cover the scar that ran from her throat to just above her ear…”
Originally from Galway, Julie Cruickshank lives and works in Dublin. This is her third time to be shortlisted for this competition; she was previously shortlisted for Beneath the Trees, Where Nobody Sees in 2020, and last year with The Coast of Africa.
About the story: Julie says: “I thought about writing a ghost story originally, but not a scary one, and it occurred to me that the most persistent, nosy and irritating ghost of all would be a mother. I became more forgiving of the mother character as I wrote and I identified more with her as the story
emerged, how, like many women, she muddled along, doing the best she could, in difficult circumstances.
“At some point in our adult lives I think we generally try to come to terms with our parents’ imperfections and limitations, minor and more serious, and let go; this story is about making peace with the loss that this entails, both real and imagined.”
*****
Off Season, by Jamie Samon
“This was Torremolinos in March, and it was barely even March, and it was barely even Torremolinos. A stretch of coast called La Carihuela, in fact – about two kilometres down the promenade from the rowdy centre of town. Certainly a kind of paradise, but a freakish, menacing, off-duty paradise, all dead beaches and shivering palms, boarded-up casinos, dark shops plastered with peeling inducements. The bodies that trundled across the playa belonged not to the young and beautiful but to blitzed-out pensioners in winter coats. It was my kind of place.”
Jamie Samson (pen name of Jamie O’Donoghue) is a writer from Dublin. His fiction has been published in The Irish Times and The Ogham Stone. He was a finalist at the 2019 Hennessy Literary Awards in the First Fiction category. He currently works as a copywriter and has lived in various countries, including France, Spain, Israel, the Czech Republic, and Canada.
About the story
Jamie says: “The Costa del Sol in late winter has a very peculiar atmosphere, with its cold palm trees and vacant boardwalks. It seemed like the perfect setting for a story about love and nostalgia, and the disappointments that arise when we try to revive the past.”
Off Season by Jamie Samson will be read on air by Rory Nolan.
*****
Breathe, by Robin Livingstone
“He’s 17 but looks 15. He’s wearing a blue Fred Perry polo, Wranglers, a pair of cherry-red Doctor Marten shoes. Because it’s the summer side of May he’s got his jumper knotted around his waist. He’s so skinny the only time he ever had a pair of RUC handcuffs on he slid his hands in and out of them to pass the time in the back of the Land Rover…”
Robin Livingstone has been a journalist on a local newspaper in Belfast for 35 years, covering a wide range of issues during the worst years of the conflict and latterly in times of relative peace. He also pens a weekly newspaper diary in which he takes a light-hearted view of the stories in the news. He has a passion for Irish wildlife and the outdoors and is greatly attached to his blackthorn and binoculars. He is married with three children and is currently besotted with his first granddaughter.
About the story: “I was a young journalist around the time that plastic bullets started to take their deadly toll and have both personal and professional experience of the devastation wrought by a supposedly ‘non-lethal’ weapon. It’s an issue that has stayed with me as I’ve grown older.”
Breathe by Robin Livingstone will be read on air by Marty Rea on Thursday 19 October on RTÉ Radio 1.
*****
You, by Nadine O’Regan
“You think about him all the time. It’s been a month since you broke up and you have a lump in your throat, permanently. His favourite band release a new album and you wonder if he likes it. You see a black leather jacket he’d look nice in and you fantasise about buying it for him. You turn up in places you think he’ll be – the cheap hamburger place off Dame Street, the Gingerman bar on Fenian Street, the indie club night in Lost Lane. You are addicted to his Twitter feed. You look at your WhatsApp constantly in case he texts or even just to see if he’s online….”
Nadine O’Regan is an award-winning journalist, presenter and podcaster. Editor of the Business Post Magazine, the culture and lifestyle magazine published weekly with the Irish media brand, she is also a broadcaster who has presented shows on RTÉ Radio 1 (Late Date, Future Sounds and Rising Time), Phantom FM (The Kiosk) and Today FM (Songs in the Key of Life). From Skibbereen in Co. Cork, Nadine has an M.Phil. in Creative Writing from Trinity College Dublin. She lives in Dublin with her husband Shane and son Oscar.
About the story
Nadine says: “Earlier this year I took part in an online creative writing workshop with the author David Nicholls. He had given us a prompt to pen a scene that involved three characters, two of whom were speaking to each other, and a third who was observing from a distance. At the time, I was on maternity leave, and I was spending a lot of my mornings in the park, walking my sleeping baby in the buggy. One day I saw a couple having an argument that sounded very much like their relationship was ending. It got me thinking: what if another character was there, listening surreptitiously — and what if this character was somehow part of their story? This short story is a tale of romantic betrayal and it’s also about the way we live now — so many of us devote our lives to social media posts and WhatsApp messages, but is it serving only to increase our sense of isolation?”
*****
It All Began with the Turlough, by Caoimhín Gaffney
“The turlough appeared now in early summer instead of its autumn arrival as the 30 years previous. Blow-ins would be forgiven for thinking it was a lake that belonged here, but locals know it had taken over the depressed field that lay off the main road beside the graveyard. A house, which no one had ever seen anyone living in, sat on the other side, with yellow gorse peering over it from the hill known as Carrick, or the Rock. The turlough’s water bounced light around the hills, with the neighbours opposite complaining that it was reflecting sunlight into their sitting room and moonlight right into their bedroom and, either way, they could see too much or they couldn’t see anything at all…”
Caoimhín Gaffney is an artist, filmmaker and writer. Born in Dublin and living in Cavan, their work has been shown at exhibitions and screenings across Ireland and in the UK, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the United States. In 2017, a monograph titled Unseen By My Open Eyes was published which featured four of their film scripts and their corresponding translations in Irish, Persian, Korean and Mandarin. In 2022 they completed their PhD about queer artist filmmaking practice at Ulster University. Their work is featured in the art collections of the Arts Council, Imma and the Crawford Art Gallery. www.caoimhin.xyz
About the story: Caoimhín says: “Over the past few years, I’ve walked to and photographed a local turlough, sometimes surprised to return to its disappearance. I’m interested in how we view nature as something that should provide us with our wants and needs, and how often we also view it with irritation when it defies or inconveniences us. So, I had the idea of this innocuous turlough — and all the surrounding lakes in Cavan — beginning to operate of their own volition, and how this would restructure society around them and ultimately reshape our relationship to nature.”
It All Began with The Turlough, by Caoimhín Gaffney, will be read on air by Aaron Monaghan.
*****
Artificial Intelligence for Psychotherapists, by Ilona Adams
“You’re making friends with a robot?”
“I swear, my therapist told me to.”
“Forgive me if I suddenly doubt your therapist’s licence.”
Caoimhe looks at me with all the caring country force of her mother and grandmother before
her. For a moment, a mirage of a dusty rolling pin and an apron.
“Don’t look at me like that if you’re not going to bake me scones or something.”
“I could bake you scones if you think it would help…”
Ilona Adams was born in Dublin and studied engineering in UCD. She currently works part time as a programmer and has just moved to Cork to begin an MA in Music Performance on the viola. At present, her writing career mostly consists of sending uninvited reviews of old films to her friends via email.
About the story
Ilona says: “Artificial Intelligence for Psychotherapists was inspired by the recent boom in high quality AI chatbots. It was not inspired by advice from my real therapist!”
Artificial Intelligence for Psychotherapists by Ilona Adams will be read on air by Camille Lucy Ross.
*****
On Craigavon Bridge, by Peter McCauley
“‘We’ve gone and lost the dog. That’s what we’ll be telling her. We’ve gone and lost the dog. All you had to do was grab hold of it. Now it’s gone. Her face’ll be a sight when we tell her that we’ve gone and lost the dog’.
It was nearly midnight. A Tuesday in April. We walked along Foyle Road. Fierce cold. Biting wind coming off the Foyle. The dog’s empty leash dangling at my side…”
About Peter: “I was born and raised in Derry, and I have lived there ever since. I graduated from the Open University in 2018 with a first-class honours degree in English Language and Literature. I am passionate about developing a creative writing career. I have had some poetry published in the past and I am working on three children’s books that are in various stages of development at the moment. Also, I want to continue the work I’ve started with ‘On Craigavon Bridge’, namely, to set a series of stories, both for page and stage, in my native city of Derry.”
About the story: Peter says: “The story started out as a script that I’d entered for a BBC writing opportunity. It didn’t work out, so eventually I reworked it into a short story for this competition. It is not autobiographical (I have never owned a dog!) It was born out of my desire to set stories on the streets of my native Derry; stories that would celebrate the extraordinary in the ordinary, the universal in the local, and showcase my city as a unique, distinctive and compelling backdrop to the stories we tell ourselves and each other about what it means to be human.”
***
Mr Hoo, by John O’Donnell
“One says, ‘Do you want to tell us why you did it, Bird?’
I fold my wings over my head. The African grey can speak hundreds of words, did you know that? But it doesn’t understand what it’s saying; it’s just repeating the sounds it thinks people want to hear.
The other one sighs. ‘Come on, Robert,’ he says, and I scowl. My father’s name.
Mam starts stroking the back of my neck, which makes me want to cry…”
John O’Donnell is a writer and a lawyer. His work has been published and broadcast in Ireland and abroad. Awards include the Irish National Poetry Prize, and the New Irish Writing Awards for Poetry and Fiction. He has published five poetry collections. His collection of short stories Almost the Same Blue was longlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize. Rainbow Baby, a play for radio, was broadcast on RTE’s Drama On One and won a prize at the New York Festivals Radio Awards. He lives and works in Dublin.
About the story: John says: “Mr Hoo is loosely based on a real case; I still remember the late Professor Nial Osborough recounting the grisly facts to us in First Year Criminal Law. As a kid, the need to belong is overpowering; you’ll do nothing your parents ask of you, but you’ll do anything for your friends.”
Mr Hoo by John O’Donnell will be read on air by Emmet Farrell.
*****
The Warbler, by Caitriona McArdle
“The car shook along the road, gravel spitting into the verge, the mirror on my side scraping the hedgerows, leaving a haze of insects and dandelion seeds whispering past the window. Morning light blinked through the tangle of brambles and bushes, exposed the streaky windscreen and burned into my eyes. I pulled the visor down, turned up the radio. My father drove more slowly as the grass growing in the middle of the road got thicker, the ground beneath it softer. I shuffled in my seat, the torn edges of the plastic cover scratching the back of my thighs, my denim shorts damp and heavy in the warm air. A small but grievous sigh escaped me without much thought…”
Caitríona McArdle grew up in the midlands and now lives in Dublin city with her young daughter. She works as an architect.
About the story
Caitríona says: “The story is semi-autobiographical, in that none of it happened but all of it is true. It’s set in an Offaly bog in the early Nineties, a place and time that is forever etched in my mind, but for which I hold little fondness. A story of a father and daughter navigating grief and early adolescence, it’s about how, even with the best of intentions, we fail to see the kind of love that is being asked of us, while the kind of love that we give is more seen than we might realise.”
The Warbler by Caitríona McArdle will be read on air by Elaine O’Dwyer at 11.20pm on Thursday 26 October on RTÉ Radio 1.
FRIDAY 27 OCTOBER
Arena / RTÉ Short Story Competition Awards Night Special goes out live from the Pavilion Theatre, Dun Laoghaire at 7pm, hosted by Sean Rocks, with judges Ferdia MacAnna, Kathleen MacMahon and Claire Kilroy, featuring live music and extracts in live performance from all the stories, interviews with the shortlisted writers and the announcement of the top prizes. For tickets see https://www.paviliontheatre.ie/events/view/arena-short-story