This spring, The Five Lamps Arts Festival is inviting writers based in Ireland to submit their flash fiction stories of up to 500 words. Poet and fiction-writer Mary O’Donnell and poet Sara Ribeiro will be the judges of the competition.

The overall winner will be awarded a €250 cash prize and their story will be published in the Dublin Inquirer, an independent, subscriber-funded newspaper serving Ireland’s capital since 2015. Second and third place will receive €150 and €100 respectively.

We will also be offering a mentoring package to an entrant who represents a New Irish voice, a writer who has chosen to make Ireland their home and is at an early- or emerging-stage in their writing career. This entrant may be one of our winners, or they may be an entry that the judges noted as promising. This package will include

• one-to-one feedback on their entry from an established Irish writer;
• subscriptions to some of Ireland’s leading literary journals;
• a meeting with a publishing insider who will demystify Ireland’s literary scene;
• and publication of their competition entry in the Dublin Inquirer.

Each winner will have the opportunity to read at a prize giving ceremony which will take place during the Five Lamps Arts Festival in Dublin’s North East Inner City.

Tips for writers: 

• We’re looking for a well-written, self-contained fictional story with a beginning, middle, and end. We’re not looking for any particular theme or genre, we just want to find ourselves momentarily mesmerised in no more than 500 words.
• Is this your first time writing flash fiction? A good tip is to keep your story small, focus on the micro – not too many characters, one location, be in the moment. Small stories often contain the most sacred observations. But also, feel free to go wild. You can take us to space, unknown dimensions, the past, the future, around the world in 80 words.
• Also, don’t feel like you have to write the full 500 words. If your story feels done at 300 words, that’s fine.
• Writer David Gaffney’s tips on writing Flash Fiction is a great article: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012 may/14/how-to-write-flash-fiction

To enter and to read our guidelines/rules, please consult the ENTRY FORM

All entries for the Five Lamps Arts Festival Flash Fiction competition must be submitted by Wednesday 19th February 2025 at 5pm. Contact fivelampsflashfiction@gmail.com for any further enquiries.