“My God, that was tough!” says Evie Wyld of judging this year’s Moth Short Story Prize, now in its 13th year. “Such brilliant writing.”
Wyld chose (Un)Tethered by Australian author Clare Roche as her first prize winner. “It took me right back to the loneliness of having a small baby,” she says, “the specific physical horror of it – a really beautiful rendering of how solitary you feel in that moment, and how open to the morbid you are.”
Roche, who lives in Sydney, Australia, on Gadigal land, has been shortlisted for several literary prizes, including the Australian Prize for Fiction, and her poetry has been published in online journals. As well as being awarded €3,000 for her story, Roche has the joy of seeing (Un)Tethered published as part of the summer fiction series in The Irish Times today.
“I’m beyond thrilled and completely shocked to win this prize,” says Roche. “I started writing fiction about six years ago; my husband and a handful of friends have been my readers and supporters. I’d hoped as a writer my words would connect with someone, somewhere. That my story has resonated with Evie Wyld, a writer who I’ve long admired, is both surreal and immensely validating. Thank you to The Moth and to The Irish Times!’
RM Block
Wyld loved the cleverness of Martha Sprackland’s story, Bee Box, which has been awarded second prize, describing it as “unsettling and folkloric in the best way”. Sprackland is an editor, writer and translator. Her debut collection of poems, Citadel (Pavilion, 2020), was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and the Costa Poetry Award. Her fiction has been shortlisted for both the London Magazine‘s and Brick Lane Bookshop’s short story prizes, and she is at work on a novel. Sprackland’s new translation of the poems and prose of 16th-century Spanish mystic St John of the Cross is forthcoming from Penguin Classics next spring. Her prize consists of a week at the luxury writing retreat, Circle of Misse, in France, aided by a travel stipend.
Small Bad Things by Shelley Hastings took third prize. “I felt cold reading this,” Wyld said, “the fantastic expectation of violent horror. I loved it, I am still in the window with the protagonist.”
Hastings is a writer, artist and creative producer based in London. Her stories have been published by Chroma Editions, Dear Damsels, Galley Beggar Press, Mechanics Institute Review, Southword and Thi Wurd. She recently won the European Writers Salon Prize and was shortlisted for the 2025 Desperate Literature Prize. She was the winner of the Seán O’Faoláin Short Story Prize and The Aurora Short Fiction Prize 2021. She was a finalist in the Manchester Short Fiction Prize and has been long listed for The BBC Short Story Award. She is the co-recipient of UCL’s 2025 Trellis Arbor artist/researcher commission and works as a producer/arts facilitator at dementia charity Resonate Arts. She lives in London.
For her story, she will be awarded €1,000.
Wyld also commended stories by Sally Bothroyd, Finn Brown, Aoife Inman, Sophie James, JG Lynas and Susan Wigmore.
For more information about upcoming literary prizes, including The Moth Nature Writing Prize (judged by Mark Cocker) and The Moth Poetry Prize (judged by Ishion Hutchinson), see themothmagazine.com
