CONAMAR
CONAMAR BY HARRIET BRADLEY
An adult daughter working as a nurse in England returns to the west of Ireland with her siblings to bury their mother. Old tensions resurface as ghosts from the past – real and imagined – linger. The judges described Bradley’s story as ‘emotionally impactive’ and ‘suspenseful’.
You can read an extract from the story below.
HARRIET BRADLEY
Harriet is a writer of fiction and poetry. Her work appears in New Letters, Mslexia and elsewhere, and she was a 2026 Sun Valley Writing Fellow. She is at work on a novel-in-stories following three generations of an Anglo-Irish family across continents; ‘Conamar’ is taken from that novel.
Conamar
Oisín picks you up from the airport without a word, and it’s a long two hours in the car going west, including the pub stop where he disappears and leaves you alone on a damp bench in the garden with two bags of Tayto and a red lemonade. Roses bud up a trestle: yellow, your favourite and your mother’s. She always said they were lucky. At home in Essex, the children will be back from school and arguing over the television and the best Beatle and you will not be much missed, though at the hospital where you nurse they’ll be cursing your absence as the London Flu fills up the wards. But – like a child – you have come home.
After some time passes, you go inside the pub to find Oisín. The room is dark and clotted with smoke, a couple of old fellas in the corner ignoring the TV and you. Your mother used to tell you that women weren’t allowed in the pub. On the bar beside Oisín are the dregs of three pints.
There you are, you say.
Still he will not talk. Grief has silenced your bright brother and he will not ask about your husband William, or your children, or your work or life in England. He will not turn on the radio in the car. He stares straight ahead at the road: two lanes then dirt tracks, the world becoming harder to move through. So you are silent. Your face is very clean and dry now, scrubbed and creamed before leaving for the airport in your good dress.You’ve eaten nothing since the telephone rang during the six-o clock news.
It was your sister Mairin.
She said: Tá do mháthair marbh.
You said: Speak English.
Then your knees buckled. You pressed your forehead to the floor and breathed old cigarettes and food in the fibres of the carpet. The receiver was silent, as if your sister had given up on you. The children became alarmed, raising their voices. William said your name three times. Your English name: Catherine. Catherine. Catherine. You had to be carried to bed. You did not move for a night and a day.
Other shortlisted stories:
The Brunel Prize Winner
Rowan is a poet and tree surgeon living in East London. His work has recently been featured in 14 Magazine and Acumen. His poem ‘Wild Ghazal’ won second prize in the Shelley Memorial Project’s 2025 competition. He is currently working on a new pamphlet of compromised, radical ecopoems.
