Saturday, 18th October

Festival Pass (all events) | €50

Ó Faoláin Prize Reading

3.00pm, Cork Arts Theatre | €5

The Seán Ó Faoláin International Short Story Prize is awarded to the best single story entered in competition from anywhere in the world. The first prize is €2,000, a featured reading at the Cork International Short Story Festival (with four-night hotel stay and full board) and publication in Southword. This occasion is an opportunity to hear the winning story as chosen by this year’s judge Laura Jean McKay (who is also this year's Frank O’Connor International Short Story Fellow).

Details of the winner, not yet announced, will be posted here. Prizewinning and shortlisted stories from this competition will be published in Southword 50 (summer 2026).

Tanya Farrelly & Nuala O’Connor

4.30pm, Cork Arts Theatre | €5

Tanya Farrelly is the author of five books. Her debut fiction collection When Black Dogs Sing was named winner of the Kate O’ Brien Award 2017. Two psychological thrillers: The Girl Behind the Lens and When Your Eyes Close were published by Harper Collins, London. She holds a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing from Bangor University, Wales and was appointed Writer-in-Residence at NUI Galway in 2021. In March 2025, she edited the anthology Take Six: Six Irish Women Writers (Dedalus Books). Her latest short story collection The Marionette and the Maestro has just been published by Arlen House.

Visit the author's website.

“Farrelly does an effective line in mood and intrigue as she weaves her narrative magic, effortlessly drawing the reader ever further into the unsettling tales she has fashioned.” — Alan McMonagle

Nuala O'Connor lives in Galway. Her sixth novel, Seaborne, about Irish-born pirate Anne Bonny, was nominated for the Dublin Literary Award and shortlisted for Novel of the Year at the 2024 An Post Irish Book Awards. She won Irish Short Story of the Year at the 2022 Irish Book Awards. Her fifth poetry collection, Menagerie, was published by Arlen House in spring 2025. She is currently writing a memoir about late-diagnosed autism.

Visit the author's website.

“…blending of wry, caustic irreverence and meditative poignancy is central to the success of O’Connor’s storytelling. The mix is just right.” — Houman Barekat

(Moderator) Jennifer Horgan is a Cork poet, teacher and columnist. Her work appears in various journals including Acumen, Skylight 47, Southword and Ragaire. She was shortlisted in RTÉ’s The Prompt series in July 2025. Her debut collection Care is published by Doire Press.

Yoko Tawada

7.30pm, Cork Arts Theatre | €5

Yoko Tawada was born in Tokyo and moved to Germany at the age of 22. She published her first collection of prose and poetry in 1987 with konkursbuchverlag Claudia Gehrke, and has been writing both in Japanese and German since. She has also been active in giving readings and performances in collaboration with the pianist Aki Takase. Tawada is the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards, including the Kleist Prize (Germany) and the Akutagawa Prize (Japan). The English version of Kentoshi or The Emissary (2018) has won the U.S. National Book Award for Translated Literature.

Visit the author's website.

“Tawada is an artist out on the tip of the spear. She isn’t courting a readership, curating her image, coaxing popularity like some; she is pushing her art forward, and we as readers are welcome along for the ride if we can keep up. It’s startling, breathtaking prose, literature at its purest. What to compare it to? Nothing. It is simply Tawadaesque…” — Iain Maloney

(Moderator) Till Weingärtner is Senior Lecturer in Japanese Studies at University College Cork. A former Japan Foundation Fellow at the University of Tokyo, he has performed stand-up comedy in Japan, dabbles in storytelling and translates Japanese prose and poetry.

Éilís Ní Dhuibhne

9.00pm, Cork Arts Theatre | €5

Éilís Ní Dhuibhne was born in Dublin. Author of novels, short stories, memoir and drama, her most recent books are Twelve Thousand Days: A Memoir (shortlisted for the Michel Déon Award 2020), Little Red and Other Stories (Blackstaff 2020), Selected Stories (Blackstaff 2023), Milseog an tSamhraidh (Clo Iar Chonnacht 2023), and Look! It’s a Woman Writer! (Arlen House 2021). She has been the recipient of many literary awards. In autumn 2020 she held the Burns Scholarship at Boston College. She is a member of Aosdána, and President of the Folklore of Ireland Society. She is the present Laureate for Irish Fiction.

Visit the author's website.

“…linguistic precision convey[s] the social observations of her cool eye, and the unsettling way compassion emerges from behind the satirical edge … Ni Dhuibhne’s pre-eminent technical gift – to evoke a character or mood unmistakably in three words – is dazzling.” — Bernard O’Donoghue

(Moderator) Nuala O’Connor lives in Galway. Her sixth novel, Seaborne, about Irish-born pirate Anne Bonny, was nominated for the Dublin Literary Award and shortlisted for Novel of the Year at the 2024 An Post Irish Book Awards. Her fifth poetry collection, Menagerie, was published by Arlen House in spring 2025. She is currently writing a memoir about late-diagnosed autism.

Image credits: Nuala O’Connor photographed by Úna O’Connor, Éilís Ní Dhuibhne photographed by Vincent Hoban