Saunders wins Moth Short Story Prize for 'compelling' tale

Lara Saunders has won this year’s Moth Short Story Prize for “Cock’s Eye Moon”, with Louise Miller’s “Double Happiness” securing second place and Joe Richards’ “If Ye Love Me” awarded third prize. 

The prize is run by the Moth, a quarterly printed arts and literature magazine featuring poetry, short fiction and art, which was founded in 2010. The three winning stories will appear in its autumn issue. The winner receives €3,000, second prize a week at Circle of Misse in France plus a €250 travel stipend, and third prize gets €1,000.  

This year’s judge was award-winning short story writer and novelist Sarah Hall, who has also previously judged the Man Booker Prize and Sunday Times Short Story Award. 

Hall chose Saunders’ tale as her “clear winner” describing it as "a wonderful story — tight, atmospheric, dramatic — and it was really compelling to read from beginning to end”. She added: “The prose is natural and evocative, descriptive but not overdone, with some absolutely beautiful phrasing. As with all great short stories it has its own torque, that subversive un-guessable feeling, a satisfying and, in this case, tragic payoff at the end.” 

Saunders is a creative writing graduate and social worker living and writing on Peramangk land in South Australia. Her work has been twice shortlisted for the Victoria University Short Story Prize and twice longlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize. She is currently working on a novel-length story.  

She said: “I have been a huge fan of Sarah Hall since I read The Wolf Border (Faber) a few years ago, so to know that she read and liked a story of mine is deeply touching. I am in love with writing and it has broken my heart many times over the years – and now it has made me joyful, and so grateful. Thank you to those who have made this possible for me and to anyone who takes the time to read these words of mine.” 

She said her story “seemed to happen by itself, with my hand but without me, which is how I knew I liked it. It came out of the fragments of other lives and a few what ifs,” she said. “I love the words and idioms of Gaelic languages and played with these to find this character’s voice. It took a long time to redraft. Whenever I reread the story, it felt like putting on a jumper back to front and inside out. But I always believed there was something there if I could just break it out of the rock. I am so proud that it found a home within the beautifully crafted pages of the Moth.” 

Hall praised "the strangeness and compression” of Miller’s story, which secured second place. “The details and observations are astute and the tone is very unsettling. The information withheld by the protagonist is interpretable by the reader and allows a greater sense of understanding and disquiet. It’s a complete little gothic tale, domestically occult, surprising, but still emotionally moving and human. It pulls no punches, and chooses a careful narrative frame but the reader still has a (horrifying!) sense of what lies beyond its borders.” 

She described Richards’ work as “a striding story that covers so much ground with really evocative detail and momentum. o begin with it seems like a memory piece but takes on a plot-life of its own, to become a complete narrative rather than just a reflection. The dynamics between boys, parents and overseers — both neglectful and pastoral — are so well portrayed, with heart-rending moments, humour and wit, and a real understanding of psychology.”