Loretta Fahy was placed first runner up for the Mairtín Crawford Award in Belfast this summer, and has two poems, "Waiting" and "Hellebore," featured in the summer issue of The Soliloquist.

Patrick ten Brink's short story "A Present, an Apology and a Tribute" has found a home in The Berlin Literary Review . “A little bit of a mad, romantic, speculative piece.”

Brussels Writers Workshop member Paul Stephenson has new poems in three recent issues of Poetry Worth Hearing. Read them on the page, then hear Paul read them aloud on Spotify.

Short Story :

‘Apparently he’s short, but wears stacked heels’, someone whispered as we waited for the lift lights to blink their way up to floor 40. We craned our necks to see him as he exited. Rubbish, I thought.

Poetry: A manifesto-poem about poetry, voice and defiance

Subversification

You may have heard that poetry

Makes nothing happen.

This is fake news.

In this week's "100-words-in-10-minutes" challenge, writers tackled the prompt "Next Sunday." From a pirate’s cunning deal to a poetic reflection on change and resilience, and a humorous tale of forgotten birthdays and mundane chaos, explore how each story brings its unique twist

This week, our 100-words-in-10-minutes challenge was sparked by a rather shocking comment overheard at our bimonthly meeting at Le Cocq: "I've often been told that French people stink, especially women." While we all know this isn't true, it inspired some amusing interpretations. Read more here as we turn stereotypes on their head and share our creative takes on this bold statement, all crafted in just 100 words.

6 writers converge on 1 location, each writing a 100-word story in 10 minutes. The stories reveal a wide range of perceptions of this singular place, providing a unique perspective, uncovering layers of symbolism and architectural nuance, generational dynamics, nostalgia, and introspection, painting a vivid and diverse portrait of the place.

A backstabbing gone wrong

Discover two short stories. Journey into the night, where a secret mission takes an unexpected turn under the moonlit sky, or enter the underground world of a theatre to unravel the mystery of an enigmatic figure, cloaked in red and shrouded by rumours.

She walked down the street that ran parallel to the main street, the ‘butchers’ alley’. The air was suffocating. It was a little after two o’clock. She was sweating profusely and had a haut-le-cœur. She felt suffocated and covered her mouth with her hand. The smell of blood and dead meat was overwhelming and more than she could handle. She had never liked it.

Sparrow likes hanging around handbags and shoes

waiting for the flecks of cured meats and truffle infused 

breads to fall from the fingers of those above.

Sparrow was born under the restaurant eves 

She sat there wondering what he meant.

‘It doesn’t get any better than this,’ but he wasn’t smiling.

Sticks and stones will make my bones and words can always break you,” sang Hex as she pressed moss onto her forearm in the moonlight. But her flesh, while soft, was green. Hex added leaf after leaf. “Skin smells good,” she murmured, “but they will know.”

I can’t seem to grow more than four strawberries

At a time.

Each one takes its own size and shape: