Shop

Filters

Showing 1–24 of 25 results

View 24/48/All

Please add widgets to the WooCommerce Filters widget area in Appearance > Widgets

1-24 of 25 products

  • 0.00

    My Life as a Godard Movie:
    Joanna Walsh in conversation with Lara Alonso Corona
    ENTRY to SCREENING

    AFTER THE EVENT WE'LL BE HAVING A SCREENING but as there are limited places, we're asking for reservations here* *PLEASE NOTE, this is just for the screening. Entry to the reading is free and not ticketed! ABOUT THE EVENT: Please join Joanna Walsh at Desperate Literature for a reading from her new book, 'My Life as a Godard Movie', a meditation on beauty, fashion, desire, politics, youth, art, and Paris, via the 1960s films of Jean-Luc Godard. The reading will be followed by a brief discussion led by Lara Alonso Corona and then a private screening (limited numbers for screening). ENTRY FREE! As Joanna Walsh watches the films of Jean-Luc Godard, she considers beauty and desire in life and in art. “There’s a resistance, in Godard’s women,” writes Walsh, “that is at the heart of his work (and theirs).” Captivated by the Paris of his films and the often porous border between the city presented on screen and the one she inhabits herself, with cool precision, and in language that shines with aphoristic wit, Walsh has crafted an exquisitely intimate portrait of the way attention to works of art becomes attention to changes in ourselves. “It is rare to find a writer who can take such candid pleasure in beauty—the beauty of faces, figures, clothing, and cities—while also querying its injustices. To watch Godard’s films through Joanna Walsh’s eyes is to see envy and appreciation, longing and disavowal, walking hand in hand. This book is a gorgeous complex gesture of criticism.”—Merve Emre, writer and critic. Joanna Walsh is a multidisciplinary writer for print, digital and performance. The author of eleven books (several co-written with AI), her publishers include Semiotext(e), Bloomsbury and Verso. She also works as an editor and university teacher. She is a Markievicz Awardee in the Republic of Ireland and a UK Arts Foundation fellow. She founded and ran the Twitter campaign @read_women (2014-18), described by the New York Times as ‘a rallying cry for equal treatment for women writers’. She currently runs @noentry_arts.
    0.00
    0.00
  • The DL BOX set

    The perfect gift for bibliophiles, the travelling lover, the Madrid-based progeny, or just your future self.

    You'll get a copy of Eleven Stories 2022, our notebook and a tote. We can either prepare in store or send for you and if you want to add a gift certificate, you can! Free shipping for all orders that include a gift certificate!  

    “I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.”

    Jorge Luis Borges


     
  • 5.00

    Steph Wynn
    A Concert

    Fri 13th January FINALLY RESCHEDULED Limited Tickets - 25
    TICKETS: €5 - Concert + 10% discount on books

    We invite Steph Wynn for an evening of folk and country music, pulling from gospel, blues, Indian mantra, and Eastern European folk.
    As her first time presenting a collection of her music in Madrid, the show will exhibit a mixture of original tunes and covers from those who’ve inspired her.
    Steph Wynn is a singer songwriter from Chicago who has been living in Spain for the past 5 years. She started playing guitar in the parks of Madrid and took her first singing class in an antique lamp store in Lavapies. As a twist of fate, the longer she stayed in Spain the more connected she became to her blues, country and folk roots.
    5.00
    5.00
  • Sale
    0.008.50

    ‘Eleven Stories 2022’

    Eleven Stories 2022 collects the shortlist from our fourth short fiction prize and is available in either:
    PDF - €2.50 PRINT - €11 / a limited edition copy, numbered and stamped by our fine selves 

    The shortlisted stories were exquisitely written and completely delightful in their power to surprise and astonish in a remarkably few number of words. Reading these stories made me feel glad for the future of short stories and excited me for reading more. I hope other readers feel the same way - ANTON HUR
    In these rich and vibrant stories, the language surprises and delights. From surreal mouse proposals to the catharsis of visible grief, via the uncertainty of memory and perception, each of these stories creates a new, engrossing reality, while shedding light on our own. - NATASHA BROWN

    Here's what the magnificent Rachel Cusk and Niven Govinden have to say about our 2020 selection:
    ‘I thoroughly enjoyed reading these submissions, which surprised me with their honest poise, their integrity, and their understated adherence to the values of literature. In the hands of some of these writers, the story form was brought to bear on the modern scene in new and astute ways.’ – Rachel Cusk ‘I was bowled over by the power, inquiry, and humour of these stories. They shine brightly in the mind after reading.’ – Niven Govinden  
    0.008.50
    0.008.50
  • 8.00

    The Desperate Literature Notebook

    ,
    Our notebook is finally out Oxblood red lines with a blindstamped cover 120 pages
    8.00
    8.00
  • Sold out
    1.00

    ‘Another Valentine’
    Entradas | Tickets

    El 18 de Febrero Entradas Limitadas | Limited Tickets - 25

    €1 con billete para el sorteo | €1 with raffle ticket*

    Invitamos a Martha Sprackland, Kwaku Osei-Afrifa, Joe Dunthorne y Rodrigo García Marina para una lectura de San Valentín extramundana | We invite Martha Sprackland, Kwaku Osei-Afrifa, Joe Dunthorne and Rodrigo García Marina for an other-worldly Valentine's reading
    EVENT IN ENGLISH y ESPAÑOL
    mascarilla obligatoria mask obligatory *THE RAFFLE: Win feedback on three poems or a single short story (English ONLY)
    Saber más:
    Joe Dunthorne was born and brought up in Swansea. His debut novel, Submarine, was translated into twenty languages and made into an award-winning film. His second novel, Wild Abandon, won the Society of Authors’ Encore Award. His latest is The Adulterants. His first collection of poems, O Positive, was published by Faber & Faber in 2019. He lives in London. Rodrigo García Marina estudió el Conservatorio Profesional de Viola, el Grado en Medicina y en Filosofía. Acaba de realizar el Máster en Teoría y Crítica de la Cultura. Ha publicado La caricia de las amapolas, Premio de Poesía Saulo Torón 2017, Aureus, I Premio de Poesía Irreconciliables, Edad, I Premio de Poesía Tino Barriuso, El libro de los arquitectos, II Premio de Poesía de la Facultad de Filología de la UNED, y Desear la casa. Investiga, edita y enseña. Kwaku Osei-Afrifa is a nonbinary writer and editor living in east London. A novella is coming out in June this year with Solaris, and they will start writing part two when the time is right. Martha Sprackland is the founder of Offord Road Books and poetry editor for CHEERIO Publishing. Her debut collection, Citadel, was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and the Costa Poetry Prize.
    1.00
    1.00
  • Sold out
    0.0024.55

    ‘SPANISH BEAUTY’
    Entradas

    El 23 de Febrero Entradas Limitadas - 20*

    Gratuita | con un descuento de 5% en compras anticipadas

    Invitamos a Esther García Llovet a presentar su nueva obra, Spanish Beauty (Anagrama), en conversación con Lucía Lijtmaer, autora de Ofendiditos (Anagrama).
    *mascarilla obligatoria Saber más sobre Spanish Beauty: «Su estilo es de cuchilla de afeitar» (Laura Fernández) «Excelente narradora... Brillante» (Alberto Olmos) «Nos gusta mucho García Llovet, y nos gusta su estilo, su poética... Autora de culto» (Sara Mesa) «Una exquisita rara avis... Esta autora cuestiona cada código, cada imagen, cada palabra... Estupenda» (Marta Sanz) Si en sus novelas de la Trilogía instantánea de Madrid (Cómo dejar de escribir, Sánchez y Gordo de feria) Esther García Llovet construyó una ciudad nocturna, marginal y casi surreal, en esta Spanish Beauty, la primera entrega de la Trilogía de los países del Este, nos ofrece un Benidorm plagado de mafiosos ingleses, rusos millonarios, billares cutres de sótano y rascacielos a medio construir: una ciudad en la que manda Michela, la policía corrupta que necesita a toda costa recuperar un mechero que perteneció a los legendarios Kray Twins del Londres de los sesenta.
    0.0024.55
    0.0024.55
  • Sale
    0.008.50

    ‘Eleven Stories 2021’

    Eleven Stories 2021 collects the shortlist from our fourth short fiction prize and is available in either:
    PDF - €2.50 PRINT - €11 / a limited edition copy, numbered and stamped by our fine selves // OUT NOW

    ‘I loved reading the shortlist selection which realizes the Desperate Literature team’s ambition to reimagine and diversify contemporary writing. The stories represented are inquisitive, irreverential, critical, and fully committed to their respective creative projects. I’ve never been more hopeful for the future of fiction, and the Desperate Literature Prize plays no small part in this.’ — Isabel Waidner, 2021 Judge

    Here's what the magnificent Rachel Cusk and Niven Govinden have to say about our 2020 selection:
    ‘I thoroughly enjoyed reading these submissions, which surprised me with their honest poise, their integrity, and their understated adherence to the values of literature. In the hands of some of these writers, the story form was brought to bear on the modern scene in new and astute ways.’ – Rachel Cusk ‘I was bowled over by the power, inquiry, and humour of these stories. They shine brightly in the mind after reading.’ – Niven Govinden  
    0.008.50
    0.008.50
  • 15.90

    Minor Detail
    by Adania Shibli
    Book of the Month
    JUNE 2021

    BOOK-OF-THE-MONTH selection JUNE 2021: For our June selection, we have picked Minor Detail, and will be donating €2 from each sale to the Go Fund Me page helping to rebuild the Samir Mansour Book Store in Gaza, destroyed in recent airstrikes. -- ‘Though Minor Detail initially promises to be a kind of counterhistory or whodunit—a rescue of the victim’s story from military courts and Israeli newspapers–it turns out to be something stranger and bleaker. Rather than a discovery of hidden truths, or a search for justice, it is a meditation on the repetitions of history, the past as a recurring trauma ... For Shibli, the emblematic experience of occupation is the longue duree of ennui and isolation rather than a dramatic moment of crisis.’ — New York Review of Books Minor Detail begins during the summer of 1949, one year after the war that the Palestinians mourn as the Nakba – the catastrophe that led to the displacement and expulsion of more than 700,000 people – and the Israelis celebrate as the War of Independence. Israeli soldiers capture and rape a young Palestinian woman, and kill and bury her in the sand. Many years later, a woman in Ramallah becomes fascinated to the point of obsession with this ‘minor detail’ of history. A haunting meditation on war, violence and memory, Minor Detail cuts to the heart of the Palestinian experience of dispossession, life under occupation, and the persistent difficulty of piecing together a narrative in the face of ongoing erasure and disempowerment. Times Books of the Year 2020
    15.90
    15.90
  • 18.00

    The President Shop

    In The President Shop, there is no telling what the future really holds in store as the beliefs of the past slowly start to crumble. “The President Shop is a marvelous, timeless book that sweeps between the personal and the panoramic as it asks, Does every family, or country, contain an axis, around which the rest of it spins? Can you hear the voice of a stone? How clearly can anyone see the past or future? For which tyrannies have we been unwittingly waving flags?” —Catherine Lacey, author of Pew and Certain American States The President, the founder of the Nation, is an old man now, but his young and unifying spirit stands steadfastly at the heart of, Vesna Maric’s debut novel. Images of and tributes to the President are found in all homes in the Nation, procured from stores like the one Ruben and Rosa run. The couple met as partisans, fighting to forge the Nation in the crucible of conflict. But even though their pride shines as brightly as the gilded bust of the President, the younger generation has questioned whether the Nation really has its citizens best interests in mind. Ruben’s brother is actively working to avoid mandatory military service as he pines away for another man, and Ruben and Rosa’s daughter Mona is too busy adjusting to womanhood to get caught up in state-mandated nostalgia. To further exacerbate the family tension, an elderly uncle claims to have invented a machine to see into the future, which he stores in the basement of the family’s apartment building. But there is no telling what the future really holds in store as the beliefs of the past slowly start to crumble.
    18.00
    18.00
  • 16.00

    Second Place
    by Rachel Cusk
    Book of the Month
    MAY 2021

    BOOK-OF-THE-MONTH selection MAY 2021: A haunting fable of art, family, and fate from the author of the Outline trilogy. A woman invites a famous artist to use her guesthouse in the remote coastal landscape where she lives with her family. Powerfully drawn to his paintings, she believes his vision might penetrate the mystery at the center of her life. But as a long, dry summer sets in, his provocative presence itself becomes an enigma—and disrupts the calm of her secluded household. Second Place, Rachel Cusk’s electrifying new novel, is a study of female fate and male privilege, the geometries of human relationships, and the moral questions that animate our lives. It reminds us of art’s capacity to uplift—and to destroy.
    “Her genius is that in deliberately blurring a boundary of her own – that between a writer and her subject, between the expectation of autobiography so often attached to writing by women, and the carapace of pure invention so often unthinkably afforded to men – she tricks us into believing that her preoccupations and failings, her privileges and apparent assumptions, are not our own. By the time we realize what has happened, it is too late: our own surface has been disturbed, our own complacent compartment dismantled. It is a shock, but as the narrator of Second Place reminds us, 'shock is sometimes necessary, for without it we would drift into entropy.' Cusk is necessary too – deeply so, and Second Place, exquisite in the cruelty of its rightness, reminds us why.”
    —Sam Byers, The Guardian
    16.00
    16.00
  • 19.50

    Diary of a Film
    by Niven Govinden
    Book of the Month
    APRIL 2021

    BOOK-OF-THE-MONTH selection April 2021: A book fizzling with energy, the vibrancy of potencial and artistic discovery, with the joys and pains of creation, the melancholy of longing, of having given oneself fully, of love. It’s a book we all need right now. It gives me hope every time I open it.
    "Precision engineered European modernism from a master stylist. It walks us into a luminous and loving conversational drama, rich with complex erotics and interwoven private agonies. He writes exquisitely about art making, about obsession and responsibility. It's a gorgeous novel."
    - Max Porter
    SYNOPSIS:
    An auteur, together with his lead actors, is at a prestigious European festival to premiere his latest film. Alone one morning at a backstreet café, he strikes up a conversation with a local woman who takes him on a walk to uncover the city’s secrets, historic and personal. As the walk unwinds, a story of love and tragedy emerges, and he begins to see the chance meeting as fate. He is entranced, wholly clear in his mind: her story must surely form the basis for his next film. This is a novel about cinema, flâneurs, and queer love – it is about the sometimes troubled, sometimes ecstatic creative process, and the toll it takes on its makers. But it is also a novel about stories, and the ongoing question of who has the right to tell them.
    19.50
    19.50
  • Sold out
    10.00

    ⚡️The Harry Potter Quiz⚡️

    "IT'S BACK" - Cornelius Fudge Sunday Dec 18th | 20h

     
    HOW IT WORKS:
    - Choose your house and play for the glorious house cup: there'll be giggle water, there'll be questions harder than Hagrid's rock cakes and there'll be fire whisky to boot.* - Drinks and wizard snackery included. *2 HOUSE POINTS for every person in fancy dress (proper fancy dress, mind!)
    HOW MUCH IT COSTS:
    €10/person (including your beverages, of course)...
     

    THE PRIZES:

    1st place:

    A bottle of fire whiskey + some HP swag for the team*

    *As many Harry Potter goodies as we can get together! Think: stickers, posters flyers, and maybe even Tote Bags
    2nd Place:
    We'll give you a reduced goody bag, including some stickers and posters!

    10.00
    10.00
  • 2.00

    Juana y La Cibernética (edición bilingüe)

    THE FIRST ENGLISH LANGUAGE TRANSLATION OF A CHILEAN MASTERPIECE

    Juana y la cibernetica is a proto-cyberfeminist, proleterian, machine-loving work of solitary confinement by Elena Aldunate, "La Dama Chilena de la ciencia-ficción".

    BILINGUAL EDITION                EDICIÓN BILINGÜE

    The edition comes with parallel bilingual texts and a fiction response by author Jo Lindsay Walton.  
    María Elena Aldunate Bezanilla (1925-2005) was born in Santiago, Chile, and wrote under the name of Elena Aldunate. She became associated with the science fiction scene in Chile in the 1960s and 1970s, publishing a number of short fiction works and anthologies. These include Juana y la cibernética (1963), El señor de las mariposas (1967), Angélica y el delfín (1976) and Del cosmos las quieren vírgenes (1977).

    Jo Lindsay Walton is a writer, editor and Research Fellow in Critical and Cultural Theory in the Sussex Humanities Lab. He is interested in the intersection of culture, technology, and economics. With Polina Levontin, he co-edits Vector, the critical journal of the British Science Fiction Association, and with Samantha Walton, he runs the poetry press Sad Press. @jolwalton


    Our print edition will be a limited edition riso production made by Do The Print, Barcelona Translation by Ana Baeza Ruiz and Elizabeth Stainforth Cover design by Terry Craven 44 pages €8 - limited edition riso print version (OUT OF PRINT) €2 - .pdf edition
    2.00
    2.00
  • Sold out

    ‘Eleven Stories 2020’

    Eleven Stories 2020 collects the shortlist from our third short fiction prize and is available in either:
    PDF - €2.50 PRINT - €10 / a limited edition risography edition, numbered and stamped by our fine selves.
    DON'T FORGET: you get €2.50 off a prize entry with your purchase!
    Here's what the magnificent Rachel Cusk and Niven Govinden have to say about our selection:
    ‘I thoroughly enjoyed reading these submissions, which surprised me with their honest poise, their integrity, and their understated adherence to the values of literature. In the hands of some of these writers, the story form was brought to bear on the modern scene in new and astute ways.’ – Rachel Cusk ‘I was bowled over by the power, inquiry, and humour of these stories. They shine brightly in the mind after reading.’ – Niven Govinden
    44 pages Risoprinted at Dotheprint, Barcelona
  • Sold out
    2.00

    The Raffle / Sorteo

    🌞 SORTEO de VERANO 🌗 🌞 THE SUMMER RAFFLE  🌗

    NOW CLOSED MARIANA ENRIQUEZ FIRMADO /SIGNED


    En nuestro sorteo de verano podrás ganar una copia firmada de Nuestra parte de la noche una libreta de DESPERATE LITERATURE y un totebag de tela para llevarlos contigo!

    €2/billete Fecha limite: 1 de septiembre Envío Internacional por correos incluido*


    "La herencia, el deseo de pervivir, la paternidad, el horror, lo íntimo y lo político. Una novela libre y osada, hechizante y genial."


    For our summer raffle you can win a signed copy of Nuestra parte de la noche a DESPERATE LITERATURE notebook and a totebag to carry it all about!

    €2/ticket End date: September 1st Worldwide shipping by post included*

    *shipping is uninsured and untracked (though you can pay for tracking!) available wherever the Spanish correos can ship! THE WINNER Elena Espada

    2.00
    2.00
  • 17.00

    In Full Velvet

    Sinuous and sensual, the poems of In Full Velvet interrogate the nuances of desire, love, gender, ecology, LGBTQ lineage and community, and the tension between a body’s material limits and the forms made possible by the imagination.

    "Maybe a voice from the ancients whispers to Jenny Johnson—Sappho or the Muse Euterpe—how to sing of love and death and joy and reality in as many registers as they come in life. Or maybe Johnson is just a genius." — Brenda Shaughnessy

    17.00
    17.00
  • 6.00

    The Quintuple Whammy: Eleven Stories 2018 – 2022 (the .pdfs)

    Get the bundle of all five current editions of Eleven Stories, bringing together the shortlist from our four previous short fiction prizes... Don't forget, you get €2.50 reimbursed if you enter the prize, just use the promotional code in the receipt! 

    PLEASE NOTE THAT FOR COPYRIGHT REASONS WE HAVE REMOVED JOANNA WALSH'S SHORTLISTED STORY FROM THE 2018 PDF.
    Only the best in contemporary experimental fiction...
    ‘Reading these stories made me feel glad for the future of short stories.’ —Anton Hur, 2022 Judge
    ‘In these rich and vibrant stories, the language surprises and delights. From surreal mouse proposals to the catharsis of visible grief, via the uncertainty of memory and perception, each of these stories creates a new, engrossing reality while shedding light on our own.’ —Natasha Brown, 2022 Judge
    I loved reading the shortlist selection which realizes the Desperate Literature team’s ambition to reimagine and diversify contemporary writing. The stories represented are inquisitive, irreverential, critical, and fully committed to their respective creative projects. I’ve never been more hopeful for the future of fiction, and the Desperate Literature Prize plays no small part in this.’Waidner, 2021 Judge
    ‘I thoroughly enjoyed reading these submissions, which surprised me with their honest poise, their integrity, and their understated adherence to the values of literature. In the hands of some of these writers, the story form was brought to bear on the modern scene in new and astute ways.’ —Rachel Cusk, 2020 Judge
    'The 2019 Desperate Literature Short Fiction Prize has once again produced a memorable collection of diverse, dynamic short stories. It was a joy to read' —Claire-Louise Bennett, 2019 Judge
    ‘The 2019 Desperate Literature Prize has produced an incredibly impressive shortlist of stories. It’s an exciting, powerful and original selection. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.’ —Holly Faulks, Literary Agent at Greene & Heaton
    6.00
    6.00
  • 2.50

    ‘Eleven Stories 2019’ PDF download

    Eleven Stories 2019 collects the shortlist from our second short fiction prize and is available for a limited period in pdf format as a response to the lockdown measures put in place by the Spanish government.

    All sales will be shared between Desperate Literature and the authors.

    ->ONLY €2.20<-

    Only the best in contemporary experimental fiction...
    Here's what the magnificent Eley Williams and Claire-Louise Bennett have to say about our selection:
    'The 2019 entries revealed all the seething, the subtle and the searing possibilities of the short story -- it was a pleasure and privilege to celebrate them all' - Eley Williams
    'The 2019 Desperate Literature Short Fiction Prize has once again produced a memorable collection of diverse, dynamic short stories. It was a joy to read' - Claire-Louise Bennett
    ‘The 2019 Desperate Literature Prize has produced an incredibly impressive shortlist of stories. It’s an exciting, powerful and original selection. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.’ - Holly Faulks, Literary Agent at Greene & Heaton
    2.50
    2.50
  • 2.50

    ‘Eleven Stories 2018’ PDF download

    Eleven Stories 2018 collects the shortlist from our first short fiction prize and is available for a limited period in pdf format as a response to the lockdown measures put in place by the Spanish government.

    All sales will be shared between Desperate Literature and the authors.

    ->ONLY €2.20 or €3.50 for both the 2018 and 2019 editions AVAILABLE HERE<-

    PLEASE NOTE THAT FOR COPYRIGHT REASONS WE HAVE REMOVED JOANNA WALSH'S SHORTLISTED STORY FROM THE 2018 PDF.

    Here's what the magnificent Eley Williams has to say about our selection:

    ‘This brilliant shortlist celebrates everything that I value in literature — its demands, its affirmations, its possibilities. Linguistically playful, narratively deft: each story demonstrated the ways in which writing’s verve can thrill in the vein and trill on the ear. It was incredibly difficult to find winners: all of the writers’ entries were assured in their teetering, fiery in their freshness and bold in their complexity and should be congratulated and thanked.’

     
    2.50
    2.50
  • The Unamuno Author Series Festival Anthology

    ,

    In 2019, over eighty poets and academics came to Madrid to form the city’s first anglophone literary festival.

    Containing works from local performance poets and pulitzer prize winners alike, this bilingual collection represents a body of work capturing a glimpse of the itinerant anglophone poetry community that has passed through Madrid in recent years.


    ‘An unprecedented organization of writers from around the world ... I hope many more poets, writers, and readers get to benefit from this truly exceptional point of exchange.’ —Gregory Pardlo

    ‘..an international reading series which is inclusive, eccentric, very inspiring, which has been instigated by somebody who not only loves and understands poetry, but loves and understands people. That’s a rare thing, and something that should be celebrated.’ —Caitríona O’Reilly


    Details: 320 pages 170mm x 240mm 0.626 kg
    Cover art by Mark Strand An Unamuno Author Series and Desperate Literature title
    Including work by:

    Carl Adamshick, Nico Amador, Francisco Aragón, David Baker, Layla Benitez-James, Richard Blanco, Peg Boyers, Jericho Brown, Barney Bush, Rafael Carvajal, Mario Chard, Scott Cunningham; Joanne Diaz, Mark Doty, Michael Dumanis, Mary Moore Easter, Kit Fan, Joseph Fasano, Monica Ferrell, Joan Fleming, Kathleen Flenniken, Carolyn Forché, Livia Franchini, Forrest Gander, Dana Gioia, Aracelis Girmay, Rigoberto González, Jennifer Grotz, Christian Gullette, Marilyn Hacker, Tom Healy, Travis Helms, Marie Howe, Jenny Johnson, Marjorie Kanter, John Koethe, Shara Lessley, Su Smallen Love, Sheila Maldonado, Campbell McGrath, Ricardo Menes, Naomi Mulvihill, Luis Muñoz, Pádraig Ó Tuama, Sharon Olds, Caitríona O’Reilly, Gregory Pardlo, Elena Penga, Emilia Phillips, Dana Prescott, Ruben Quesada, Octavio Quintanilla, Spencer Reece, Paisley Rekdal, Luis J. Rodríguez, Steven Sanchez, Annie Schumacher, Richard Scott, Martha Serpas, Bruce Snider, Page Hill Starzinger, Fiona Sze-Lorrain, Jeremy Voigt, Clarissa Watson, Michael White, Mark Wunderlich, Monica Youn, Maya Jewell Zeller, Mark Strand

  • Sold out

    ‘Eleven Stories 2019’

    Eleven Stories 2019 collects the shortlist from our first short fiction prize into a limited edition risograph booklet ready for your reading pleasure.
    Only the best in contemporary experimental fiction...
    Here's what the magnificent Eley Williams and Claire-Louise Bennett have to say about our selection:
    'The 2019 entries revealed all the seething, the subtle and the searing possibilities of the short story -- it was a pleasure and privilege to celebrate them all' - Eley Williams
    'The 2019 Desperate Literature Short Fiction Prize has once again produced a memorable collection of diverse, dynamic short stories. It was a joy to read' - Claire-Louise Bennett
    ‘The 2019 Desperate Literature Prize has produced an incredibly impressive shortlist of stories. It’s an exciting, powerful and original selection. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.’ - Holly Faulks, Literary Agent at Greene & Heaton
  • Sold out

    ‘Eleven Stories’

    ---SOLD OUT---

    Eleven Stories collects the shortlist from our first short fiction prize into a limited edition risograph booklet ready for your reading pleasure.

    Here's what the magnificent Eley Williams has to say about our selection:

    ‘This brilliant shortlist celebrates everything that I value in literature — its demands, its affirmations, its possibilities. Linguistically playful, narratively deft: each story demonstrated the ways in which writing’s verve can thrill in the vein and trill on the ear. It was incredibly difficult to find winners: all of the writers’ entries were assured in their teetering, fiery in their freshness and bold in their complexity and should be congratulated and thanked.’

     
  • €20 Single Entry (+ €10 every further entry)

    Prize Submission 2023

    The 2023 Desperate Literature Prize for Short Fiction is NOW OPEN for submissions

    Before you enter, please ensure that you are eligible to enter the prize and have read our 'Eligibility & Conditions' page for the details on all the prizes. If you have any questions, you can also consult our FAQs page. Entries are limited to five pieces per person. EXTENDED DEADLINE: APRIL 16th 2023 Please note: multiple entries must be made at the same time. If you'd like to own previously shortlisted stories, you can get a free .pdf copy of Eleven Stories 2022 and €2.50 off both the full pdf bundle (2018 - 2022) as well as the print edition of Eleven Stories 2022 with submission entry. Just remember to add it to the cart at the time of purchase!  
    €20 Single Entry (+ €10 every further entry)
    €20 Single Entry (+ €10 every further entry)