Our Aim

We are aiming to promote both creative writing and its performance among writers in the north of Ireland.

Competition Rules

2025 Theme: In the North of Ireland

Closing date for Submissions: July 31st, 2025

Accepting places: Ten chosen finalists will be contacted via their email account on or around the 1st August. There will be a limited amount of time to reply to accept your place before the spot will be offered to one of the runner-up entries.

Length of Submissions: Writers may submit one entry only to the competition. This may be one Prose or Poetry piece, length: less than ten minutes reading time. This is because the ten chosen will go through to the Showcase Event. As it is impossible to predict how fast entrants might read their prose piece or poem, each person will have to time themselves before submitting, to gauge the suitability of their entry. Less than 10,00 words may be taken as a General Guideline.

Entry Winners: Ten finalists will be chosen by an independent International Panel of Impspired Authors, chaired by Charlie Cawte, the Editor of Impspired to perform their pieces in Portrush as part of the Swell Festival in a Showcase Event on Saturday,11th October 2025. By entering you are confirming your availability for the physical performance.

All 10 chosen finalists will have their work published by Charlie Cawte, Impspired Editor, in an Online Magazine (out 1st December 2025) and in a subsequent Print Edition.

Showcase Night: On the night of the Showcase event a panel of local judges, ( Sue Divin, Author of Guard Your Heart, 2021, & Truth Be Told, 2022,  Paul Doran, journalist, founder/director of Tenx9 + last year’s three Trophy Winners) after having heard all 10 readers, will select an overall Trophy winner for Best Performance on the night. The Trophy Winners for the Best Prose and Best Poetry pieces will already have been chosen by the International Panel. Therefore only eight readers will be eligible at the Showcase Event for the Performance Trophy.

Judging: The three Trophy holders will then be asked to join the local judging panel at the following years Showcase Event.

Submission Guidelines: 

• Submissions window: Thursday 1^st May – Thursday 31^st July 2025

• One Submission only per person of either Poetry or Prose.

• Please submit your piece in the body of an email (no attachments) and send to *maryfarrell85@hotmail.com

*in Times New Roman, Font Size 12,

*with ‘Impspired Soundwaves Competition’ AND your Name in the email subject line.

• This submission will then be forwarded anonymously to the International Panel. There must be no name or any information about the Sender in any entry. If you have your name in the header or footer of your work please remove it prior to submission.

•  Those entering MUST also also send a short biography (about 200 words or so) and a good resolution photograph with your submission. This is needed for those Winners who will be published in the Impspired Online magazine and subsequent Print Edition.

• We accept reprints or simultaneous submissions, but please let us know if the piece has been accepted elsewhere.