L’Esprit Literary Review
Judged by Michael Nath
I like fiction that banquets the reader. Too much fiction now follows a strict diet.
Michael Nath
L’Esprit seeks short fiction exhibiting exceptional ingenuity and vision in narration. After receiving 109 total submissions, we are pleased to announce the Grand Prize Winner; along with the Second Place and Third Place Awards; Finalists; and Shortlist Nominees:
2025 Leopold Bloom Prize for Innovative Narration
Guest Judge: Michael Nath
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Grand Prize Winner || Publication in L’Esprit Issue Six and $500 USD
Helen Mulgrew and the Hollow Tree, Art O’Connor
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Second Place Award || Publication in L’Esprit Issue Six and $100 USD
Hiraeth, Colm O’Shea
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Third Place Awards || Publication in L’Esprit Issue Six
Nothingbergers, Danielle Barr
Twilight in the Amphitheater, Andy Bodinger
Parallel Monologues, Noémie Boucher
Finalists:
Hiraeth, Colm O’Shea
Nothingbergers, Danielle Barr
Twilight in the Amphitheater, Andy Bodinger
Helen Mulgrew and the Hollow Tree, Art O’Connor
Parallel Monologues, Noémie Boucher
Shortlist:
Hiraeth, Colm O’Shea
Twilight in the Amphitheater, Andy Bodinger
Helen Mulgrew and the Hollow Tree, Art O’Connor
The Interruption, Claude Clayton Smith
Nothingbergers, Danielle Barr
An Invitation to the Gulls, Michael Thériault
Ashley and the Ewe, Naomi Afrassiabi
Logan Takes a Lit Test, Beatriz Seelaender
Parallel Monologues, Noémie Boucher
Deja Vu, Neil Weiner
Sharon, Hannah Wyatt
Due Care, Carol LaHines
My Mother Is A Cannibal, Priyanuj Mazumdar
The Devil and the Mirror, Joachim Glage
Crying, Josh Boardman
Thank you for your support of fearless writing.
Michael Nath is a British author and academic.
His first novel, La Rochelle (2010), was shortlisted for the 2011 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction. His second, British Story: A Romance (2014), was a Morning Star Book of the Year. It was described by The Times Literary Supplement as “a wonderful exercise in novelistic virtuosity, strange and beautiful.”
His most recent novel, The Treatment, (Quercus, 2020), was a critical success: The Guardian (Michael Donkor: “it is the voices and the language that make this novel such a triumph”); iPaper (Sarah Hughes: “His writing is addictive, sometimes strange, often beautiful”); Arts Desk (“A London novel to join the greats”); Morning Star (Paul Simon: “beautifully vulgar”); Tablet (hailed by AN Wilson: “Some of the most interesting dialogue I’ve read in years … a fantastic book”); Metro (Anthony Cummings: “a maverick project that defies comparison”)
Michael on what he likes in fiction:
I like authors who are doing it their way; their ‘signature against the world’. This is why I admire novels as far apart as Wuthering Heights and Neuromancer: Emily Brontë and William Gibson were making the rules for themselves. This is why I read Moby Dick twice in my first term as an undergrad. And why I keep reading Musil, Kafka, Joyce; Sir Water Scott, Jane Austen, Dostoevsky.
To me, there is nothing more important than voice. What is voice? The most familiar mystery; is there anything more friendly?
Above anyone, I admire Shakespeare: a dramatist, also one of the greatest writers of prose; he indicated the future for the novel in English. The prose of Shakespeare has the vigour of an ever-growing tree; I like prose that is woody, not lapidary: living, not stony.
Listen to Nietzsche: ‘Of prime necessity is life: a style should live.’
And let’s add that Shakespeare was supreme at setting problems, rather than solving them. I like fiction that dives deep, without checking its oxygen.
I like fiction that laughs. When the royal librarian begged Jane Austen to try an historical romance, she wrote back to him that they’d hang her for laughing: ‘I must keep to my own style & go on in my own way.’ Huzza!
And I like fiction that banquets the reader. Too much fiction now follows a strict diet.
I don’t care for fiction in the present tense: we weren’t all born this morning.
And I like fiction that has its way with my heart; Jane Eyre has its way, every time.
An interview with Michael can be found here.
Dan White, Private Collection
in mediam mentem // Leopold Bloom Prize
L'Esprit Literary Review 