Posted on

Teen Short Story Competition in Association with Tertulia Books

We are delighted to co-host the Teen Short Story Competition with Tertulia Books in Westport, Co. Mayo.

Our theme for this competition is ‘Waves’. Put your thinking caps on and start writing!

The competition closes on August 1st, at 6 PM.

Submit your short story to: competition.paperlanterns@gmail.com

In the body of your email, please include:

  • Your name.
  • Your age.
  • Your county of residence (you must live on the island of Ireland).
  • Your school (if applicable).
  • A little bit about yourself!

Our guest judge will read and select the winning pieces (one from each age group) from the shortlist.

The winners will be published in Issue 6 of Paper Lanterns.

The winners will receive a cash prize sponsored by Tertulia in association with Spot-Lit EU.

The winners will also receive a copy of Issue 6.

Guidelines:

  • You must be a resident on the island of Ireland.
  • You must be aged between 13-18. We have two judging categories: 13-15 years and 16-18 years.
  • Your work must be an original piece.
  • Short stories must be between 1200 and 2000 words. Please do not exceed this word count.
  • All stories will be read blind. Do not include your name or contact details within the submitted document.
  • We will not consider work that is prejudiced in nature. We will not consider work that includes, but is not limited to: sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, or classist content.
  • We cannot accept work that has already been published.
  • The judge’s decision is final. Our guest judge cannot provide feedback on any submitted or shortlisted pieces.

 

Posted on

Issue Four Launch Night

We are so excited to launch our fourth issue this Thursday March 25th at 7pm!

We would be thrilled if you joined us to celebrate the amazing new work that we have coming up this issue. Our launch will be held virtually on our YouTube channel here.

We will be joined by some of our contributors who will be reading some of their work and talking about their pieces. We will also be chatting about submissions for issue five and our new book club! It’s gearing up to be a fantastic night. To make sure you don’t miss out, you can even set a reminder on our YouTube channel so that you’re notified when the launch premieres! Click here to check it out.

And don’t forget, you can pre-order issue four now!

We’re really looking forward to the launch and hope you can join us!

Posted on

Happy World Book Day!

Happy World Book Day! 📚We hope everyone is celebrating with a good book! We thought we would share with you what everyone on the Paper Lanterns team is reading this week. There are some fantastic YA reads here that we would recommend checking out. Let us know what you’re reading at the moment!

Amy is reading Savage Her Reply by Deirdre Sullivan

Maggie is reading Courting Darkness by Robin Lafevers

Grace is reading A Song For Ella Grey by David Almond

Joyce is reading Spare and Found Parts by Sarah Maria Griffin

Posted on

News and Updates – Book Club and New Team Member

Hello everyone! We’ve had a lot of exciting things going on behind the scenes here, and wanted to share some of the updates with you.


Firstly, we wanted to wish our co-founder Ruth Ennis well on her next adventure! Ruth was a co-founder and co-editor of the journal for our first year, and we’re excited to see what she does next! 


We’re absolutely delighted to announce that Maggie Masterson is joining the Paper Lanterns team as production manager. Maggie was a children’s and young adult librarian in the Chicago suburbs, where she also sat on the committee for the Illinois Rebecca Caudill Young Readers’ Book Award. She moved to Ireland to complete her M.Phil. in Children’s Literature at Trinity College Dublin, where she studied the illustration of fairy tales, and thought about books as souvenirs of childhood. She conducted bibliographic research in the Pollard Collection of Children’s Books. She is currently working on her PhD at Trinity, researching the construction of girlhood in the children’s literature archive. 


We’re excited to let you know we are changing how we run our Book Club! From Issue 4 onwards, we’re creating a space for readers to come together and have interactive discussions about each issue’s selected book. We’ll also have author interviews, and there will be a chance for our readers to ask their questions too! Readers are welcome from all over the world. We can’t wait for you to join us, and we’ve a wonderful author lined up for Issue 4!


Finally, we’d like to give a huge thanks to Rachel Drohan, who helped us overhaul our book club. Rachel recently completed a 3 weeks internship with us as part of her Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Writing and Literature.

Don’t forget, you can save 10% on our back issues with our bundle deal!


We hope everyone is reading, writing, and staying safe. We’ll be sharing our contributors for issue 4 soon, so watch this space!

Posted on

The Perfect Christmas Gift

Looking for the perfect gift for the bookworm in your life? We have just the thing – in the run up to the holidays, we’ve put together a fantastic bundle for the YA lover in your life. Get the first three issues of Paper Lanterns in our stocking filler and save 10%!   Packed to the brim with writing, interviews, art, photography, features and book reviews  this is not to be missed.