Friday Five: Frazzled Lit short story winner Gary Finnegan

Gary Finnegan‘s short story “Limbo Nights,” which won first place in the Frazzled Lit 2025 short story competition, has been described as “a word-perfect gallop through the highs and lows of a post-Leaving Cert trip, and the swift transition from irresponsible child to semi-responsible adult-in-training.” The story is also praised for its “Great imagery and dialogue,” and I agree wholeheartedly.

An accomplished journalist as well as a writer of fiction, Gary is based in Kildare, Ireland. His writing has appeared in The Hooghly Review, The London Magazine, Litro, Flash Fiction Magazine, Roi Fainéant, and elsewhere. Read on to learn more about the inspiration for “Limbo Nights,” Gary’s upcoming projects, his advice to other writers, and more.

1. With the success of “Limbo Nights,” what new writing projects are you working on, and can you share a glimpse of what readers might expect next?

Two things. The first is a novel which my agent in London is preparing to send out to a list of publishers. That one grew from a short story published by The London Magazine and centres on a woman who hacks her friends’ phones in an act of twisted revenge. All manner of secrets spill out, posing moral dilemmas and straining long-standing relationships. If I reveal the motivation for the hack, it might be something of a spoiler, so I’ll say no more on this one for now. 

The other project, which is at a much earlier stage, is an expanded – probably novel length – version of “Limbo Nights”. Earlier this year, I had applied for funding from the Arts Council of Ireland to develop the short story into a novel. I learned that they’d approved a grant – known as the Agility Award – in the same week as the story won the Frazzled Lit Short Story Award. There are, of course, days where I wonder if it’s worth persevering with it, so it’s great to receive some external encouragement. So I’ll keep at it but promise to take my time.

2. “Limbo Nights” won first place in the 2025 Frazzled Lit Short Story Award. What inspired the story, and how did you approach crafting its narrative and emotional impact?

I’ve heard other writers over the years say fiction is a mix of memories or experience and imagination– and that’s true of “Limbo Nights.” The starting point doesn’t have to be your own experience, it can be something you’ve seen or heard about. With this piece, I read a news story about the tragic death of a young person who had died while on a holiday with their friends weeks before they were due to start university. It reminded me of a trip I’d taken with about a dozen classmates in the first summer after we’d finished school. I’m sure this is pretty common elsewhere, but it has become a real rite of passage for eighteen-year-olds in Ireland. It can be a brilliant, liberating experience, but there are also obvious dangers. So I was drawing on my own real-world memories, but taking it to new and darker places. 

The emotional heartbeat of the story is the relationship between two boys in this group of friends. They are at a crossroads, having grown up together. One is bound for a prestigious university course and the other is a little adrift. This is something of a reversal of fortunes, as the one whose future looks uncertain had been far more popular through their teenage years. Of course, they’ve never addressed the fact that they are on the verge of an enormous change – and therein lies the tension. 

A key element of this story is in how it’s told. I had written it in third person but it felt too distant from the action. Then I wrote in first person but it still lacked emotional heft. The trick was–thanks to feedback from friends–to try another approach. So I reworked it as though it were written by one of the boys to his friend, addressing him as “you.” This narrowed the gap between the pair, adding an intimacy that had been lacking in earlier drafts. This approach wouldn’t work for some stories, but it felt right for this one. 

3. As a writer whose fiction has appeared in prestigious outlets like The London Magazine and Litro, which authors or literary influences have most shaped your storytelling style?

I was slow to get into short stories, until I picked up “There are Little Kingdoms” by Kevin Barry. That was a turning point for me. The humour, the darkness, the ordinary subjects and settings. From there, I read collections by other Irish short story writers like Colin Barrett, Wendy Erskine, John Patrick McHugh and Lucy Caldwell. All different, all amazing. And then there’s the peerless prose of Claire Keegan. Those writers have also written novels, proving that good storytellers are not confined to one form. Of course, I read lots of books by British and American writers–right now, “Orbital” by Samantha Harvey and “All Fours” by Miranda July–but you can survive fairly well on a diet of modern Irish literature. 

At the moment, I don’t read sci-fi or fantasy or much genre fiction. I want the stories I read, and the stories I write, to have a dose of realism, ideally some humour and a plot that really moves. Of course, I reserve the right to change my mind entirely about this and try to write a dystopian romance novel. 

4. Your background as a journalist likely informs your fiction. How do you balance the precision of journalism with the creative freedom of short story writing?

Well, I suppose the big difference is that, in journalism, making things up is really frowned upon! The beauty of writing fiction is that you can do whatever you like. At the moment, I want to write about contemporary life in Irish towns; extraordinary things happening to ordinary people in middling places. But if I sit down to write and the idea that grabs me is something more far-fetched, then that’s what I’ll do. And it may go nowhere, but that’s okay. It’s different in freelance journalism because I need to make that work pay. 

That is probably the biggest challenge when switching between modes: if I’m writing a long piece of fiction and the text can be improved by cutting two hundred words– or two thousand words–then that’s what I’ll need to do. But my years of being paid based on word count, or at least being paid per piece, makes it extra painful to make radical cuts. Similarly, I am trying to get over a bad habit of submitting every piece of fiction I write. It has taken time to accept that some stories or some chapters of a novel are just part of the development and will never see the light of day. In my day job, I don’t have the luxury of writing-off a day’s work because there are bills to pay. 

The positive effect of journalistic writing is that paring something back to tighten the word count by five or ten percent is not so hard. It forces me to choose words carefully and not allow sentences to run out of control. 

5. What advice would you offer aspiring writers, particularly those aiming to break into competitive literary spaces like contests or anthologies?

Expect nothing. The reality is that all contests and journals are massively oversubscribed, so even strong stories are likely to be overlooked. With this in mind, you have to do all you can to make the reader care about the character and the story within the first lines. The writing needs to be as tight as possible, your word choices should be fresh without sounding like they’ve been lifted from a thesaurus, and the story has to make–and keep–a promise to the reader that it’s worth their while reading beyond the opening paragraph. 

The other thing I’ve taken from my recent experiences is that it’s well worth getting frank feedback from friends and fellow writers, and investing yourself in editing your work. In the past, I’ve been too impatient and moved on to chasing the next idea for a story before really doing justice to the previous piece. I tended to favour quantity over quality but am trying to reverse that. 

Follow Gary on Linktree, X at @finnegag, Instagram at @finnegan6893, and BlueSky at @finnegag.bsky.social.

Check this video interview with Gary on the Frazzled Lit website.