“It was a real pleasure to judge The Moth Short Story Prize,” says Wendy Erskine. “The standard was just wonderful.” The international prize for unpublished fiction was established by The Moth magazine in 2013, and has been presided over by a single judge each year – the likes of Ali Smith, Donal Ryan or Ottessa Moshfegh – who chooses three winners anonymously. Past recipients include Tracey Slaughter, Owen Booth, Mandy Beaumont and Caoilinn Hughes. This year, Erskine chose The Shoulder by Jeffrey-Michael Kane as her 1st prize winner: “This is a mesmerising story told in a tender, unhurried way by a poised and talented writer. It’s poetic and has a beautiful toughness.”Kane, an environmental attorney living in New Orleans, is the author of Quiet Brilliance: What Employers Miss About Neurodivergent Talent and How to See It. His prose work has been published in more than three dozen literary journals and magazines, including Plough, Camas, AMERICA Magazine and The New Ohio Review, where his essay Nomenclature of a Life, cataloguing his experience as someone with Level 1 Autism Spectrum Disorder, was awarded the 2026 Ellis Prize for Non-Fiction. Kane received the Honourable Mention in the 2026 Alex Albright Creative Nonfiction Prize and his recent poem Sediment was runner-up in the 2025 Gulf Coast Journal Poetry Prize. “This is the most incredible news,” Kane said when he was contacted by The Moth director Rebecca O’Connor. “I am so grateful for the trust in my work.” Kane will receive €3,000 in prize money. Ava Sedgwick’s story Tomorrow has been awarded 2nd prize. “Now this is what I call a love story,” says Erskine. “Tomorrow is humane, adult and very affecting.” Sedgwick lives in Cork and has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Limerick. She won the 2024 Gemini Magazine Annual Short Story Prize and her stories have been published by Northern Gravy, Elegant Literature and Shooter Literary Magazine, as well as listed in numerous competitions including the Bridport Prize, Lorian Hemingway Short Story Contest and Bath Short Story Award. The novel she is working on was longlisted in the Mslexia Novel Competition and received an Honourable Mention in the Chapter One Prize. She is an Arts Council Agility Award recipient. Sedgwick will receive €1,000. Third prize goes to Octomum by Patrick Eades. “Inventive, funny and a total delight,” says Erskine. “Octomum deals with loss in its own inimitable way.” [ ‘Why are you home early?’: Shauna said the first thing she could think of to her mother and regretted it immediatelyOpens in new window ]Eades, who lives in Sydney, Australia, is a physiotherapist and part-time stay-at-home dad as well as a writer. He was runner-up in the 2025 Peter Carey Short Story Award, and his work has appeared or is forthcoming in Meanjin, Splinter and X-R-A-Y. His debut novel, A Road to Nowhere, is also forthcoming. Eades will spend a week at The Moth Retreat. Erskine also commended stories by Jonny Aldridge (UK), Mike Allen (Spain), R Frenzel (USA), Darragh Kelly (Ireland), Shana Kimball (USA), Matilda Kime (France), Jaden McGinty (USA), Patrick O’Brien (Ireland), James Simpson (Northern Ireland) and Susan Wigmore (UK).For more information about upcoming literary prizes, including The Moth Nature Writing Prize (judged by Sean Borodale) and the upcoming Moth Poetry Prize, see themothmagazine.com