Dead Bait by Mattie Brennan has been announced as the winning story in this year’s RTÉ Short Story Competition 2024 in honour of Francis MacManus. Listen to RTÉ Arena's lives pecial announcing the winner above.
The winning stories were selected by writers Claire Kilroy, Neil Hegarty and Kathleen MacMahon, from a shortlist of 10 stories which was announced earlier this month - read them here.
(L-R) Stephen O'Reilly, Mattie Brennan and Emer O'Toole
Dead Bait was chosen as the overall winner, in the words of the judges, for 'its mastery of storytelling, triumph of detail and sense of jeopardy that grows as the story nears its gripping conclusion'.
You can read (and listen to) Dead Bait here.
As winner, Mattie Brennan received a cheque for €5,000.
Second Prize went to Divination, by Stephen O’Reilly who was presented with a cheque for €4,000, while Third Prize went to The Other Órla, by Emer O’Toole who was presented with a cheque for €3,000. The seven runners-up received €250 each.
The announcement was made at an RTÉ Radio 1 Arena RTÉ Short Story Special hosted by Sean Rocks in the Pavillion Theatre Dun Laoghaire.
The event was broadcast on Arena on RTÉ Radio 1 at 7pm on Monday 2nd December.
Here, the writers react to being prize winners .....
Mattie Brennan:
"Hearing my story being announced as the winner of the 2024 RTÉ Short Story Award was a moment that will live with me for a long time. I'm honoured and humbled that my story was selected from such a competitive shortlist. I'm full of gratitude to everyone involved in the competition, especially the judges, the preliminary readers, the competition's production team, and, of course, every other writer who entered. Thanks, too, to Seán Rocks and Cathal Murray, who showed such great support for the competition. I owe a huge debt of gratitude also to Aaron Monaghan, whose inimitable reading style brought my story to life with such vividness."
Stephen O'Reilly:
"There’s a sense of accomplishment that your story has resonated with the judges in such a high-profile competition. It validates your abilities and the choices you make to have an artistic career. Achieving second place against fifteen hundred other entrants and judged by respected writers like Claire Kilroy, Neil Hegarty, and Kathleen MacMahon, is an enormous confidence boost. It motivates me to continue writing and pushing those creative boundaries. "
Emer O'Toole:
It's an immense honour to be awarded third prize this year, especially given the quality of the shortlist. I so much enjoyed reading the other stories and meeting their authors. I'm relatively new to fiction, and, as any aspiring writer will tell you, it can feel like typing into the void - will anyone get it? will anyone like it? will anyone get it AND like it? The judges' compliment to my work is a missive from the inky darkness. It reads, "more void typing plz."
Find out more about the RTÉ Short Story Competition here.
