Frank O’Connor Fellowship – Munster Literature Centre

Frank O’Connor International Short Story Fellowship

The fellowship is made possible through the very generous sponsorship of Cork City Council. The fellowship follows on from the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award and further demonstrates the commitment of the Munster Literature Centre and Cork City Council to the short story community. Named for one of Cork’s most renowned writers, it acknowledges the special place the short story form occupies in the cultural history and contemporary practice of the city.

Applications for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Fellowship are indefinitely suspended.

Benefits of the fellowship

The fellow benefits from the prestige of receiving a highly competitive international literary award which will not only allow the candidate to spend time concentrating on their own work, but also to acquire more experience in the delivery of workshops and mentorships. The successful fellow also receives a monthly stipend during their stay (September, October, November).

2026 Fellow: Zsuzsi Gartner

Zsuzsi Gartner is the author of the Giller Prize finalist fiction collection Better Living through Plastic Explosives and of the widely acclaimed story collection All the Anxious Girls on Earth. Her first novel, The Beguiling, was a finalist for the 2020 Writers Trust Fiction Prize and a Globe & Mail Best Book of 2020. Her fiction has been widely anthologized and read on the CBC and NPR and won National Magazine Awards. She was the inaugural Frank O’Connor International Short Story Fellow for Cork, Ireland in 2016, and ran The Writers Adventure Camp in Whistler for four years. She has been on faculty at the Banff Centre for the Arts and The University of British Columbia’s MFA Program. Zsuzsi edited the award-winning fiction anthology Darwin’s Bastards: Astounding Tales from Tomorrow and was the guest editor of the Best Canada Stories 2026 anthology. She is completing her fourth book (third short fiction collection) and lives in Vancouver, Canada.