It was an evening of nervous anticipation and excitement on Friday 24th October when the audience gathered in the Pavilion Theatre, Dún Laoghaire to hear the winners of the 2025 RTÉ Short Story Competition announced by Rick O'Shea, presenter of RTÉ Radio 1's Arena. You can listen back to the full programme here
'Witness' by Lynda McCarthy, a story of domestic tension, took home first prize of €5,000. It's a story the judges found "subtle, sensitive and quietly powerful".
Second prize of €4,000 went to 'A Spectrum of Sorrow' by Angela Finn, a meditation on grief, what comes after, and allowing ourselves to live again. The judges agreed it was "captivating from the first sentence...a skilful and gently restorative story".
'Auntie and Anto and Ivy and Ava' by Ian Feighery scooped the €3,000 third prize, a story that imagines the challenges of parenthood in a way that is both "beautifully woven" and "excels in teasing out the vividness, the anxieties, the pleasures" from a child narrators point of view.
Alongside the other finalists - Niall Ó Siadhail, Sinéad Troy, Sage Omar, Kevin McDermott, Mary O'Rourke and Jill Kenny (finalist Peter McCauley could not attend) - here is a selection of images from the night (all images are courtesy Maxwell Photography)...
