The Stinging Fly

Our Summer 2026 issue is now available to order on our website 🌞 We are kicking off the summer in style with the launch of Issue 54 on Saturday night. Join us at our usual spot, the big yellow Synge Tent in Merrion Square Park. Tickets are still available via @ILFDublin website. Thank you to all our contributors for trusting us with their words, and thank you to our brilliant editorial team Lisa McInerney, Annemarie Ní Churreáin (@NiChurr), Emma Dabiri and Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh, for putting together another magnificent magazine issue. All orders will be sent out from May 18th onwards. stingingfly.org/product/summer…

@YanGeMay 📸 by Patrick Fleming

Judging the 2026 prize were novelist and short story writer @YanGeMay (Strange Beasts of China), Stinging Fly contributing editor and author Danny Denton (All Along The Echo) and FBA agent, Carrie Plitt The panel was chaired by our programme manager, Eoin Rogers. Awarding the prize, the judges stated: "Elegant and remarkably nuanced, Breathwork is a brilliant case study of short fiction’s ability to probe a wide range of human conditions while remaining exquisitely self-contained.”

We are delighted to announce that Rosa Mäkelä is the 2026 winner of The Stinging Fly/FBA Fiction Prize🎉🎉🎉 Established in 2022, the €2000 prize, sponsored by @FelicityBryan, is awarded annually to an emerging fiction writer published in The Stinging Fly during the previous year. This year we are also delighted to include a week long residency at The Mill France, a writing retreat giving writers the opportunity to focus on their work in the beautiful environs of rural France. stingingfly.org/news/rosa-make…

Tomorrow is the launch of The Stinging Fly Summer 2026 Issue 🖤 Join us for this exciting celebration of Issue 54, featuring contributor readings, conversation and connection – and a DJ session by Siobhan Kane. Hear from writers Luke Morgan, Eleanor Hooker, Alan McMonagle, Eva Morrissey, Lauren Collett and William Brady, who are featured in the new issue. The evening will also feature the announcement of the winner of this year’s Stinging Fly / @FelicityBryan Fiction Prize. Saturday, 20th May, 8pm in the Synge Tent @ILFDublin Merrion Square Park. Buy your tickets: ilfdublin.com/whats-on/festi… Enjoy these photos from last summer's launch, courtesy of Ger Holland📸

Winter 2026-27 Issue: Five Days Left To Submit ­ We are currently accepting submissions of fiction, creative non-fiction, and poetry for our Winter 2026-27 issue. The deadline to submit work is Wednesday May 20th at 5pm (Irish Time). As part of our current open submissions round, we invite poets writing in the Irish language to submit their work for consideration for the Comhchealg section of the magazine. We are not accepting Featured Poet submissions during this submission window. All work must be submitted via Submittable. The link to submit along with the submissions guidelines are available on our website. stingingfly.org/submissions/

After years of reading The Stinging Fly, I'm very excited to have a novel extract in the latest issue!! @stingingfly

Two days to go until The Stinging Fly Summer 2026 Issue Launch🌞 🗓️Saturday 16 May, 8pm, Merrion Square Park Book your ticket: ilfdublin.com/whats-on/festi… Join us for this eclectic celebration of the Summer 2026 issue, featuring contributor readings, conversation and connection – and a DJ session by music journalist, Siobhan Kane 🎵 Siobhan will be playing records - a special set responding to our cover artist Diarmuid Breen’s evocative painting 🎨 Event line-up: @LukeMorganPoet, Eleanor Hooker, @mcmonaglewriter, Eva Morrissey, @collett_lauren and William Brady The evening will also feature the announcement of the winner of this year’s Stinging Fly / @FelicityBryan Fiction Prize. The launch event is hosted in partnership with @ILFDublin

Join us for The Stinging Fly Summer 2026 Issue Launch this Saturday🌞🍦 All are welcome to this exciting celebration of the Summer 2026 issue, featuring contributor readings, conversation and connection – and a DJ session by Siobhan Kane 🎵 Hear from writers featured in the new issue @LukeMorganPoet, Eleanor Hooker, @mcmonaglewriter, Eva Morrissey, @collett_lauren and William Brady📚 The evening will also feature the announcement of the winner of this year’s Stinging Fly / @FelicityBryan Fiction Prize. The launch event is hosted in partnership with @ILFDublin 🎪 Book your tickets: ilfdublin.com/whats-on/festi… 📆 Saturday 16 May 🕰️ 8pm 📍 The Synge Tent, Merrion Square Park Dublin

NEW ONLINE FICTION | 'A Bellyflop Shouldn't Hurt Like This' by @LisaSHarding is available to read now. stingingfly.org/2026/05/06/a-b… ‘A radio station blares such shitty muzak that I double-check to make sure this is, in fact, the man who was my father back in Dublin.’

The Stinging Fly invites artists to submit potential cover art for our magazine. EXTENDED DEADLINE: Monday May 11th, 5pm (Irish Time). We invite artists to put forward up to three images for consideration. More Info: stingingfly.org/news/call-out-… Our magazine and book cover artists have included Pat Curran, Stephanie Deady, Niamh Flanagan, James Hanley, Alice Maher, Melissa O'Donnell and Lee Welch. Our two most recent magazine covers were found during a field-trip last year to the 195th RHA Annual Exhibition where we encountered the work of Robert Ryan, whose painting ‘The Conversation’ features on our climate issue cover, and Diarmuid Breen, who has provided ‘The Excursion’ for our upcoming Summer 2026 issue. We are not seeking artwork produced to any particular theme. We’re excited to find existing pieces that are fresh, striking, and specific to the artist’s personal style and approach. What excites you will also – hopefully – excite us. Artists must be over 18 and live on the island of Ireland. Our cover artists receive payment of 500 euro.

Danielle McLaughlin tells Ruth McKee which books she would save if her house was on fire 🔥📚 Her latest novel Rituals is out now with The Stinging Fly Press. Listen back: audioboom.com/posts/8896519-…

Loved this book sooooo much 🖤

NEW on our website: John Christopher Vaughan reviews Idiocy by Pierre Guyotat (trans. Peter Behrman de Sinéty) @NYRB_Imprints stingingfly.org/review/idiocy/ "It is not irrelevant that this, Guyotat’s parting statement to the world, is related in such lucid terms: he wanted to be loud and clear, to smash the window, to wake the sleeper up. It is not irrelevant that Guyotat writes, in this book, at the age of 78: ‘Life, as repetition, isn’t worth it; only the first time counts.’"

Spruce up your spring / summer reading list with Rituals 🐇🐚 Rituals has been making the rounds over April. Thanks to the editors at @IrishTimes @image_magazine and @TheGlossMag for spotlighting this brilliant new novel born out of an ongoing artistic collaboration between cork-based writer Danielle McLaughlin & visual artist Siobhán Rea. “Author Danielle McLaughlin had been fascinated by Rea’s morning drawings for a while, and the pair are long-term friends. In 2023, she decided to collaborate with Rea as the inspiration for a book. The result is Rituals, a gentle yet powerful novel in which the central character, Joan, is both comforted and trapped by her rigorous self-imposed daily habits.” – Gemma Tipton's interview with Danielle McLaughlin & Siobhán Rea in The Irish Times irishtimes.com/culture/books/…

Rituals, the new novel by Danielle McLaughlin is out now. “Rituals is warm, funny, full of humanity and peppered with devastating insight. I could spend another six hundred pages with these characters. You’re going to fall in love with this book.” –– novelist and short-story writer Jan Carson. stingingfly.org/product/ritual… Joan, a public servant in her fifties, is in the habit of living alone. Or rather, she’s in the habit of living with the many rituals and routines—some ordinary, some less so—that allow her to navigate her days. It’s a system that works very well for Joan… until it doesn’t. An unexpected career break prompts her to take in a lodger, a young man studying English Literature at the university. Together they must learn to negotiate everything from a shared bathroom to the hazards of global warming. Set in Cork city, Rituals takes us inside an obsessive mind and invites us to reflect upon the power and beauty contained within our daily lives, but also the dark grip of compulsion. By turns tender, funny and poignant, it celebrates the bravery involved in opening our hearts to change and to chance.