Munster Literature Centre
Ionad Litríochta an Deisceart

Southword

Southword: New International Writing is a print literary journal published twice a year by the Munster Literature Centre. Southword has published the likes of Medbh McGuckian, Helen Ivory, Haruki Murakami, James Lasdun, Kim Addonizio, Tess Gallagher, Colm Tóibín and Vona Groarke. Our summer issue is composed of prizewinning entries from our Gregory O’Donoghue International Poetry Competition, Southword Editor’s Poetry Award, Seán Ó Faoláin International Short Story Competition, and Subscriber Poetry & Flash Fiction Competitions, as well as specially commissioned work.

This year, we have opened the Southword Creative Non-Fiction Award. Winning entries will be published three per issue from issue 49 (winter 2025).

Subscribe

Two issues per year starting with our next issue #48 (summer 2025)

This is a recurring subscription (yearly payment) which can be paused or cancelled at any time through your PayPal account under Automatic Payments, or by contacting us to cancel on your behalf. You will receive two issues per year and can select from the following rates:

  • Ireland, UK, North America, Australia, New Zealand: €24 postage free
  • Rest of Europe: €28 postage free, tax-inclusive
  • Rest of the World: €34 postage included

By subscribing, you will receive the summer and winter issues of Southword straight from the printers, as quickly as we will ourselves. Your subscription will also help to provide us with the resources to make Southword even better.

Other perks include:

  • Access to Southword Online (linked at the bottom of this page), the precursor to the print journal as you know it now. These 27 issues, which appeared on our website from 2009 – 2018, include ten years of writing from our O’Donoghue poetry competition and Ó Faoláin short story competition.
  • The opportunity to enter our free-to-enter flash fiction competition and poetry competition exclusively for subscribers. Current subscribers are emailed a link every April and may submit up to three poems and/or three pieces of flash fiction; winners are published in our summer issue and receive the following: 1st Prize €150, 2nd prize €100, 3rd prize €75.
Location

Submit

Unsolicited submissions of poetry and short fiction (for our winter issue) are open annually as follows:

POETRY: 1st ‒ 31st January

FICTION: 1st ‒ 28th February

Our Submittable account limit means that we can only receive 1000 submissions per month, so if we reach this limit before the end of January (for poetry) or February (for fiction), the submission link will automatically close and we will be unable to accept any further submissions.

Southword pays contributors €50 per poem and €400 per short story. We welcome submissions of up to four poems or one short story (of up to 5000 words) per submission period. If your work has been published in Southword before, we ask that you please don’t submit again for at least one year after publication. The poetry editor is Patrick Cotter. The fiction editor is Billy O’Callaghan. Subscriber competitions are judged by James O’Leary.

Further Guidelines are available on our submission manager during the our open submission periods:

submit

Southword Online

Issues 16-34 of Southword were published exclusively online. Access to this back catalogue is available to current subscribers. Southword Online (Issues 16-34)