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Southword is now open for poetry submissions until February 28th, 2021 for our autumn 2021 issue. Fiction submissions are open until March 31st, 2021. Guidelines and submission forms on our Submittable page.

Queer Love has a mixture of established writers of international standing, writers who have been making a splash in recent years and new emerging writers. The anthology also has a mixture of previously published stories, newly commissioned work and those entered through our call out. Featuring stories by John Boyne, Emma Donoghue, Mary Dorcey, Neil Hegarty, James Hudson, Emer Lyons, Jamie O’Connell, Colm Tóibín, Declan Toohey, and Shannon Yee. Order your copy here.

In April 2020 the publishers put out a call to poets to submit works of hope or its lack, which were about Covid-19 or an historical / fantasy plague; poems which were autobiographical / confessional or surreal / allegorical. The result is a collection of brilliant work by both established and emerging poets from across the English-speaking world, from Australia to India, Europe to North America. With its accounts of life changed utterly, lives abruptly finished; testimonies of the poignancy, the loneliness and sometimes madness of lockdown, this book is an essential statement of record on the dark times we are living through. Order your copy here.

The Abduction by Maram al-Masri (translated by Theo Dorgan), a Poetry Book Society Winter 2020 Translation Choice, is now available from Southword Editions for €10.

Grief is a kind of exile, and these are the poems of an exile, of a woman driven by cruelty into a world where her rights as a mother are negated—the right to give love, the right to receive love, the right to determine her life in accord with her own independent sense of what is proper and just. Her subjects here are grief and love, the truths and impossibilities of each and both. More particularly, the grief of a loving mother cruelly separated from her infant son, the need to find a language of love that may pass between them when he is restored to her embrace.

The winners of our Southword Summer Essay competition are Helen Mort and Kim Moore! Read their essays in issue 39 of Southword. In addition, six other essays were selected for publication from the competition and will appear in issues 39 through to 41. Buy individual issues or subscribe here.

Seán O'Faolain International Short Story Competition
2020 winners and commended authors

Read about 1st prize winner Ben Fergusson, 2nd prize winner La Williams, shortlisted authors Hilary Fennell, Erin Courtney Kelly, Niamh Mulvey and Mel O Doherty, as well as the thirty highly commended authors on our results page.

The 2020 Cork International Short Story Festival is online this year, with 10 events over 5 days, as well as a short story workshop delivered by our Frank O’Connor fellow, Alannah Hopkin. Among the featured authors are Kit de Waal, Richard Ford, Zsuzsi Gartner, Etgar Keret, Naomi Ishiguro, Frances Leviston, Billy O'Callaghan, Irenosen Okojie, Lysley Tenorio, Simon Van Booy and many others. October 6th to 10th. Individual events cost €5; a season ticket costs €50 (or €25 for subscribers to Southword journal).

Seven Cork-born poets each presents a 15-minute reading from their Southword Editions chapbooks on our YouTube Channel: Greg Delanty, John Fitzgerald, Victoria Kennefick, Bernadette McCarthy, John Mee, Gerry Murphy, James O’Leary.

Southword Editions, 118 leathanach
ISBN: 978-1-905002-78-8
Praghas: €12 (laistigh de Phoblacht na hÉireann)
€14 (postas idirnáisúnta)

Aneas is a new Irish-language literary journal published annually by Southword Editions. Edited by Simon Ó Faoláin, it includes new poems, short stories and literary criticism in Irish by many of the country's leading literary talent.

If you purchase issue 1 directly from us, you will receive a free poetry chapbook of Marius Burokas' poetry translated from the Lithuanian to Irish, Rinktiniai eilėraščiai.

Announcing the 2020 Frank O'Connor
International Short Story Fellow
& mentorship bursary opportunities

Alannah Hopkin of Cork, Ireland received the 2020 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Fellowship. This three-month fellowship includes a €3,000 monthly stipend. Hopkin will teach workshops and give readings at the Cork International Short Story Festival (taking place online in October) and University College Cork, and will mentor two emerging Cork writers. The annual fellowship is usually given to a short story writer from outside Ireland who has published at least two full-length books of fiction. In light of the pandemic, the Munster Literature Centre decided to take the extraordinary step of offering the 2020 fellowship to writers living within Munster and a commuting distance from Cork City, Ireland. The fellowship is devised and managed by the Munster Literature Centre and generously funded by Cork City Council.

Farmgate Café National Poetry Award 2020
The Gravity Wave by Peter Sirr (The Gallery Press)

We're delighted to announce that the winner of the 2020 Farmgate Café National Poetry Award is The Gravity Wave by Peter Sirr (The Gallery Press). For the occasion, Peter Sirr reads 6 poems from his winning collection. More details about the award here.

Our latest poetry chapbook is a book of elegies for the Irish poet Liam Ó Muirthile written by Greg Delanty (available now from €6).

Greg Delanty was born in Cork in 1958 and studied at University College Cork. He has lived in the US for the past 30 years and is a professor of English at Saint Michael’s College in Vermont. He has received many awards, including a Guggenheim for poetry. His collections include Collected Poems 1986-2006 and The Greek Anthology Book XVII (both Carcanet).

For Cruinniú na nÓg, a day of free creativity for children and young people on 13th June, Basher's visit to the Munster Literature Centre will be presented on our YouTube channel! Subscribe for new videos every Monday and Friday.

The Munster Literature Centre celebrates the art of storytelling through puppetry with this new commissioned story from television star Dominic Moore. Dominic was part of the original Morbegs team and his puppet character Basher Bacon first appeared on the RTÉ children’s show The Swamp. Find out more about Dominic here.

New Blogs & Essays Feature

Links to new blogs and our commisioned series of new personal essays by writer & editor Sarah Byrne on Paul Celan, marking the fiftieth anniversary of his death.

Emergency Covid-19 Author Bursaries Results

Twenty-four applications were received by the Munster Literature Centre for the initial offering of six emergency Covid-19 author bursaries of €2500. We re-examined our budget and increased the number of bursaries to ten. We funded this scheme with €12,900 from the cancelled Cork International Poetry Festival and €13,000 which had been set aside for staff salaries in 2020.
The outside assessors of the applications were Aosdana members James Harpur and Thomas McCarthy, and Clíona Ní Riordain, professor at the New Sorbonne, Paris. The chosen recipients for the bursaries were the following:

The Munster Literature Centre, in partnership with the Arts Council and our other fellow constituent organisations in Words Ireland, is involved in devising a Code of Behaviour for the literature sector in Ireland. Until such time as that specific Irish code is ready, the activities of the Munster Literature Centre will be guided (subject to the laws of the European Union and Ireland) by the Code of Behaviour issued by the UK Society of Authors. All authors and workshopees involved with our events will be issued with a copy of this code. Staff, temporary and permanent, volunteers and interns, will also be issued with it, along with a staff handbook on safety and dignity in the workplace.