Davy Byrnes Irish Writing Award 2009

Sponsored by Davy Byrnes

Organised by The Stinging Fly in association with The Irish Times

€25,000 for the best short story

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5 runners-up prizes of €1,000.

Competition Judge: Richard Ford

The Stinging Fly in association with The Irish Times is delighted to announce the return of the Davy Byrnes Irish Writing Award, Ireland’s biggest short story competition and the world’s richest prize for a single short story.

The Davy Byrnes Irish Writing Award was previously held in 2004 as part of the Bloomsday Centenary celebrations. Over 1100 entries were received with Anne Enright eventually being declared the winner for her short story ‘Honey’. Also featured on the 2004 shortlist were Kevin Barry and Philip Ó Ceallaigh, who have both since won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature for their debut story collections.

In making the decision to sponsor the award for a second time, Redmond Doran of Davy Byrnes pointed to the huge success of the competition in 2004 and said that he hoped that the 2009 award would ‘seek out and reward writers with a similar level of talent and promise.’