As part of our Legends of the Fall series, readers were invited to submit a piece of original short fiction of between 1,500 and 3,000 words inspired by the events of the last five years in Ireland. Many thanks to the hundreds of readers who submitted such excellent entries. We now have a shortlist of ten stories:
Bogged Down by Ciara Duffin
Staring At the Sea by John-Philip O'Connor
Surfacing by Mary Róisín McGill
Into the Red by John O'Donnell
Speaking Without Words by Stephen Fitzpatrick
All the Dead Birds by Danielle McLaughlin
Vicious Circular by Kieran Marsh
Samurai by Robert Hopkins
Garlic Fingers by EM Reapy
The Sweet Forebearance in the Streets by Mary O'Donoghue.
The shortlisted stories will be available to read from Monday at irishtimes.com/books
The winner will be decided by a panel consisting of Fintan O'Toole literary editor for The Irish Times and writers Donal Ryan and Eilis Ní Dhuibhne and will be published on Saturday Sept 28th.
