Short Story Winner 2026: Andrew Maguire
We are delighted to introduce to you the winner of the Mairtín Crawford Award for Short Story 2026 Andrew Maguire.
Click here to read Andrew's winning work, I am Human.
I'm incredibly proud to have won this award. It's a story that means a lot to me so receive recognition for it and to be able to share it with people means a lot. Congratulations to the other winners and shortlisted writers, and thank you to the judges and all the organisers who put so much work into making awards like this happen. These events are so important for encouraging and giving opportunity to new writers and I'm very grateful for my experience of it this year.
Andrew Maguire is a writer from Omagh, living in Belfast. He has an MA in Creative Writing from the Seamus Heaney Centre, Queen’s University Belfast. His writing has featured in Blackbird, The Honest Ulsterman and the Irish Times. He was shortlisted for the RTE Short Story Competition and won the Wild Atlantic Words Short Story Competition. He works at the Graduate School at Queen's University.
The runner-ups and Shortlist of the Short Story Award 2026 were as follows:
1st Runner Up: Nicky Marcus
2nd Runner Up: Dara McWade
Shortlist (in alphabetical order): Joby Fox, David Hughes and Catherine Ogston.
Many congratulations to all the nominees!
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