
tracy fahey
author
“A modern-day gothic whose Kafkaesque otherworldly stories are beautifully disturbing.”
Lol Tolhurst, musician and writer, on The Unheimlich Manoeuvre

Tracy Fahey is an award-winning Irish author of six books. Her collection, I Spit Myself Out, won the 2025 Rubery International Book Award and her novella What Happens At The End, was awarded the 2024 Paul Cave Prize for Literature. Fahey has been a British Fantasy Award finalist in 2017, 2022, and 2024. and in 2024 she was also shortlisted for the London Independent Story Prize. In 2023 she received a Saari Fellowship from the Kone Foundation. Her work principally deals with reimagined folklore and female Gothic. Fahey's short fiction has appeared in fifty Irish, UK, US and Australian anthologies and been reprinted in the British Library Tales of the Weird series and Stephen Jones Best New Horror. She has been Guest of Honour at the UK Ghost Story Festival and Fantasticon, Denmark. Fahey's writing is supported by residencies in Ireland, Scotland, Greece, and Finland, and funded by Irish Grants Under The Arts and an Individual Arts Bursary.
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Her most recent book, the feminist folklore novella They Shut Me Up (PS Publishing, 2023) was described by Interzone magazine as ‘a gargantuan ice-breaking ship of a book. Like Angela Carter before her, Tracy Fahey has done something fundamentally new and necessary with old and misunderstood stories.’
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​Fahey holds a PhD in the Gothic and lectures in creative writing, contemporary Gothic, and folk horror at the Limerick School of Art and Design,
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Sample her short story 'I Look Like You, I Speak Like You, I Walk Like You' here.
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AWARDS AND RECOGNITIION
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Shortlisted for Rubery International Book Award, 2025.
Winner. Best Novella. The Paul Cave Prize For Literature, 2024.
Shortlisted for British Fantasy Award for Best Novella, 2024.
Shortlisted for London Independent Story Prize, 2024.
Reading Ambassador for Clare County Library for Ireland Reads Campaign, February 2024.
Recipient of Cill Rialaig Writing Residency, Ireland. 2024.
Recipient of Saari Fellowship, the Kone Foundation, Finland, 2023.
Guest of Honour at Fantasticon, Copenhagen, Denmark. 2023.
Recipient of Cill Rialaig Writing Residency, Ireland. 2023.
Recipient of Clare Arts Grant, awarded by Clare County Council. 2023.
Honourable Mention, Ellen Datlow
Shortlisted for British Fantasy Award for Best Collection, 2022.
Recipient of Cill Rialaig Writing Residency, Ireland. 2022
Recipient of Individual Arts Bursary, awarded by Limerick City and County Council. 2022.
Guest of Honour at UK Ghost Story Festival, Derby, UK. 2021.
Shortlisted for Leicester Short Story Prize. 2021.
Recipient of Cill Rialaig Writing Residency, Ireland. 2021.
Honourable Mention, Ellen Datlow 2019.
Recipient of Limnisa Writing Residency, Methana, Greece. 2019.
Shortlisted for British Fantasy Award for Best Collection. 2017.