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BA ELS student wins 3rd place in Embassy of Ireland鈥檚 short story competition

by Kassandra A. Buenafe, OfCom | Dec 15 2025

Adding to the roster of IITians with outstanding achievements this year is first-year BA English Language Studies student, Josh Fernandez, who placed 3rd in the Embassy of Ireland Short Story Competition– a fiction writing competition that highlights Irish history, mythology, music, and culture.

Competing against 100 entries, Fernandez’s piece entitled “The Song of Moher” personifies the Cliffs of Moher in the Republic of Ireland, reflecting the gentle themes of love and grief. The story is told from the perspective of the Cliffs, overseeing the complex and mundane parts of human existence. 

“I was inspired to write it partly for the competition, but more deeply because I wanted to give a voice to something nonhuman. I wanted to explore the idea of the cliffs being conscious and endlessly aware without being truly known. I was also struck by the ironic tragedy of the cliffs, a place of majesty yet a witness to many final moments. I found it devastatingly poetic, for how could something so beautiful come to bear so many final moments?” Fernandez said in an interview. 

Despite not having much experience in literary writing, Fernandez acknowledged that being in a language program helped in articulating the emotional layer of his story. According to him, language is a powerful force that can encapsulate strong emotions.

Writing this story was a way for him to magnify nature’s stillness and to “give voice” to inanimate things. “As a novice writer, writing and personifying the cliffs of Moher, and knowing about its devastatingly poetic history, taught me how inanimate entities are simply silent carriers of undocumented history,” he said.

More than the honor received and the heartfelt literary contribution, Fernandez is also set to receive a cash prize worth six thousand pesos. 



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