O'Hanlon wins inaugural Stinging Fly/FBA Fiction Prize

Emer O’Hanlon has won the inaugural Stinging Fly/FBA Fiction Prize. 

The €2,000 (£1,689) prize, sponsored by Felicity Bryan Associates, will be awarded annually to an emerging fiction writer published in the Stinging Fly during the previous year. O’Hanlon’s winning story, "Diana in a lonely place", was published in the Stinging Fly’s summer 2021 issue. She will be presented with the award at the Stinging Fly summer party at the International Literature Festival Dublin on 26th May. 

Judging the 2022 prize were author Colin Barrett, Stinging Fly contributing editor and author Mia Gallagher and Felicity Bryan agent Angelique Tran Van Sang. The panel was chaired by Thomas Morris, author and editor-at-large of the Stinging Fly. 

The judges praised O’Hanlon’s work as an “exceptional accomplishment”. They said: “With great skill, subtlety and humanity, it weaves and subverts core elements of the classic short-story form, examining the intersection between our online and offline selves from surprisingly fresh angles. Brutal and beautiful in its execution, the story pushes up against what is comfortable, entangling the reader in a complicity that lays bare the starkest and rawest elements of human connection.” 

The judges also commended two further stories: "The Baby" by Jacinta Mulders and "The Strange Kid" by Glen Jeffries. 

O’Hanlon said: “As a new writer balancing studies and work with writing, I never feel that I’m doing ‘enough’. This prize has come at a time when I have been struggling to carve time for my writing as well as figure out which direction I should go in next. The professional (not to mention financial!) backing of this award feels game-changing. I considered it a huge privilege to be published in the journal at all last year; to receive such an endorsement from the Stinging Fly, whose publications I am in awe of and whose ethos I admire, is really special and exciting.” 

A spokesperson for Felicity Bryan added: “We are excited to be partnering with the Stinging Fly, whose dedication to discovering, nurturing and championing writers aligns so closely with the values that FBA has long upheld. It’s important to us as a company to support the work of literary magazines that are vital in providing writers both a platform, and a space to develop and hone their work – and the Stinging Fly’s reputation is second to none. We are thrilled to be awarding the inaugural prize to Emer O’Hanlon, and look forward to celebrating her win, and the beginning of this brilliant partnership.” 

A spokesperson for the Stinging Fly also commented: “This exciting partnership with FBA helps us celebrate and illuminate the brilliant new writers and new writing that we are privileged to publish each year. Choosing one story from all the wonderful stories we published in 2021 was an enormously difficult task and we’re grateful to our judges for bearing that pain on our behalf. ‘Diana in a lonely place’ is a superb work of fiction, and Emer a very worthy winner of our inaugural prize. We’re sure we’ll be hearing a lot more from this gifted writer. 

“Looking forward, the Stinging Fly is eager to develop further initiatives that will help support writers at all stages of their careers, and allow us to continue in our mission to seek out, nurture, publish and promote the very best new writers and new writing.”