We are delighted to announce that Tenaya Steed is the 2025 winner of The Stinging Fly/FBA Fiction Prize. Established in 2022, the €2000 prize, sponsored by Felicity Bryan Associates, is awarded annually to an emerging fiction writer published in The Stinging Fly during the previous year.
Tenaya’s winning story, ‘Missing the Eclipse’ appeared in Issue 50 Volume Two, published in May 2024. Tenaya was announced as the winner of the award at the launch event for our Summer 2025 issue at the International Literature Festival Dublin on Saturday May 17th. She has a new story ‘Water Lilies’ in that issue.
Tenaya lives in Dublin and is also an artist and jewellery maker. She has previously won the Michael McLaverty award, the Paul McVeigh Residency and an Arts Council Literature Bursary Award.
Judging the 2025 prize were novelist and poet K Patrick (Mrs S), Stinging Fly contributing editor and author Danny Denton (All Along The Echo) and Felicity Bryan agent, Angelique Tran Van Sang. The panel was chaired by our programme manager, Eoin Rogers.
Awarding the prize, the judges stated:
“‘Missing the Eclipse’ grabs you by the first line and doesn’t let go – an immersive, deeply compelling character-driven story that builds a boisterous world that feels real and raw and tangible. Structurally ambitious, and brilliant on the spectrums of hope and despair below the poverty line, this is an extremely well-wrought and touching piece of fiction, promising such an exciting future for its writer. The writer is a talented natural stylist, building character through intense and perceptive detail.”
The judges highly commended two other stories: ‘Boyfriend Reacts’ by Sean Cavanaugh from Issue 51 Volume Two and ‘Anything Strange or Startling’ by Emma Warnock from Issue 50 Volume Two:
‘Boyfriend Reacts’ by Sean Cavanaugh
“A quiet, calm surface belies brutal content. This story handles contemporary masculinity in an unexpected and clever way, requiring the reader to double check their own complicity. This story was both subtly shocking and deeply moving, and full of wry parallels and perfectly chosen images. Its writer expertly maps the complex interiorities of a generation, building brilliant worlds, both real and virtual.”
‘Anything Strange or Startling’ by Emma Warnock
“A brilliant exercise in reduction, this innovative story strips an experience to its essence and is profoundly moving as a result. It’s playful but resonant, drawing brilliantly on the human mind’s need for repetition at times of trauma or strife. A startling piece with intelligent and careful form, one that artfully shows grief is a factless state. Toying with time and duty, rendered sentences linger long after you have finished reading.”
Previous winners of The Stinging Fly/FBA Fiction Prize:
2024: Moso Sematlane: ‘A Fern Between Rocks’
2023: Leopold O’Shea, ‘The Afterlife’
2022: Emer O’Hanlon, ‘Diana in a Lonely Place’