(photo by Garry Knight)
An archive of the newsletters sent to members of our Mailing List from 2010 – 2016.
28 October
VS Pritchett Prize Announces 2016 Shortlist
The VS Pritchett Memorial Prize for an unpublished short story is one of the most well-regarded short story competitions in the country, with a first prize of £1,000. This year’s judges are Aamer Hussein, Peter Kemp and Sara Taylor. Congratulations to the 2016 shortlist:
‘The Scattering’ by Clare Colvin
‘Theft’ by Jasmine Donahaye
‘The Street of Baths’ by Fiona Marshall
‘The Listener’ by Kenneth Steven
The winner will be announced on 17 November and their story will be published in Prospect Magazine and in The RSL Review. For further information, please visit the Royal Society of Literature website.
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21 October
Shortlist for the Willesden Herald
Short Story Prize 2016
The shortlist for the 2016 Willesden Herald Short Story Prize has been announced. Compiled by judge Katy Derby, the list contains the work of ten short story writers, including several former University of Chichester Creative Writing students. Congratulations to all, this is what the list looks like:
‘All Quiet by the Idle Wall’ by Patrick Slevin
‘All That Remains’ by Rob Hawke
‘The Cliffs of Bandiagara’ by Catherine McNamara
‘Looking for Nathalie’ by Susan Haigh
‘Love and Hair’ by Olga Zilberbourg
‘The Mayes County Christmas Gun Festival’ by David Lewis
‘Supersun’ by Barbara Robinson
‘Twisted’ by Tracy Fells
‘Undercurrents’ by Gina Challen
‘The Volcano’ by Anna Lewis
All shortlisted stories will appear in volume 9 of the Willesden Herald anthology. For further information, please visit the Willesden Herald website.
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17 October
Chichester Lecturer David Swann Takes First and Highly Commended
in the 2016 Bridport Prize
This week, the winners have been announced for the 2016 Bridport Prize. The competition encourages emerging writers and promotes literary excellence with short story, flash fiction, poetry and novel categories. It is one of the richest competitions in the UK for creative writing, offering a total of £16,000 in prize money. Once again, we were delighted to see University of Chichester Creative Writing lecturer David Swann on the listings, coming first in the Flash Fiction category, and Highly Commended in the short story. Congratulations to David, and all of the winning writers – as ever, we were delighted to see many names familiar to Thresholds listed this year.
SHORT STORY WINNERS:
1st – ‘Cut Loose’ by Wendy Brandmark, London
2nd – ‘Open House’ by Kathleen Donkin, Gardiner, Maine, USA
3rd – ‘Steroid Dreams’ by Lesley Krueger, Toronto, Canada
FLASH FICTION WINNERS:
1st – ‘Drought’ by David Swann, Brighton
2nd – ‘Dentures’ by Karen Smyte, Michigan, USA
3rd – ‘467 Strathmore Ave’ by Rachel Robb, Toronto, Canada
To find details of all winning, highly commended and shortlisted writers, visit the Bridport Prize website.
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08 October
Stefanie Seddon wins 2016 Bristol Short Story Prize
Stefanie Seddon, a recent graduate of Birkbeck’s M.A. in Creative Writing, has won the 2016 Bristol Short Story Prize. The international writing competition is open to writers worldwide and in this, its ninth year, over 2,000 entries were received. Seddon, originally from New Zealand and now based in Kent, won with her story ‘K?kahu’, called ‘a poignant, magical story tackling trauma through a child’s eyes using the power of myth’ by judge Tania Hershman.
Second prize went to Tanner McSwain from Chicago, for ‘The Red Sea’, while third prize was awarded to Berlin-based Kate Brown, for ‘Making Fists’. The three winning stories, along with seventeen other shortlisted pieces, will appear in Volume Nine of the Bristol Short Story Prize Anthology, now available. Visist the BSSP website for further details.
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07 October
KJ Orr Presents a Plea to Publishers to Take Risks
In a piece for the Guardian, following her win of the 2016 BBC Short Story Award, KJ Orr explains why writers need freedoms in order for the short story form to thrive:
Since winning the BBC National Short Story award this week for “Disappearances”, I have been asked whether I am writing a novel. This is something that happens to short story writers…
Continue reading on the Guardian website, here.
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05 October
KJ Orr wins BBC National Short Story Award 2016
Our warm and hearty congratulations go out to University of Chichester PhD graduate KJ Orr, as winner of this year’s prestigious BBC National Short Story Award. The £15,000 prize was presented to Orr by Jenni Murray from Woman’s Hour, at a ceremony in London last night. Judge Kei Miller described Orr’s winning story, ‘Disappearances’ – a tale of a retired plastic surgeon who develops a relationship with a waitress in his local café – as “a near perfect example of how the short story works”. Di Speirs, of the BBC, said: “KJ Orr’s precision and clarity, her ability to expose a life in a line and to induce sympathy and disdain, linger long after reading the final paragraph.”
The runner-up prize of £3,000 was awarded to Claire-Louise Bennett, also a debut writer, for her story ‘Morning, Noon and Night’, while Hilary Mantel, Lavinia Greenlaw and Tahmima Anam, the remaining shortlisted writers, each received £500.
KJ Orr’s debut short story collection, Light Box, was published in February by Daunt Books. You can find features by Orr across the Thresholds website, including her Short Story Masterclass interviews with Jane Rogers and David Constantine, her ‘Coffee with…’ Vanessa Gebbie and Toby Litt, plus features on Daniel Kehlmann and Nam Le.
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20 September
All-Female Shortlist for 2016 BBC National Short Story Award
Our congratulations go out to the 2016 BBC National Short Story Award shortlist, this year compiled entirely of female writers. Former University of Chichester Creative Writing PhD student K.J. Orr is amongst the five shortlisted, for her story ‘Disappearances’. Orr is joined by anthropologist and novelist Tahmina Anam for ‘Garments’, writer Lavinia Greenlaw for ‘The Darkest Place in England’, novelist Hilary Mantel for ‘In a Right State’, and Claire-Louise Bennett for ‘Morning, Noon & Night’.
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08 September
Gearing up for the 2016 Small Wonder Short Story Festival
Charleston’s annual short story festival begins later this month. Running from 28 September to 02 October the Small Wonder Festival will feature an eclectic range of speakers, including Ali Smith – this year’s winner of the Charleston Award for a Lifetime’s Excellence in Short Fiction. As ever, Thresholds will be teaming up with Small Wonder to produce a brand new series of Short Story Masterclass podcasts. Watch THIS SPACE for news later in the autumn.
A theme of ‘fluidity’ weaves through this year’s Small Wonder programme, with events looking at the refugee experience, sex and death, and changing trends within the short form. The line up includes, among others: Juliet Stevenson, Kei Miller, Naomi Alderman, Patience Agbabi, Dragan Todorovi?, Petina Gappah, Peter Hobbs, Elif Shafak, Lionel Shriver, Salley Vickers and Kevin Barrett. You can download your copy of the brochure on the Small Wonder website, and Thresholds will have more news closer to the time.
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24 May
Short Fiction Longlist
Congratulations to all the longlistees in the Short Fiction Prize 2016. There are several names appearing on this year’s list that are familiar to THRESHOLDS, particularly our Assistant Editor, David Frankel, and Chichester MA tutor David Swann. The 2016 competition is judged by Graham Mort, Professor of Creative Writing and Transcultural Literature at Lancaster University. Find the longlist and full details on the Short Fiction website.
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22 April
And the winner is…
Jonathan Tel’s ‘The Human Phonograph’ has won the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award 2016, the richest prize in the world for a single short story. Tel’s story, which sees him awarded the £30,000 prize, centres on a marriage lived in the shadow of the Chinese nuclear weapons programme of the 1960s. Judge Rose Tramain commented:
“The hesitant relationship between a husband and wife who barely know each other forms the basis of this troubling, well-wrought story, set on a Chinese nuclear base in the 1960s and 70s.
“But it is the image taken from the title – of a man who, in a silent, punitive and desolate world, can remember the old songs and sing them perfectly every time – that elevates it to something truly memorable. The decision to award the prize to this work was unanimous among the judges and we all feel that Jonathan Tel has a bright future as a fiction writer.”
Full details of the prize, plus the shortlisted stories, can be found on the Story Award website.
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21 March
The Sunday Times EFG 2016 Shortlist is Out
This year’s shortlist for the prestigious Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award has been released and it features six authors from five different countries – all in the running for the world’s richest prize for a single short story: £30,000. Congratulations to the shortlisted authors:
ALIX CHRISTIE – ‘The Dacha’
COLUM McCANN – ‘What Time Is It Now, Where You Are?’
EDITH PEARLMAN – ‘Unbeschert’
JONATHAN TEL – ‘The Human Phonograph’
NICHOLAS RUDDOCK – ‘The Phosphorescence’
PETINA GAPPAH – ‘The News of Her Death’
The winner will be announced on 22 April. You can read the shortlisted stories and find out more about the prize on the Short Story Award website.
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14 March 2016
Showcasing Writers at the Margin
According to a recent report by Spread The Word, a staggering 97% of literary agents think the publishing world was ‘a little diverse’ or ‘not diverse at all’. In direct response to the lack of diversity in literature, Brighton-based charity Creative Future are aiming to change the face of publishing by once again running the Creative Future Literary Awards (CLFAs) – the UK’s first and only writing competition aimed specifically at talented writers from marginalised backgrounds. Winners of the competition, which opens today, will receive cash prizes totalling £1,000, as well as high-quality professional development opportunities with nationally recognised literature organisations like The Literary Consultancy and New Writing South. Find out more on the Creative Future Literary Awards website.
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10 March 2016
The Edge Hill Short Story Prize Longlist Announced
The only UK award that recognises excellence in a published collection of short stories, The Edge Hill Short Story Prize attracts established names alongside relative newcomers for the £10,000 prize, as well as that £1,000 Readers’ Prize.
The 2016 longlist includes a number of prize-winning writers Kate Clanchy (winner of the 2009 BBC Short Story Prize), China Mieville (three-time winner of the Arthur C. Clarke award and winner of the British Fantasy Award twice), and Donal Ryan (whose novel was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2013 and won the Guardian First Book Award in the same year).
Ailsa Cox, Professor of Short Fiction at Edge Hill University and organiser of the Short Story Prize said: “We are excited to be able to mark the tenth anniversary of our prize with such a strong longlist of authors from across the UK and Ireland. It is fitting that in our anniversary year a previous winner features in the list – Graham Mort (Winner 2011) – as well as two previously shortlisted authors – Helen Simpson and Ali Smith. We face a tough task in the judging stages, but our tenth anniversary prize will truly showcase some of the best talent in the genre.”
For more information and the full longlist, visit the Edge Hill University website.
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18 December 2015
Prolitzer Short Fiction Prize Results
Prolitzer Short Fiction Prize judge Jaki McCarrick has chosen Melanie Whipman’s story ‘Dissolving’ as the 2015 winner. Our congratulations go out to Whipman, a University of Chichester MA in Creative Writing graduate, and PhD student. McCarrick said the story is ‘dark and introspective. It is also beautifully written – the sentences are taut and powerful; the reader has to work hard to piece together the details given to us.’ It is the story of ‘a man is being held hostage, along with another. He is about to be executed. In the minutes before his death, he recalls aspects of his life, his upbringing in Sussex, his schooldays and teachers, his relationship with his father.’
Aiden O’Reilly was awarded second place for his story ‘The Enormous Building Site’, while Karina Vidler took third prize for ‘Bedtime Drink’. Congratulations to all three writers.
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30 November 2015
Costa Short Story Award Shortlist Available to Read
In the Costa Short Story Award the public votes for the winner from six shortlisted stories selected by five judges. All shortlisted stories are available to read and listen to right now on the Costa Book Awards website, where you can vote for your favourite to win.
This year’s shortlisted titles are:
‘Fallen’
‘Gerardo Dreams of Chillies’
‘Rogey’
‘The Night Office’
‘To William Burroughs, from His Wife’
‘Watching the Storms Roll In’
Read and vote for your favourite here.
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23 November 2015
The Eccles Centre at the British Library announces William Atkins and Alison MacLeod as joint winners of the 2016 Eccles British Library Writer in Residence Award
All at Thresholds are thrilled to see Professor Alison MacLeod, founder of the forum, named as this year’s joint winner of the Eccles British Library Writer in Residence Award. The Writer in Residence Award was set up as part of the Eccles Centre’s charge to promote awareness of the British Library collections relating to the USA and Canada, and to help facilitate the use of these collections. Both Watkins and MacLeod will be awarded £20,000, and they will use the British Library’s collections to research their writing projects during their residency, which will begin in January 2016.
The Eccles Centre announced that: ‘Atkins will be researching a new travel narrative interrogating the Western concept of the desert through a series of journeys – through Australia, Central Asia, the Arabian Peninsula and North Africa but above all the American West.’
The novel MacLeod will be researching takes its inspiration from the events of the 1960 trial of Penguin Books, in which the publisher famously found itself in court for its decision to publish the unexpurgated Lady Chatterley’s Lover. ‘The story will unfold across a London still marked by the Blitz, following an unexpected trail of suspicions which lead ultimately to the USA and the very core of Establishment forces’
Our hearty congratulations go out to both William Atkins and Alison MacLeod. You can read more about the Award and both authors on the Eccles Centre for American Studies website.
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13 October 2015
Canadian Writers Win the 2015 Bristol Short Story Prize
Congratulations to Canadian writers Brent van Staalduine and J. R. McConvey who have won first and second prizes in the 2015 Bristol Short Story Prize. Hailing from Hamilton, Ontario, Brent van Staalduine has been awarded the £1,000 1st prize for his story ‘A Week on the Water’, while J. R. McConvey of Toronto took second place for his story ‘Between the Pickles’. Third prize went to Australian writer Magdalena McGuire, for her story ‘Birthday Bones’.
Now in its eighth year, the Bristol Prize received 2,420 entries from writers based in more than sixty countries. Find out more on the Bristol Prize website.
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06 October 2015
Jonathan Buckley takes the 2015 BBC National Short Story Award
Congratulations to Jonathan Buckley, author of the winning story in this year’s BBC National Short Story Award. ‘Briar Road’ is a story about a psychic who investigates the case of a missing teenager. This 10th annual Award saw Buckley presented with the £15,000 prize by Chair of Judges Allan Little at a ceremony held in the BBC’s Radio Theatre in London. Mark Haddon’s story ‘Bunny’ was named runner-up, taking home a cash prize of £3,000. The three other shortlisted authors – Frances Leviston, Hilary Mantel and Jeremy Page – received £500 each. You can find further details on the Book Trust website.
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27 September 2015
The 2015 Charleston-Chichester Award for Lifetime Achievement in Short Fiction
The Dept. of English and Creative Writing at the University of Chichester is delighted to announce that the writer Jane Gardam is this year’s recipient of The Charleston-Chichester Award for Lifetime Achievement in Short Fiction. The Award is a wonderful development of the University and the Department’s partnership with The Charleston Trust, which hosts a range of renowned writers and artists at its two literary festivals each year. A special award event for Jane Gardam took place at The International Small Wonder Festival, where Gardam read and was interviewed in front of a sell-out audience. A special ‘masterclass’ podcast/interview will be available later this autumn on THRESHOLDS.
Read more about Jane Gardam in an interview with the Independent here.
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16 September 2015
The BBC National Short Story Award Shortlist is Out
‘Briar Road’ by Jonathan Buckley
When their daughter goes missing, a desperate family enlist the help of a clairvoyant to shed light on her fate. Yet their encounter with this visitor puts them all under immense strain.
‘Bunny’ by Mark Haddon
A man dangerously over-eats; just as seriously he lives at home in fear of the outdoors. Until Leah calls and his life takes a dramatic turn.
‘Broderie Anglaise’ by Frances Leviston
Hidden tensions between a mother and daughter surface in the emotional build-up to a family wedding.
‘The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher’ by Hilary Mantel
A knock at the door announces an unexpected visitor who has plans to alter the course of history as we know it.
‘Do It Now, Jump The Table’ by Jeremy Page
A young man prepares to meet his girlfriend’s parents for the first time – in the disquieting knowledge that they enjoy a somewhat alternative lifestyle.
The winner will be announced on Wednesday 6 October, live on BBC 4’s Front Row. They will receive £15,000. For more information, visit and to read more about each of the nominees, visit the BBC website.
You can catch Mark Haddon at the BBC National Short Story Award event at this year’s Small Wonder Festival, at the end of September.
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08 July 2015
Frank O’Connor Winner Announced
Congratulations to Carys Davies, winner of this year’s Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award – the most lucrative award for a collection of short stories in the world, with a prize of €25,000. Davies’ collection The Redemption of Galen Pike, published by Salt, was called “a truly original and striking collection, full of funny, keenly observed stories replete with twists and turns that surprise,” by judge Éibhear Walshe. “The language is economical with not a word to spare. Davies takes historical moments and themes and examines them in novel ways which intrigue the reader.”
To find out more about the Award, visit the Frank O’Connor website.
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14 May 2015
Edge Hill Prize for the Short Story Shortlist Confirmed
The Edge Hill Prize for the Short Story is the only award that recognises excellence in a published collection of short stories, offering £5,000 as a first prize. This year’s shortlist features Toby Litt, Anneliese Mackintosh, Carys Davies, Madeleine D’Arcy, Rose Tremain and Kirsty Gunn. Congratulations to all. The overall winner will be announced on 02 July. Visit the Edge Hill University website for full details.
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30 April 2015
PhD Bursary Opportunity at Chichester
The University of Chichester, home to THRESHOLDS, has one full Bursary for PhD study for three years available in the area of English and Creative Writing. Innovative proposals for PhD study are invited and the strategic drive behind the studentships is to attract excellent students to conduct collaborative PhD projects. Collaboration may involve either a third party organisation e.g. museum, gallery, charity, business or collaboration with the University of Chichester subject areas of Enterprise Management and Leadership (The Business School), Education or Music. The deadline for applications is noon on 10 June 2015. Find full info here.
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25 April 2015
Yiyun Li wins The Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award
Chinese-American author Yiyun Li has won the 2015 Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award. Her story ‘A Sheltered Woman’ was first published in The New Yorker in 2014 and is the story of ‘a Chinese-American nanny hired to spend a month supporting a new mother and her baby; trying to keep detached from the emotional turmoil around her, she is also entrapped by her own past’. Listen to Yiyun Li discuss short story writing in a THRESHOLDS podcast with Robert Coover, here.
This is the world’s richest prize for a single short story and Li is the winner £30,000, while the five other shortlistees will each receive £1,000. Find full details of the Award on the Book Trust website.
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17 March 2015
Fish Publishing Short Story Prize Winners
The result of the 2014/15 Fish Publishing Short Story Prize are in and we are delighted to see lots of regular Thresholders on the shortlist – congratulations to all. This year’s judge, author Jennifer Johnston, chose the winning story – ‘The Pace of Change’ by Chris Weldon – which will be published along with nine other stories in the 2015 Fish Anthology.
SECOND: ‘Tomorrow’ by Keren Heenan
THIRD: ‘Two Funerals’ by Kara Moskowitz
Find a list of honorary mentions and the shortlistlist, plus more details, on the Fish Publishing website.
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01 February 2015
Shortlist for the Sunday Times EFG Award Announced
Congratulations to the six shortlisted writers in this year’s Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award. The world’s richest prize for a single short story, the Award offers its winner £30,000, while the five other shortlistees will each receive £1,000.
The shortlist:
Rebecca F John – ‘The Glove Maker’s Numbers’
Yiyun Li – ‘A Sheltered Woman’
Elizabeth McCracken – ‘Hungry’
Paula Morris – ‘False River’
Scott O’Connor – ‘Interstellar Space’
Madeleine Thien – ‘The Wedding Cake’
Find full details about the Award on The Book Trust website.
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27 January 2015
Zoe Gilbert wins the Costa Short Story Award
Our warm congratulations go out to Zoe Gilbert, winner of this year’s Costa Short Story Award. Gilbert is a PhD student at the University of Chichester and her winning story, ‘Fishskin, Hareskin’, tells the tale of a new fishwife returning ‘to her past and its lost comforts’. It was voted for by the public from a shortlist of six stories.
Gilbert’s short stories have appeared in anthologies and journals in the UK and internationally. Her work has won prizes from Cinnamon Press, Lightship and the British Fantasy Society, amongst others, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is currently working on her first folklore-inspired collection of stories, which will form part of her PhD on the short story at the University of Chichester. She lives in London, where she runs a writers’ critique group and co-hosts the Word Factory short story club.
Second place: Paula Cunningham for ‘The Matchboy’
Third place: Joanne Meek for ‘Jellyfish’
You can read Zoe Gilbert’s winning story on The Costa Book Awards website.
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19 January 2015
Costa Short Story Award Shortlist 2014
Congratulations to the six shortlisted authors who have finally been revealed in this year’s Costa Short Story Award. The Award was judged by author Victoria Hislop, Simon Trewin from William Morris Endeavor agency, novelist Patrick Gale, novelist and journalist Fanny Blake, and director of The National Academy of Writing, Richard Beard. The winner and two runners-up will be announced at the Costa Book Awards ceremony on Tuesday 27th January. The shortlisted writers are:
Paula Cunningham – ‘The Matchboy’
Zoe Gilbert – ‘Fishskin, Hareskin’
Jane Healey – ‘The Liontamer’s Husband’
Joanne Meek – ‘Jellyfish’
Mark Newman – ‘Rosa and Thirkel’
Lucy Ribchester – ‘The Glassblower’s Daughter’
Full details about the Award can be found on the Costa Book Awards website, where you can also read all six shortlisted stories.
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16 November
The Writeidea Prize-winner
Melanie Whipman, PhD student in Creative Writing at the University of Chichester, has won the Writeidea Prize, for her story ‘What You Do for Love’. Remarkably, on the same day, Whipman was also announced as the winner of the HG Wells Short Story Competition, for her short story ‘Wakes and Wishbones’.
Rowena Macdonald, former Edge Hill Prize shortlistee and VS Pritchett runner-up, won Writeidea’s Tower Hamlets prize and was placed second overall. The other finalists were: Andrew Blackman, Tracy Fells, CG Menon, Umi Sinha and Farrah Yusuf.
You can find out more about the Writeidea Prize, and read the finalists’ stories, here.
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25 October
Winner of the 2014 Bristol Short Story Prize Announced
Leicester-based writer Mahsuda Snaith has won the £1,000 first prize in this year’s Bristol Short Story Prize. She captivated the judges with ‘The Art of Flood Survival’, a short story about a young Bangladeshi servant girl. This is Snaith’s second win in a matter of days, after she also won the SI Leeds Prize for unpublished black and Asian women writers.
Claire Griffiths won the second prize for her story ‘Tata and Mama and Me’, while Tom Vowler placed third with ‘Debt’.
The Bristol Short Story Prize Anthology Volume 7 features these winning stories, plus the shortlisted stories from the competition. Full details on the Prize and the anthology can be found on the Bristol Short Story Prize website.
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13 October
Writeidea Prize 2014 Finalists
The new national competition run by the Writeidea Festival attracted more than 300 entries from across the UK. We were delighted to see that several Thresholds contributor names have appeared in the longlist and our congratulations go out to all.
The shortlist:
‘I’m Not a Cab’ – Andrew Blackman
‘Lone Wolf’ – Tracy Fells
‘Phosphorescence’ – Rowena Macdonald
‘Songs From the Old Country’ – CG Menon
‘Caged’ – Farrah Yusuf
‘India Syndrome’ – Umi Sinha
‘What You Do for Love’ – Melanie Whipman
The winner of the Writeidea Prize 2014 will be announced at 2pm on Sunday 16 November, at the Writeidea Festival. Please see the Writeidea website for further details.
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07 October
Manchester Writing Competition Longlist Announced
This year’s famous Carol Ann Duffy Manchester Writing Competition has received thousands of submissions. The Fiction Prize has the aim of seeking out writing talent and encouraging new work, and is judged by Nicholas Royle, Christopher Burns and Claire Dean. The winners of the £10,000 prize will be announced at a ceremony held on Friday 17th October, during Manchester’s Literature Festival, presented by Adam O’Riordan and Nicholas Royle.
The Shortlist:
‘Something Inside the Head’ by David Grubb
‘Eating Words’ by Avril Joy
‘Our Disorder’ by Martin Maclnnes
‘Henderson’ by Robert Mason
‘An Ape in a Backwater’ by Davey Moore
‘Roar’ by Adrian Wakeling
Full details of the shortlist and booking information can be found here.
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02 October
Hilary Mantel International Short Story Competition Longlist Announced
Kingston Writing School celebrate the excellence in the short story through their annual International Short Story Competition, judged by Man Booker Prize-winner Hilary Mantel. Congratulations to the thirty longlisted writers, chosen for their ‘stories that push the boundaries of the short story form’. The shortlist of ten stories will be officially announced on October 31.
Full details of the longlist – and now the shortlist (as of 15 Oct) – can be found here.
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30 September
‘Shriver proves that short really is sweet’ in the BBC National Short Story Award
After being shortlisted three times, US author Lionel Shriver has won this year’s BBC National Short Story Award for her story ‘Kilifi Creek’. Shriver was awarded the main prize of £15,000 at the ceremony held at the BBC’s Radio Theatre, London.
‘Kilifi Creek’ sees ‘a naïve, freeloading, young woman making her first trip abroad and finding herself in peril’.
Chair of BBC Short Story Award judges, Alan Yentob, said:
From a fantastic shortlist, Lionel Shriver’s ‘Kilifi Creek’ stood out as a wonderful evocation of life in miniature, crossing continents and generations … Shriver proves that short really is sweet.
Zadie Smith was selected as this year’s runner-up, receiving £3,000 for her story ‘Miss Adele Amidst the Corsets’.
Listen to the winning story on the BBC Podcasts and Downloads site.
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17 September
Shortlist for the 2014 BBC National Short Story Award Announced
Announced on Radio 4’s Front Row programme, the 2014 shortlist brings both well-known and emerging writers to the annual anthology’s pages. The five stories on this year’s shortlist were chosen by judges Adam Foulds, Laura Dockrill, Philip Gwyn Jones, Di Speirs and Alan Yentob.
The shortlist:
‘Bad Dreams’ by Tessa Hadley
‘The Taxidermist’s Daughter’ by Francesca Rhydderch
‘Kilifi Creek’ by Lionel Shriver
‘Miss Adele Amidst the Corsets’ by Zadie Smith
‘The American Lover’ by Rose Tremain
The winner will be announced on Tuesday 30th September. Find out more about the prize and the winners on the BookTrust website.
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09 June 2014
The Frank O’Connor Longlist
The 2011 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Prize is worth €25,000 and is the single largest prize in the world for a collection of short stories. It is awarded to the winning author of a new collection, published in English, from anywhere in the world.
This year’s judges are poet, publisher and short story writer John F. Deane, founder of the Sunday Times Short Story Award Cathy Galvin, and former executive editor of the Paris Review Brigid Hughes.
Our congratulations go out to everyone who made the longlist, which you can find on the Frank O’Connor Award website.
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22 May 2014
Hassan Blasim wins the 2014 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize
Many congratulations go to Hassan Blasim, who has won the 2014 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize for his short story collection ‘The Iraqi Christ’, which explores the atrocities of war and sectarian violence in the aftermath of the 2003 Baghdad invasion.
Translated by Jonathan Wright and published by Comma Press, Blasim becomes the first winner to be translated from Arabic and the first person to win the prize with a short story collection.
Judge Boyd Tonkin said of the collection: ‘Strung between reportage, memoir and dark fantasy, these linked stories present Iraq, post-Saddam and post-invasion, as a surrealist inferno. Bizarre horrors become everyday events. Outlandish tragedies punctuate ordinary life. Blasim’s wild imagination, pitch-black comedy and fierce compassion, all captured by Jonathan Wright’s pacy, pugnacious translation, keep nihilism at bay.’
For more information on the winner and prize visit the Book Trust website.
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16 May 2014
Finalists Announced For Edge Hill Short Story Prize 2014
Five writers have been nominated to vie for the 2014 Edge Hill Short Story Prize. Now in its eighth year, the prize celebrates excellence in a published collection of short stories – with this year’s shortlist dominated by publications from small presses.
Prize co-ordinator Dr Ailsa Cox said: ‘It has been an incredibly difficult decision for all our judges to draw up year’s shortlist and it’s going to be even trickier to decide on the winner…’
The winning collection and author will be announced at an official award ceremony in London on the 3rd July.
Congratulations go to the five nominees: David Rose, Rachel Trezise, Bernie McGill, Jaki McCarrick and John Burnside.
For more information on the five nominated collections go to the Edge Hill University website.
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14 May 2014
Commonwealth Short Story Prize 2014 Regional Winners Announced
The Regional winners of the 2014 Commonwealth Short Story Prize have been chosen from nearly 4,000 entries, from the five regions of the Commonwealth – and, for the first time, feature an all-female list of winners.
This year’s prize Chair, Ellah Allfrey, said of the chosen stories: ‘Whilst recognising craft and excellence, the judges were equally impressed by stories which transported us in place and time and thrilled us with language that felt original. In the end, the stories that impressed us the most were those that took risks – in subject and style.’
Congratulations go to Jennifer Makumbi (Regional Winner – Africa), Sara Adam Ang (Regional Winner – Asia), Lucy Caldwell (Regional Winner – Canada & Europe), Maggie Harris (Regional Winner – Caribbean) and Lucy Treloar (Regional Winner – Pacific).
The overall winner of the prize will be announced in Kampala, Uganda on the 13th June.
For more information on the five winners visit the Commonwealth Writers website.
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7 May 2014
The Thresholds Feature Writing Competition 2014 Winner Announced
Congratulations to Sharon Telfer, winner of the 2014 Thresholds International Feature Writing Competition for her feature ‘Wolves at the Hearthside’ which explored the unique story-telling power of Angela Carter.
‘Full of energy and bringing new life back to a well-discussed collection’
Telfer takes home the £500 first prize for her feature, which the judges commended for its ‘…intelligent, artistic and engaging…writing.‘
The two runner-up prizes went to Gill Thompson for her feature ‘A Woman of Words’ and Dan Powell with his essay ‘The Unnerving Tales of Yoshihiro Tatsumi’- both win £100 prize money.
For more information and to read all three winning features, visit the Thresholds website.
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30 April 2014
The Thresholds Feature Writing Competition 2014 Shortlist Announced
The fourteen writers featured on the Thresholds Feature Writing Competition longlist have been whittled down to just seven shortlisted writers. Announcing the results, Thresholds’ Editor and competition judge Vicki Heath said, ‘This year our team of judges found a very high quality of writing across the board, with vibrant and insightful pieces that captivated us, surprised us and even challenged our preconceptions.’
The Winner and two runners-up will be announced very soon.
The shorlisted features are: Carys Bray: Horror and Humanity, Stephen Devereux: Where are you Helen Harris?, Dan Powell: Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s The Push Man and Other Stories, Angela Readman: What We Talk About When We Talk About Editing, Sharon Telfer: Wolves at the Hearthside, Gill Thompson: A Woman of Words, Claire Thurlow: on Alice Munroe.
Congratulations to all. For full details on the shortlist visit the Thresholds website.
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22 April 2014
The Thresholds Feature Writing Competition 2014 Longlist Announced
Fourteen writers have been longlisted for the Thresholds International Short Fiction Feature Writing Competition 2014. The shortlist will be revealed next week ahead of the announcement of the winner of the £500 first prize.
Thresholds’ Editor and competition judge Vicki Heath commented that, ‘The quality of entries has been particularly high and choosing this longlist has not been easy.’
Congratulations to the fourteen longlisted writers: Carys Bray, Stephen Devereux, Victoria Leslie, Charles E. May, Kath Mckay, Marcella O’Connor, Dan Powell, Angela Readman, Sharon Telfer, Gill Thompson, Claire Thurlow, Juliet West, Scott Wilson and Patrick Yarker.
For full details on the longlist visit the Thresholds website.
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11 April 2014
The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2014 Shortlist Announced
Six shortlisted writers have been selected for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2014 and, for the first time in its 24 year history, the shortlist features two Japanese women writers, short story writer Yoko Ogawa, and Hiromi Kawakami. Also in the running are Iraqi short story writer Hassan Blasim (pictured), Karl Ove Knausgaard (Norway), Birgit Vanderbeke (Germany) and Hubert Mingarelli (France).
Judges Alev Adil, Natalie Haynes, Nadifa Mohamed, Shaun Whiteside and Boyd Tonkin will reveal the winner of the £10,000 prize (split equally between writer and translator) on the 22nd May.
For full details on the shortlist, visit the Independent website.
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04 April 2014
Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award 2014 Winner Announced
Congratulations go to Adam Johnson, winner of this year’s Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award for his story ‘Nirvana’. Johnson becomes the fifth consecutive international winner of the £30,000 prize, chosen by judges David Baddiel, Sarah Hall, Elif Shafak, John Carey and Andrew Holgate from a shortlist of six stories, whittled down from over 650 entries.
Judge David Baddiel said: ‘I loved ‘Nirvana’. It was both sad and, rare in literary-competition-land, funny. Plus it proves that genre fiction – the story is, at heart, science fiction – can work, emotionally and artistically, at the highest levels.’
For full details on the winning story, and the six shortlisted writers, visit the Sunday Times website.
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01 April 2014
Edge Hill Longlist Unveiled
Now in its eighth year, the 2014 Edge Hill Prize longlist is dominated by small and independent publishers. This is the only UK award that recognises excellence in a published collection of short stories and offers a £5,000 main prize, a £1,000 Readers’ Prize and an additional category worth £500, which acknowledges rising talents on Edge Hill’s MA in Creative Writing.
Judges Kevin Barry, Katie Allen and Carys Bray will decide the winner in May, from a longlist that includes a number of well-established, award-winning writers, including Alison Moore, Bernard MacLaverty, John Burnside, Sarah Maitland, Dan Rhodes, and Dave Gaffney. You can find details of the full longlist on the Edge Hill website.
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17 March 2014
Fish Short Story Prize Winners Announced
Congratulations to David Butler, winner of this year’s Fish Short Story Prize. Judge Claire Kilroy chose Butler’s story ‘Taylor Keith’ from hundreds of entries, saying that she ‘was drawn to stories that were inventive in terms of language, imagery and plot, stories that possessed sparks of brilliance.’
‘The Nod’ by Barry Troy came in second place, with ‘Horse Latitudes’ by Aongus Murtagh in third.
For full details of the short and longlisted authors, including several Thresholders, visit the Fish Publishing website.
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10 March 2014
Short Story Collection Wins the Inaugural Folio Prize
We were delighted to see distinguished short story author George Saunders named as the winner of the inaugural Folio Prize, for his latest short story collection, Tenth of December (Bloomsbury). Saunders is an award-winning writer of short stories, essays, novellas and children’s books.
‘Tenth of December is a dazzling and disturbing collection of short stories that illuminate human experience and explore figures lost in a labyrinth of troubling preoccupations.’
Worth £40,000, The Folio Prize recognises and celebrates the best English-language fiction from around the world, published in the UK. Full details of the Prize can be found on the Folio Prize website.
02 March 2014
Sunday Times EFG Award Shortlist
Congratulations to the six shortlisted authors in this year’s highly prestigious Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award – the award with the largest prize for a single short story. In the running for the £30,000 prize are two Pulitzer winners, Adam Johnson and Elizabeth Strout, British author Jonathan Tel, Granta Best of Young British Novelists Tahmima Anam, Canadian-American author Marjorie Celona, and twenty-six year old Anna Metcalfe, a graduate of the University of East Anglia Creative Writing MA.
Find full details of the prize, on the Sunday Times website.
18 February 2014
The Esoteric Short Story Contest Results
Congratulations to Guy Mitchell, from London, winner of this year’s Carve Magazine Esoteric Short Story Contest. Guest judges Sandra Hunter, Jake Andrews, Dan Powell, Jennifer Harvey and Elizabeth Baines chose Mitchell’s story ‘Berryman’s’ to win the $1,000 prize, from a list of just three finalists. Tyler Keevil, with ‘Snares’, and C.R. Sender, with ‘We Can Practice Starts’, made up the list.
Semifinalists:
Lesley Mace – ‘Erosion’
Linda Atterton – ‘Are The Stars Hot Or Cold?’
Fred McGavran – ‘The Macabre on Quimby Square’
Barbara Lane – ‘The Accident’
Barney Walsh – ‘Broken Glass’
Jennifer Ryan – ‘Unstoppable’
Hannah Sloane – ‘Shameless’
Joy Martin – ‘Space’
Sean Lusk – ‘After the Burning’
Anna Arbiter – ‘Cover’
Rosia Beer – ‘Them’
Agnieszka Dale – ‘The Afterlife of Trees’
Chelsea Libby – ‘Broken Pieces’
Cliff Chen – ‘Small Print’
Alison Lock – ‘Stalking the Dog’
For full details of the contest, visit the Carve Magazine website.
03 February 2014
Longlist Announced for the 2014 Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award
The longlist has been announced for ‘the world’s most valuable prize for a single short story’. The Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award offers a prize of £30,000 for an English-language story of 6,000 words or under. It’s a truly international prize, calling for stories written in English from a fiction author from anywhere in the world who has been published in the UK or Ireland.
Congratulations to the sixteen longlisted writers:
Tahmima Anam – Anwar Gets Everything
Marjorie Celona – Othello
Clare Clark – Ward Three
Carys Davies – On Commercial Hill
Jenni Fagan – When Words Change the Molecular Composition of Water
M J Hyland – Somebody Else’s Bed
Adam Johnson – Nirvana
Jonathan Lee – Philip’s 9 Best Christmas Presents
Anna Metcalfe – Number Three
Alissa Nutting – The Expectation of Anywhere
David Park – Learning to Swim
Taiye Selasi – Driver
Elizabeth Strout – Snow Blind
Jonathan Tel – The Shoe King of Shanghai
Kevin Wilson – Sanders for a Night
Daniel Woodrell – Johanna Stull
This year’s judging panel will comprise novelist David Baddiel, Booker shortlisted novelist and short story writer Sarah Hall, Turkish writer Elif Shafak, Sunday Times literary critic Professor John Carey, and Literary Editor of The Sunday Times, Andrew Holgate, chaired by EFG Chairman Matthew Evans.
Last year’s winner was Junot Diaz for his story ‘Miss Lora’. For full details on the Award, visit the BookTrust website.
21 January 2014
A Repeat Performance for Two Costa Finalists
The finalists in the 2013 Costa Short Story Award have been revealed today, as voting closed. And, for the second year running, authors Angela Readman and Sheila Llewellyn have appeared on the list. The prize, which is judged anonymously, will be awarded on 28th January at the awards ceremony. Readman’s story ‘The Keeper of the Jackalopes’ was shorlisted, alongside Llewellyn’s ‘The Papakh Hat’. Other writers shorlisted are Tony Bagley for ‘The Forgiveness Thing’, Clare Chandler for ‘The Gun Shearer’, Erin Soros for ‘Still Water, BC’ and Kit de Waal for ‘The Old Man and the Suit’.
You can read the finalsits’ stories on the Costa Book Awards website. Good luck to all six writers.
28 November 2013
The Bridport Prize Winners
Congratulations to the winners of this year’s Bridport Prize. In the short story category, judge Michèle Roberts named Eve Thomson’s story ‘A Man in Three Moments’ as overall winner. In second place was ‘TXL’ by Kerry Hood, and in third was ‘Oyster Woman’ by Sheila Crawford. In the flash fiction category, judge David Swann named ‘Polio’ by Nicholas Ruddock as overall winner, with ‘Fine’ by Michelle Wright in second place, and ‘Locked In’ by Sarah Baxter in third.
Eve Thomson‘s work has previously been shortlisted for the Orange/Harper’s Bazaar Short Story Competition and the Bridport Prize, and her work has appeared in the Bridport Prize 2008 anthology, the Scottish Book Trust’s New Writing from Scotland 2009, and Mslexia issue 58, in 2013. Her first novel is in its final draft stage.
Nicholas Ruddock has won prizes in both poetry and fiction from literary journals in Canada. His short story ‘How Eunice Got Her Baby’ was filmed by the Canadian Film Centre. His ‘wildly inventive’ novel about poetry and love, The Parabolist, was published in February 2010 by Doubleday Canada and was shortlisted for the Toronto Book Award. He lives and works as a family doctor in Guelph.
Short Story Highly Commended:
‘Disappearance’ by Dima Alzayat
‘mice story, not his’ by Benjamin Dipple
‘So Much Lemonade’ by Barry Lee Thompson
‘Yesterday’s Pies’ by Marinella Mezzanotte
‘Peru’ by Manus McManus
‘Praise’ by Jennifer Mills
‘Jotunheim’ by John Murphy
‘Rambutan!’ by Mai Nardone
‘Contrails’ by Noel O’Regan
‘Star Sailor (Aistron Nautes)’ by Rebecca Swirsky
19 October 2013
Paul McMichael wins the 2013 Bristol Short Story Prize
Congratulations to Paul McMichael, winner of this year’s Bristol Short Story Prize. He captivated the judges with his short story ‘The House in St John’s Avenue’, and was awarded the £1,000 first prize. McMichael said of his win: “I’m overwhelmed…that a set of such discerning judges picked this story out. Thoroughly delighted and grateful”.
Now in its sixth year, the Bristol Short Story Prize received a record 2,510 entries, with stories submitted from more than 60 countries, including the UK, New Zealand, Australia, Brazil, India, Canada, USA, Bangladesh and Kenya submitting stories. You can find out more about the Bristol Short Story Prize here.
10 October 2013
Short Story Writer Alice Munro Wins the Nobel Prize for Literature
We were absolutely delighted to learn that short story author Alice Munro has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. On making the announcement, Peter Englund, of the Swedish Academy, called Munro a ‘master of the contemporary short story’. Munro’s first collection of stories, Dance of the Happy Shades, was published in 1968 and won Canada’s highest literary prize, the Governor General’s Award. Since then she has published ten further collections, and has been awarded numerous prizes, including the Man Booker International Prize for her entire body of work, in 2009. Her work frequently appears in magazines including The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, and The Paris Review. Previous winners of the Nobel Prize for literature include Rudyard Kipling, Toni Morrison and Ernest Hemingway.
08 October 2013
Sarah Hall wins the BBC National Short Story Award
Congratulations to Sarah Hall, winner of this year’s prestigious BBC National Short Story Award for her enchanting story ‘Mrs Fox’. In this darkly erotic transformation tale, a woman turns into a fox to her husband’s confusion and dismay. Sarah Hall’s first novel, Haweswater, won the 2003 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Novel, a Society of Authors Betty Trask Award and a Lakeland Book of the Year prize. Her following novels have been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the Arthur C. Clarke Award and have won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and the Portico Prize for Fiction, amongst others. Her first collection of short stories, The Beautiful Indifference, won the Portico Prize and the Edge Hill Short Story Prize, it was also short-listed for the Frank O’Connor Prize.
Listen to Sarah Hall’s Short Story Mastercalss exclusively on THRESHOLDS, here.
29 September 2013
Announcing William Trevor as the recipient of the inaugural Charleston-Chichester Award for a Lifetime’s Excellence in Short Fiction
The first award that recognises long-standing creativity and achievement in writing short stories. William Trevor was born in Mitchelstown, County Cork in 1928. He has published fourteen novels, including The Old Boys, The Children of Dynmouth, Felicia’s Journey, The Story of Lucy Gault and Love and Summer, as well as twelve collections of short stories and 2 novellas. He has won many illustrious prizes and received an Honorary Knighthood in 2002. He has lived in the West of England for many years. William Trevor says: “This is an award for what I do best, which is to write short stories. I also write novels but short stories are what I love and have always loved. I’m hugely honoured. It does mean a great deal to me. It has come from the right source. If I were to associate myself forever with the short story, this is the way I would like to do it.” Diana Reich Award Administrator says: “William Trevor is widely regarded as one of the greatest contemporary practitioners of the art of the short story in the English Language, a master exponent of the tragedy of manners. He has been a lodestar for generations of short story writers, both national and international, who have followed him. He was the unanimous choice as the first recipient of the new Award.” Alison MacLeod, Professor of Contemporary Fiction, University of Chichester says: “It is a huge honour to be able to celebrate nearly fifty years of short fiction from a writer who describes himself as ‘a short-story writer who happens to write novels’. William Trevor is, without doubt, one of our most extraordinary writers. His vision of the lives of others is as sharp as it is compassionate; as sensitive as it is wry. How lucky we are.” For full details on the award, visit the Charleston Trust Small Wonder Festival website.
22 May 2013
Short story writer Lydia Davis wins the Man Booker International Prize
A hearty congratulations to acclaimed short story writer Lydia Davis, winner of the 2013 Man Booker International Prize. Presented at an award ceremony at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the prize seeks out literary excellence from a writer’s body of work, rather than a single novel (as with the Man Booker Prize for Fiction). Davis beat a shortlist of nine other authors. She is best known for translating Marcel Proust’s Du Côté de Chez Swann and Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, and for writing short stories – some of which are among the shortest stories ever written.
07 May 2013
Shortlist for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize announced
This year’s Edge Hill Short Story Prize shortlist has been announced and we would like to extend our warm congratulations to all the authors listed. This is the only annual UK award that recognises excellence in a published collection of short stories, and this year it is judged by the 2012 winner Sarah Hall, Scottish author and literary critic Lesley McDowell, and Jim Lee, Regional Buyer at Waterstones. The final shortlist of authors and short story collections competing for the £5,000 award: Kevin Barry – Dark Lies The Island (Jonathan Cape) Emma Donoghue – Astray (Pan Macmillan) Adam Marek – The Stone Thrower (Comma Press) Jon McGregor – This Isn’t The Sort Of Thing That Happens To Someone Like You (Bloomsbury) Jane Rogers – Hitting Trees With Sticks (Comma Press) Lucy Wood – Diving Belles (Bloomsbury) The winners will be announced at an awards ceremony on 4th July at Waterstones Piccadilly, London. In the meantime, you can find more information on all of the shortlisted authors on the Edge Hill website.
04 May 2013
2013 Scott Prize winner announced
Kirsty Logan has been named as the winner of this year’s Scott Prize for Short Stories, for her collection The Rental Heart & Other Fairytales. The annual Scott Prize, delivered by Salt Publishing, is the only international prize for debut full length collections of short stories written in English. Logan is a fiction writer, literary editor, columnist and book reviewer. Her short fiction and poetry has been published in around 80 anthologies and magazines, recorded for podcasts, broadcast on BBC Radio 4, and exhibited in galleries. Warm congratulations to Kirsty Logan and to this year’s shortlisted authors: Alistair Daniel (UK) – Marriage à la Mode April L. Ford (USA) – The Poor Children Jane Hammons (USA) – A Place Called Beautiful Jenny Holden (UK) – Flexitime Hilary Hughes (UK) – Word Salad Dan Powell (UK) – Looking Out of Broken Windows Leone Ross (UK) – Lipstick, Lighters, Pens & Porn Colette Sartor (USA) – Kinship, Friendship, and Other Afflictions Peter Vilbig (USA) – Signal Boom Signal Crash Jill Widner (USA) – A Green Raft on a Muddy Swell You can find full details about the prize, winner and shortlisted writers on the Salt Publishing blog. (Author photo © Monkeytwizzle)
26 April 2013
The results are in for the 2013 THRESHOLDS International Short Story Feature Writing Competition
The results are in and we are delighted to announce that our £500 first prize winner is Nuala Ní Chonchúir, with her feature essay ‘A Trio of Irish Short Stories’. Dan Powell placed as runner-up with a feature on Stig Dagerman’s The Games of Night. The team of five judges felt the strength of the submissions this year was remarkable: ‘it has been an absolute pleasure to read through the entries – to see the time and effort that has gone into each one, specifically for this competition. We’re very grateful to each entrant, and we’re honoured to see the quality of material that the Competition has inspired.’ 
Nuala Ní Chonchúir was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1970; she lives in East Galway. Her fourth short story collection Mother America was published by New Island in 2012; The Irish Times said of it: ‘Ní Chonchúir’s precisely made but deliciously sensual stories mark her as a carrier of Edna O’Brien’s flame.’ Her début novel You (New Island, 2010) was called ‘a gem’ by The Irish Examiner and ‘a heart-warmer’ by The Irish Times. Her third full poetry collection The Juno Charm was published by Salmon Poetry in 2011. Nuala’s second novel will be published in 2014. 
Dan Powell was dragged up in the West Midlands and currently fills his nights teaching part-time while studying for an MA in Creative Writing. His short fictions have popped up in many, many places, most recently in the pages of Carve, Paraxis, and Structo. He was recently awarded a Carve Esoteric Award for his short story ‘Storm in a Teacup’ and his Yeovil Prize winning story ‘Half-mown Lawn’ is included in The Best British Short Stories 2012 (Salt Publishing). He procrastinates at danpowellfiction.com. Nuala’s winning entry was described by the judges as ‘a rich, deft piece about the way we are each inhabited by stories’. You can read ‘A Trio of Irish Short Stories’ here.
25 April 2013
The White Review Prize winner announced
Congratulations to Claire-Louise Bennett, winner of this year’s White Review Prize. Bennett’s story ‘The Lady of the House’ was named winner of the short story competition for emerging writers this evening at a prize-giving ceremony. The shortlisted stories: ‘Popular Mechanics’ by Gareth Dickson; ‘The Story I’m Thinking of’ by Jonathan Gibbs; ‘The Taxidermist’ by Olivia Heal; ‘Towards White, 1975’ by Scott Morris; ‘The Final Journals of Dr Peter Lurneman’ by Luke Neima; ‘Fairy Tale Ending’ by Stacy Patton; ‘How to be an Astronaut’ by J. D. A. Winslow. You can read the winning story on The White Review website.
23 March 2013
Junot Díaz wins the Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award for ‘Miss Lora’
Congratulations to American author Junot Díaz, winner of this year’s Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award. Díaz was presented with the £30,000 cheque – the largest award for a single short story – by Joanna Trollope at a ceremony at the Oxford Literary Festival last night. Prize judge Andrew O’Hagan said that ‘Miss Lora’, Díaz’s winning story, ‘has the feel of a contemporary classic’ and that it ‘echoes in the heart as well as the mind’. Junot Díaz joins a winners’ circle of Kevin Barry, who won the Award last year with ‘Beer Trip to Llandudno’, American Anthony Doerr, who won in 2011 for his ‘The Deep’, and New Zealander C K Stead, who won the inaugural Award in 2010 with ‘Last Season’s Man’. For full details of the Award winner and shortlisted authors, visit the BookTrust website. You can read about Díaz’s writing in a recent THRESHOLDS post, where Ruba Abughaida takes a look at his linked collection This is How You Lose Her.
02 March 2013
Author Pawel Huelle’s Cold Sea Stories longlisted for the 2013 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize
Polish author Pawel Huelle’s short story collection Cold Sea Stories, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, has been long-listed for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. Honouring the best work of fiction by a living author, which has been translated into English and published in the UK, the prize gives equal recognition to both the author and translator. Published by Comma Press, Cold Sea Stories is ‘a breathtaking voyage into Poland’s political and historical landscape, from post-Nazi invasion to the Solidarity movement.’ For full details, please visit Pawel Huelle’s page at Comma Press.
01 March 2013
Inaugural International Salt Prize winners announced
In 2012, Salt Publishing launched three new creative writing contests, known collectively as The Salt Prizes, for best single short story, best flash fiction and best single poem. After receiving ‘a truly extraordinary response’, the judges have named Jay Merill’s story ‘As Birds Fly’ winner of the £1,000 award for Best Individual Short Story. Pearse Murray’s ‘Off Kaizersgracht’ came in second place, and Jonathan Pinnock’s story ‘Duo for Oboe and Violin’ in third. The Best Individual Flash Fiction prize went to Armando Celayo for ‘If This Was A Love Story’, with the second prize awarded to Clare Conlon for ‘Clean Me’ and third prize to Tania Hershman’s flash ‘A Song for Falling’. Congratulations to the winners and runners-up in the International Salt Prize 2012. Best Individual Short Story runners-up: Joanna Campbell — ‘Following Candace’ Catherine Mee — ‘French Lessons’ Alban Miles — ‘Fish Eyes’ Matthew Morgan — ‘Absent Stars’ Dan Powell — ‘A Storm in a Teacup’ Cherise Saywell — ‘Hard Shoulder’ Adam Wilshaw — ‘Flowers, Whisky’ Best Individual Flash Fiction runners-up: Kevlin Henney — ‘A Higher Calling’ Annemarie Hoeve — ‘An Acquired Taste’ Danielle McLaughlin — ‘Clock’ Allie Rogers — ‘Cool for Cats’ Jose Varghese — ‘Argumentative Hands’ Judi Walsh — ‘Victor’ Jan Woolf — ‘Fixed’ For full details of the International Salt Prize 2012, please see the Salt Publishing blog.
27 February 2013
Fish Short Story Prize long and short-listed stories announced
Congratulations to the long and shortlisted writers for this year’s Fish Short Story Prize. From 1,600 submissions, the judges narrowed the stories down to 348 on the longlist, from which they selected 89 stories to compile the shortlist. Judge Philip O’Ceallaigh (pictured) will choose the winners whose stories will be published in the Fish Anthology later this year. The winning entries will be announced on 17 March 2013. See the Fish Publishing website for full details of the long and shortlisted authors.
26 February 2013
The shortlist is announced for Salt Publishing’s Scott Prize
The shortlist has been announced for the only international prize for debut full length collections of short stories written in English – the International Scott Prize for Short Stories. The winner, whose collection will be published by Salt Publishing, will be announced in April. Along with congratulating the shorlisted writers, Salt say: ‘We are also delighted to see the short story now thriving in the UK, a country that seemed, just a few years ago, to have abandoned the genre; yet the explosion of new magazines and new methods of reaching readers has led to a dramatic resurgence.’ Congratulations to the eleven shortlisted writers: Alistair Daniel (UK) – Marriage à la Mode April L. Ford (USA) – The Poor Children Jane Hammons (USA) – A Place Called Beautiful Jenny Holden (UK) – Flexitime Hilary Hughes (UK) – Word Salad Kirsty Logan (UK) – The Rental Heart & Other Fairytales Dan Powell (UK) – Looking Out of Broken Windows Leone Ross (UK) – Lipstick, Lighters, Pens & Porn Colette Sartor (USA) – Kinship, Friendship, and Other Afflictions Peter Vilbig (USA) – Signal Boom Signal Crash Jill Widner (USA) – A Green Raft on a Muddy Swell Full details about the Scott Prize can be found on the Salt Publishing website and blog.
24 February 2013
The Sunday Times EFG Award short-list announced
The short-list for The Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award has just been announced. With a list made up of established and emerging writers, it’s going to be a fascinating award to watch. The winner will be announced at The Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival on March 22, where they will receive the world’s largest prize for a single short story – £30,000. Congratulations to all on the short-list. The stories and authors are: Miss Lora by Junot Diaz The Gun by Mark Haddon Evie by Sarah Hall The Dig by Cynan Jones Call It ‘The Bug’ Because I Have No Time To Think of a Better Title by Toby Litt The Beholder by Ali Smith Full details for The Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award can be found on the Book Trust website.
February 2013
BBC Radio 4 searches for five short stories by ‘new voices’
BBC Radio 4 has commissioned Sweet Talk to produce five short stories by new voices for their returning series of broadcasts named ‘The Time Being‘. Sweet Talk, the independent radio production company has, in recent times, broadcast work by authors including Nick Walker, Morven Crumlish, Alison MacLeod, Toby Litt, Simon Stephenson, Louise Stern, Andrew Miller, Jesmyn Ward, Olga Grushin, James Hopkin, Esi Edugyan, Shena Mackay, M.J. Hyland, Scarlett Thomas and former The Time Being contributors Heidi Amsinck and Tania Hershman. Writers wishing to submit should be aware of the following: ° This is a week of new voices, so we’re looking for writers who are as yet unbroadcast (and largely unpublished: i.e. having a story in a magazine or anthology here and there is OK, but a track record of novels and story collections in print is not!) ° Please don’t submit stories that have been previously ‘performed’ (e.g. at readings events which have been filmed/recorded and put on YouTube etc.) ° Ideally, stories will not have previously appeared in print or online. ° Broadcast stories will be read by a single voice. ° Stories need to be between 2000 and 2200 words in length. ° Please put full contact details (name, post and email address, phone number) including any alternative contact details for vacations and a word count on the title page of each story. ° No more than two stories per writer, please. ° We are unable to return manuscripts or provide feedback on unsuccessful submissions. The closing date for submissions is 22 March 2013. Please email stories to jeremyosborne@mac.com
January 2013
The London Magazine Short Story Competition
Congratulations to the winners of The London Magazine Short Story Competition, announced at a champagne reception on the House of Commons terrace on Tuesday 22nd January. Judges Edna O’Brien, Cathy Galvin and Alison Macleod named Sophie Hampton as winner of the £500 prize, while second prize went Mary O’Shea and third to Neil Herrington. 
Sophie Hampton was born and brought up in London and is an MA Writing student at Sheffield Hallam University. In 2012 Sophie won the Seán Ó Faoláin Prize, was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and had her story The Cairn broadcast on BBC Radio 4. She is currently working on her first collection of short fiction. About her win, Sophie said: “I am thrilled that Les Pieds de Dieu was chosen by such a distinguished panel of judges and delighted that the story is going to be published in this prestigious magazine.” 
Mary O’Shea grew up in Cork. She studied at U.C.C. where she was awarded a Master’s degree in French literature. Stories of hers have appeared in The London Magazine, New Irish Writing and in two Willesden Herald New Short Stories anthologies. She has won a Hennessy Literary Award and prizes in a number of competitions including the William Trevor International Short Story Competition, Segora, Willesden Herald, and The London Magazine. She is currently working on a novel and hoping to get her short fiction collected for publication. She lives with her husband in Cork. 
Neil Herrington grew up in Somerset and studied at the University of Southampton. He has lived in Japan and China and now lives in London. Neil has worked for the British Council and the Open University and currently works for Regent’s College London as their Business Development Manager. He has published two short stories with Ether Books and is working on a novel, entitled Imperialist Running Dogs, which is set in Shanghai at the time of the Iraq War. You can find further details of The London Magazine Short Story Competition on their website.
30 January 2013
Avril Joy wins the Costa Short Story Award
Last night, the winners of the inaugural Costa Short Story Award were announced. Congratulations to first prize winner Avril Joy, who wrote ‘Millie and Bird’. This was one of six shortlisted stories judged anonymously by the public on the Costa Book Awards website – it sees ‘two young girls find themselves caught in a world where love is unpredictable and attachment is dangerous’. Our congratulations also go out to runners-up Chioma Okereke and Guy Le Jeune, as well as the shortlisted writers Angela Readman, Sheila Llewellyn and Sally Vickers. 
Avril Joy writes novels, short stories and poetry and has recently completed a new venture into crime fiction, Blood Tide, a novel set in the heart of Newcastle. She posts regularly about life and writing on her blog which can be found at www.avriljoy.com. 
Chioma Okereke started her writing career as a poet before turning her hand to fiction. Her debut novel, Bitter Leaf, was published by Virago Press in 2010 and was shortlisted for the 2011 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize –Best First Book, Africa. She is currently working on her next book. 
Guy Le Jeune started to write two years ago after a long a career in the theatre industry. His work has been commended in the 2011 Sean O’Faolain Prize and was shortlisted for the 2012 Fish Publishing Short Story Prize. For full Award details, please visit the Costa Book Awards website.
20 January 2013
The Sunday Times Private Bank Short Story Award Longlist Announced
The 2013 judges – including Joanna Trollope, Sarah Waters, Andrew O’Hagan and Lionel Shriver – have just announced the longlisted stories for the Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award. Congratulations to all the writers who are now in the running for the £30,000 award. The Longlist: Caroline Adderson – ‘Erection Man’ Junot Diaz – ‘Miss Lora’ Helen Dunmore – ‘Spotted Dick’ Adam Foulds – ‘Tunnelling’ Mark Haddon – ‘The Gun’ Sarah Hall – ‘Evie’ Cynan Jones – ‘The Dig’ Philomena Kearney Byrne – ‘Honda fifty’ Toby Litt – ‘Call it “The Bug” Because I Have No Time to Think of a Better Title’ Belinda McKeon – ‘Eyes on Me, Eyes on You’ Mark McNay – ‘Ten Years Too Late’ C D Rose – ‘Arkady Who Couldn’t See and Artem Who Couldn’t Hear’ Ali Smith – ‘The Beholder’ Graham Swift – ‘I Live Alone’ Claire Vaye Watkins – ‘Rondine al Nido’ Samuel Wright – ‘Best Friend’ For full details of the authors, stories and the award, visit the Book Trust website.
11 January 2013
Winners of the Rubery Short Story Award Announced
Congratulations to Melanie Whipman, winner of the 2012 Rubery Short Story Award. ‘Peacock Girl’ is a story of love, where we are drawn into the world of a mother whose daughter is a female boxer named Our Peacock. The second prize in the competition went to Eve Vamvas for ‘By the Light of the Moon’, while third prize went to Andrea Stephenson for her story ‘The End of Hope’. Congratulations to all of the winners and to the shortlist. The shortlisted writers are: Gail Anderson Sarah Evans Carly Holmes William Kelly Anita Punton Paddy Ricard Lindsay Stanberry-Flynn For full details of the 2012 Rubery Short Story Award and winning stories, visit www.ruberybookaward.com
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21 December 2012
The Asham Shortlist
Lennie Goodings, Helen Dunmore and Sara Wheeler are now judging the top 39 stories on the Asham Award Shortlist. Congratulations and best of luck to everyone on the list. The results will be announced in February 2013 – full details are available on the Asham website, here: www.ashamaward.com
30 November 2012
Winners of LWC/HUSH Competition announced
Judges Clare Hay and Alison MacLeod have selected the winners of this year’s London Writers’ Club/HUSH Short Story Competition. Congratulations to both winners, Jo Tiddy and Lucie Wilk, and the seven finalists. All their stories will be published in a book which will be available to buy on HUSH’s website in time for Christmas, along with a digital version of the winning entry, now available from Short Fire Press. 
Jo Tiddy spent her childhood in Kenya. She spent innumerable years working for local government as a Planner, and then as a Heritage Officer. She currently works part time in a primary school. She lives in Thame, Oxfordshire with her husband, two children and a very large dog. * 
Lucie Wilk grew up in Toronto and now lives and works as a doctor in London. Her short fiction has been nominated for the McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize Anthology, longlisted for a CBC literary award, and appeared in Descant and Prairie Fire. She is working towards an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia and is currently at work on a novel based on the characters in her short story Stalin’s Good Friday. The runner up is: Celia Reynolds And the shortlist is: Linda Ellis Macdonald Lucy Maddox David McVey Laura Darling Lindsay Fisher Sarah E Moore For full details on the competition, click here.
29 November 2012
Vote for your favourite story in the Costa Short Story Award
The six finalists in the Costa Short Story Award have been listed. You can now download and read the wonderful shortlisted stories on the Costa Book Awards website, and vote for your favourite. Voting closes at midday 23rd January 2013 and the winner and two runners up will be announced at the Costa Book Awards ceremony on 29th January. Good luck to all the finalists. Get voting, here.
15 November 2012
The Short Review Launches New Website
Tania Hershman and The Short Review team have just launched their new website, in time for National Short Story Week and their upcoming fifth birthday. Rather than the monthly journal, new content – short story reviews, interviews, blog posts and more – will be posted on their site every few days, with a monthly newsletter rounding up all the activity. Find the wonderful new website here.
5 November 2012
Martina Devlin wins the 2012 V.S. Pritchett Memorial Prize
Judges Jane Gardam, Aamer Hussein and Penelope Lively have selected Martina Devlin’s short story, ‘Singing Dumb’, as winner of this year’s V.S. Pritchett Memorial Prize. The judges described Devlin’s story as “our winner for its confidence and simplicity”, “deft, taught and compelling, with a distinctive narrative voice” and “neatly economical, saying most by saying least”. The runners up in this year’s prize are: Clare Colvin for ‘Sehr Schön’ Art Lester for ‘Upstream’ Find out more about the annual V.S. Pritchett Memorial Prize on the Royal Society of Literature website. *
15 October 2012
Winner of the 2012 Bridport Short Story Prize announced
The winners of the 2012 Bridport Prize were announced today. Helen Barton has been named as Short Story first prize winner for her story ‘Being David’. Ruth Figgest placed second for her story ‘The Armadillo’, and Lizzy Welby was awarded third prize for ‘Jugged Hare’. The first prize winner of the Flash Fiction category was Gregory Jackson for ‘Nearly New’. Congratulations to all the winners. The other authors who were highly commended for this year’s prize are: Darci Bysouth Peter Caley Eva Ciabattoni Ruby Cowling David Foll Sophie Green Sandra Jensen Martelle McPartland Mel Murphy Naomi J Williams On behalf of the Dept. of English and Creative Writing at the University of Chichester, Professor Alison MacLeod, Director of THRESHOLDS, would like to extend the University’s warm congratulations to our shortlisted students, staff and graduates: (in alphabetical order) Michele Baker, Honoria Beirne, Josephine Corcoran, Vicki Heath, Emma-Jane Hughes (Highly Commended), David Swann, Jacky Taylor (Third Prize for Flash Fiction), and Melanie Walker. The Bridport Competition for Poetry and Short Fiction has long been one the UK’s most prestigious competitions, and the University is, once again, very proud of the outstanding successes of its students and staff in the 2012 results. We’d also like to extend our congratulations to Daisy Behagg, whose entry was ‘Highly Commended’ on this year’s poetry shortlist; Daisy is a graduate of Bath Spa University and a friend to the University of Chichester. We wish all the shortlisted and winning writers every success for their writing. You can find the full Short Story Shortlist on the Bridport Prize website, here. To view the winners of the poetry and flash fiction categories, visit www.bridportprize.org.uk.
28 September 2012
Miroslav Penkov wins the BBC International Short Story Award
Congratulations to Miroslav Penko, from Bulgaria, winner of this year’s BBC International Short Story Award. His winning story, ‘East of the West’, tells of love and identity, set in a region of Bulgaria that’s rife with conflict and sectarian violence. South African author Henrietta Rose-Innes placed as runner-up with her story ‘Sanctuary’. Listen to both stories on the BBC website. You can also find the winning and shortlisted stories in the 2012 BBC International Short Story Award collection, from Comma Press.
14 September 2012
The BBC International Short Story Award
This evening, the shortlisted authors of the BBC International Short Story Award were announced. For the first time, and in celebration of the Olympic year, the Award has gone global to highlight exceptional talent from around the world. The shortlisted stories are: ‘Escape Routes’ by Lucy Caldwell ‘The iHole’ by Julian Gough ‘Even Pretty Eyes Commit Crimes’ by M J Hyland ‘The Goose Father’ by Krys Lee ‘Black Vodka’ by Deborah Levy ‘East of the West’ by Miroslav Penkov ‘Sanctuary’ by Henrietta Rose-Innes ‘In the Basement’ by Adam Ross ‘Before he Left the Family’ by Carrie Tiffany ‘A Lovely and Terrible Thing’ by Chris Womersley Congratulations and good luck to all. The ten shortlisted stories will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 for two weeks (beginning Monday 17th September). For full details of the Award, click here.
13 September 2012
The Seán Ó Faoláin Prize
The winners of the 2012 Seán Ó Faoláin Prize were announced today. Congratulations to Sophie Hampton – creative writing student from Sheffield Hallam University – who was named as first prize winner for her story ‘White Socks and Weirdos’. Second prize went to Thomas Watson’s ‘Café at the V&A’.
The runners up are:
Ferdia Lennon ‘Raskolnikov & I’ (Ireland) David Mohan’s ‘Aerial Meditations of the Slob Land’s Only Prince’ (Ireland) Dan Purdue’s ‘Gecko’ (UK) Maree Spratt’s ‘The Graveyard Shift’ (Australia)
Full details of the competition, including the highly commended authors, are available here.
26 July 2012
The Small Wonder Festival Programme
A dazzling line-up for the 2012 Small Wonder Short Story Festival has just been announced. Charleston House in East Sussex is inviting all lovers of the short story form to attend four days of short story readings, debates, workshops and more. The festival kicks off at 6.30pm on Thursday 27th September, with Kevin Barry, winner of the 2012 Sunday Times EFG Award, and award-winning author Jackie Kay.
Additional speakers at this year’s event include: Sarah Hall * Joseph O’Connor * Michele Roberts * Margaret Drabble * Will Gompertz * D.W. Wilson * Elif Shafak * Susannah Clapp * Hattie Morahan * Barrett Robinson * Woodrow Phoenix * Benedict Hastings * Rob Davis * A.L. Kennedy * Adam Marek
For full details of the Festival’s programme, please visit the Small Wonder website, here.
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5 July 2012
Edge Hill Short Story Prize
The winner of the 2012 Edge Hill University Short Story Prize has just been announced. Award-winning writer Sarah Hall has been named as first prize winner for her debut short story collection, The Beautiful Indifference. She also picked up the Readers’ Prize, judged by Edge Hill students. This year’s Edge Hill University MA Creative Writing prize went to Dawn Wild. * The other authors shortlisted for this year’s prize are: A.J Ashworth Tessa Hadley Zoe Lambert Rowena Macdonald Full details about the Sarah Hall’s winning collection and the other shortlisted authors can be found HERE. Information about the annual prize can be found at EdgeHill.ac.uk
8 June 2012
Frank O’Connor Shortlist Announced
The shortlist for the 2012 Frank O’Connor Short Story Award has just been announced. The prize of €25,000 is the largest award of its kind, recognising the best original short story collection published in English by a living author during the preceding year. The award is the gift of the Munster Literature Centre and is presented at the Cork International Short Story Festival The six shortlisted books are: Dark Lies the Island by Kevin Barry (Ireland) What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank by Nathan Englander (USA) The Trouble With Fire by Fiona Kidman (New Zealand) The Beautiful Indifference by Sarah Hall (UK) Suddenly a Knock on the Door by Etgar Keret (Israel) Happiness is a Chemical in the Brain by Lucia Perillo (USA) This is the second year that a collection by Etgar Keret has been shortlisted for the Award, and should he win, the prize money will be split with the book’s translator and fellow nominee, Nathan Englander. This year’s judges are the poet James Harpur, novelist Mary Leland and festival organiser Ann Luttrell. The winner will be announced on July 5th and the prize will be presented at Cork International Short Story Festival on 23rd September. Read more about the Frank O’Connor Award and the nominated authors HERE.
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6 June 2012
Bristol Prize Shortlist Is In
The shortlist for the 2012 Bristol Short Story Prize has just been announced. The 20 stories selected for the shortlist will all be published in the Bristol Prize anthology which will be launched at the awards ceremony on 14th July. The top 20 stories, as selected are: 
Naked As Eve – John Arnold (Australia) Running to Nuthin’ – Lewis Bardsley (England) Unearthed – Catherine Bokkers (The Netherlands) The Swimmer – Lizzie Boyle (England) Lobster – Alys Conran ( Wales) Inked – Neil Durrant (Australia) People Like Her – Kerry Hood (England) Apple Shot – Tracey Iceton (England) Meat – Avril Joy (England) Last Days of the Unicorn – Danielle McLaughlin (Ireland) Ghost in the Machine – Christopher Parvin ( England) Yoki and the Toy Surprise – Angela Readman (England) Going Grapefruit – Ian Richards (England) Beekiller – Ethel Rohan (USA) The Bird – Samantha Short (England) The Attack at Delium – William Telford (England) Jelly Feel Real – Ellie Walsh (England) After the Flood – Melanie Whipman ( England) I Once Knew Salman Rushdie – Hilary Wilce (England) Symmetry – Samuel Wright (England) The judges for this year’s prize were literary consultant Ali Reynolds, writer, critic and broadcaster Bidisha, writer Anna Britten, and novelist Christopher Wakling. Read more about the prize HERE.
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1 May 2012
Scott Prize Winners Announced
SALT Publishing has just announced the results of the 2012 Scott Prize for debut short story collections and THRESHOLDS is delighted to see that Carys Bray, shortlisted for our own International Feature Writing Competition, has been named as joint winner for her book Sweet Home. She is joined by Rob Roensch with his collection The Wildflowers of Baltimore. Both books will be published by SALT in November. The other writers shortlisted for the prize are:
Alison Moore Otis Haschemeyer Julia Bohanna Chris Smith Sarah Faulkner Rusty Dolleman Julie Mayhew Maurice Gartshore Madeleine D’Arcy Full details about the prize and this year’s competition can be found at SaltPublishing.com.
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24 April 2012
Commonwealth Writers Short Story Prize
2012 Shortlist Announced
Commonwealth Writers has announced shortlists for the 2012 Commonwealth Book Prize and Commonwealth Short Story Prize. Writers from around the world have been shortlisted for each prize in anticipation of becoming a regional winner on 22 May and ultimately competing for overall winner which will be announced at Hay Festival on 8 June. Read the full announcement. Commonwealth Short Story Prize Morrison Okoli (1955-2010), Jekwu Anyaegbuna (Nigeria) Flight, Jayne Bauling (South Africa) The Queen’s Blessing, Edyth Bulbring (South Africa) Devil Star, Hazel Campbell (Jamaica) Brothers, Adrienne Frater (New Zealand) Like a Heart Maybe, but Cold, Chris Hill (UK) The False River, Nick Holdstock (UK) Radio Story, Anushka Jasraj (India) Rush, Nic Low (Australia) Elbow, Khadija Magardie (South Africa) Two Girls in a Boat, Emma Martin (New Zealand) Glory, Janice Lynn Mather (The Bahamas) The Dolphin Catcher, Diana McCaulay (Jamaica) Friends, Sharon Millar (Trinidad and Tobago) The Ghost Marriage, Andrea Mullaney (UK) If These Walls had Ears, Carl Nixon (New Zealand) Next Full Moon We’ll Release Juno Bridget Pitt (South Africa) The Crane, Sarah Quigley (New Zealand) Drums, Mahesh Rao (UK) Ammulu, Poile Sengupta (India) Another Dull Day, Sreejith Sukumaran (India)
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31 March 2012
Kevin Barry Wins the Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award
A story about a group of middle-aged men and their passion for authentic beer has won the world’s most valuable short story prize. The Irish author Kevin Barry was presented with a cheque for £30,000 by novelist and prize judge Joanna Trollope at a ceremony last night at the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival for his bittersweet tale of camaraderie amongst a group of ale aficionados.
4 March 2012
Shortlist for the 2012 Sunday Times
EFG Private Bank Short Story Award
The six stories chosen for the Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Awardshortlist have just been announced.
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‘Beer Trip to Llandudno’ by Kevin Barry
- ‘The Hunt’ by Emma Donoghue
- ‘Where the Gods Fly’ by Jean Kwok
- ‘The Current’ by Tom Lee
- ‘El Aziz: Some Pages From His Notebooks’ by Robert Minhinnick
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‘Nickel Mines Hardware’ by Linda Oatman High
Comments about the competition by this year’s judge, Joanna Trollope, and extracts from each of the stories, are available on the Book Trust website. Waterstones Piccadilly will be hosting three events on 27th, 28th and 29th March, featuring readings of the shortlisted stories by actors David Morrissey, Elizabeth McGovern and Julian Sands. Tickets can be obtained in-store, or by telephoning 020 7851 2419. The winner of the £30,000 prize will be announced on 30th March at the Oxford Literary Festival. An anthology of the shortlisted stories is available for advance purchase from Waterstones.com.
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19 February 2012
Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award
2012 Longlist Announced
The Longlist for the Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award for 2012 has just been announced and we are thrilled that THRESHOLDS director Alison MacLeod is one of the twenty authors whose stories will go forward to the next round of judging. Alison’s story, ‘The Heart of Denis Noble’ was previously shortlisted for last year’s BBC National Short Story Award, and featured on Radio 4’s arts programme Front Row. Alison, author of the short story collection Fifteen Modern Tales of Attraction (Penguin, 2007) and two novels, The Changeling (1996) and The Wave Theory of Angels (2005) says about being longlisted for the Sunday Times award:
I’m delighted and humbled to be longlisted for this award – there are many stunning story writers around at the moment – and it’s such an inspiring panel of judges. These are truly renaissance days for the form, and like many another writer, I’m enormously grateful to that small team at The ST Magazine who passionately support short stories (both in the magazine and, as with this award, in the world beyond) simply for the love of stories and fine writing. They know that the best stories travel far from their author and change lives. Certainly, that’s what stories have done for me in my life. Where ever ‘The Heart of Denis Noble’ travels, I also remain ever grateful to the remarkable, real-life Denis Noble, my eponymous hero. His fingers and mine are crossed for the shortlist, but the longlist is already a lovely honour. I’m proud to be there.
The £30,000 1st-place prize is the largest award in the world for short fiction. In addition, the five runners-up will receive £1000. The longlisted authors and stories are:
- Diana Athill – ‘A Hopeless Case’
- Kevin Barry – ‘Beer Trip to Llandudno’
- Evgenia Citkowitz – ‘Business Class’
- Will Cohu – ‘Two Bad Thumbs’
- Emma Donoghue – ‘The Hunt’
- Jackie Kay – ‘These Are Not My Clothes’
- A L Kennedy – ‘Late in Life’
- Jean Kwok – ‘Where the Gods Fly’
- Barrie de Lara – ‘Dinner at Benutti’s’
- Tom Lee – ‘The Current’
- Toby Litt – ‘The Sandy’
- Alison MacLeod – ‘The Heart of Denis Noble’
- Martin Malone – ‘Valley of the Peacock Angel’
- Robert Minhinnick – ‘El Aziz: Some Pages From His Notebooks’
- Linda Oatman High – ‘Nickel Mines Hardware’
- Alison Pimlott – ‘Five Year Diary’
- Tamara Pollock – ‘Elsa’
- Alex Preston – ‘The Bridge Over Shuto Expressway No. 1’
- Lionel Shriver – ‘Prepositions’
- Johanna Skibsrud – ‘Fat Man and Little Boy’
Full details of the prize can be found HERE.
12 February 2012
University of Chichester
Offers Creative Writing Bursary
The University of Chichester is inviting applications for a Professional Preparation Masters’ award for the study of Creative Writing, to commence in September 2012. Professional Preparation Masters’ studentships aim to support applicants in developing their professional career. The bursary will pay tuition fees and provide a stipend of about £9,490 (pro-rata for part-time). Applicants should be UK or EU nationals. The closing date for receipt of applications is 10 a.m. on 5th March. Interviews will take place on 23rd March. Full details on the AHRC Bursary.
22 December 2011
National Short Story Day
Today, the shortest day of the year, is National Short Story Day in the UK – a day to read, share and celebrate our favourite stories. The organisers have put together a wonderful list of classic and modern short stories, all recommended by writers and critics of the form. Many of the stories can be read or listened to online. Members of the public are invited to submit their own recommendations in 10 words or less via Twitter at: twitter @shortstoryday. The five best will win a book! Read the full list of recommendations.
26 November 2011
Bridport Prize Results Announced
We are pleased to announce that Kitty Aldridge has won 1st place in the 2011 Bridport Prize short story competion. A.L. Kennedy, this year’s competition judge, praised Aldridge’s story – ‘Arrivederci Les’ – for its skilful use of black humour. Aldridge, whose third novel is due to be published next summer, takes home a cheque for £5,000. Second place, and a £1000 cheque, was awarded to Kevin Parry for the story ‘Trying to Think in the Bantustan’, and Barrie De Lara won the 3rd-place prize of £500 for ‘Dinner at Benutti’s’. The ten stories which were highly commended are: ‘Elephants Aren’t Forgotten’ by Sheila Barrett ‘The Last Place You Look’ by Tray Butler ‘Half Life of a Stolen Sister’ by Rachel Cantor ‘Love by Proxy’ by Justine Mann ‘Wishbone Duty’ by David Pescod ‘Some Times’ by James Kinase ‘Methlahem’ by Peggy Riley ‘Saul Kaplan’s Midrash’ by Martha Schulman ‘European Monetary Union’ by Bernadette Smyth ‘The Long Straight Road’ by Pat Winslow In the flash fiction category, also judged by A.L. Kennedy, Becky Tipper was presented with the £1000 1st-place prize for ‘Meeting the Lobster’. Robert Maslin was awarded the 2nd-place prize of £500 for the story ‘More Like a Sister’, and Samuel Wright was awarded 3rd place and £250 for ‘The Christmas House’. Three stories were highly commended: ‘North End 2010’ by Stace Budzko ‘Vampires’ by John Glenday ‘Filament’ by John-Paris Kent The winning stories will all be published in the Bridport Prize 2011 anthology. For further information about the prize-winning authors, see the Bridport Prize website.
15 November 2011
Carys Davies wins 2011 V.S. Pritchett Memorial Prize
Congratulations to Carys Davies, winner of this year’s V.S. Pritchett Memorial Prize. Davies was presented with a cheque for £1000 at last night’s awards ceremony at Somerset House in recognition of her story ‘The Redemption of Galen Pike’. The V.S. Pritchett Prize, from the Royal Society of Literature, is open to previously unpublished short stories byUKand Irish citizens, and those who are permanent residents. This year’s judges were Jane Gardam, Penelope Lively and Jacob Ross. In 2010, Davies also won the Olive Cook Prize from the Society of Authors. Her collection, Some New Ambush (Salt, 2007), was on the longlist for the 2008 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, and was a finalist for the 2008 Calvino Prize. ‘The Redemption of Galen Pike’ will be published in Prospect Magazine Further information about the V.S. Pritchett Memorial Prize is available on the RSL website.
14 November 2011
Campaigning to Save the Short Story on Radio 4
In July this year, BBC Radio 4’s Controller Gwyneth Williams announced that the number of Short Story broadcasts would be reduced from three to only one per week and that the news programme ‘The World At One’ would be extended to fill the space. For almost 40 years, Radio 4 ran five fifteen-minute-long story readings a week, along with one repeat slot. In 2009, that number was reduced to three stories per week, with one repeat. The new schedule, which took effect last week, allowed for a single story to be broadcast each week, but as a concession to public protests, a second story will now fill the slot formerly given to repeats. In mid July, Ian Skillicorn, Director of National Short Story Week and founder of Short Story Radio, tweeted about the cuts. The announcement spurred Susie Maguire and a number of fellow writers to start a petition, and with the help of The Society of Authors, Equity UK and The Writers’ Guild, they began a campaign to have the cuts repealed. Supported by actors, writers and passionate fans of Radio 4, along with celebrity names including Stephen Fry and Joanna Lumley, the protest grew and the Society of Authors was invited to meet with the Controller. Although concessions were made to the original ‘one story’ decision, concern remained that there was still a lack of understanding about the short story’s place in literary output by Radio4 and that the two story slots would be lost in the week’s news-heavy schedule. In August, the General Secretaries of the Society of Authors, Equity and The Writers’ Guild sent a joint letter to BBC Director General Mark Thompson and to Chair of the BBC Trust Lord Patten, pointing out the issues, analysing the figures offered by the Controller, and suggesting that by making such drastic cuts the BBC may be in breach of its charter. Lord Patten replied, briefly, but Mr Thompson gave no response and a second letter has recently been sent, reiterating the campaign’s points. The petition has continued to grow since it was first delivered to Ms Williams, and it now contains over 9,000 names. Organisers say it will remain open for new signatures and comments until such time as serious discussion takes place between the three Arts unions and BBC senior staff. What more can be done? If you’re dismayed at the loss of the short story slots, you can write to the Controller directly, either by email: gwyneth.williams@bbc.co.uk, or by post: Gwyneth Williams, Controller BBC Radio 4, Broadcasting House, London W1A 1AA. You can comment on the BBC R4 and 4Extra blog. Or, better still, comment at BBC Complaints. Comments via this link go onto the BBC official log, “a daily report of audience feedback that’s made available to many BBC staff, including members of the BBC Executive Board, channel controllers and other senior managers. The audience logs are seen as important documents that can help shape decisions about future programming and content. The logs are also published on the BBC’s intranet site, so are available for all BBC staff to view.” Sign the petition, and encourage others to do so. Read more about the cuts on THRESHOLDS in Dr Paul March-Russell’s post ‘Whose Culture? Whose Anarchy?‘ Read what Ali Smith, James Robertson, AL Kennedy, and other authors have said on the Society of Authorswebsite.
19th October 2011
Jane Hayward wins the Lightship International Short Story Competition
Congratulations to Jane Hayward, winner of the first place prize in the Lighthouse International Short Story Competition. Jane’s story, ‘The Way to a Man’s Heart’, was previously awarded a distinction on the MA in Creative Writing programme at the University of Chichester. The story was selected for the £1000 prize by the novelist and short story writer, Toby Litt. The nine other shortlisted stories are: ‘Mercy’ by Elaine Barnard, ‘Kabuki Eye’ by Wes Lee, ‘Stabane’ by Kiare Ladner, ‘Say That You Saw Beautiful Things’ by Sandra Hunter, ‘Sketcher’ by Roland Watson Grant, ‘Sigmund Freud and the Cretinous Dwarf’ by David Carter, ‘The Forgetenarium Keeper’ by Laurie Duniam, ‘Bund Girls’ by Vanessa Fabiano, and ‘Let it Out’ by Lucy Durneen. Jane will be reading her story at the awards ceremony in Hull on November 17th, as part of the Philip Larkin Festival. ‘The Way to a Man’s Heart’ and the nine other shortlisted stories has been published in the Lighthouse Anthology by Alma Books. Read more about the competition and the winning authors, HERE.
15th October 2011
Results of 2011 Manchester Fiction Prize Announced
Congratulations to Krishan Coupland, winner of this year’s Manchester Fiction Prize. Coupland received the £7,500 first-place award for his story ‘Days Necrotic’ at last night’s glittering ceremony at Cheltenham’s School of Music. Richard Hirst took second place with ‘School Report’ and received £2,500. The prize, from Manchester Metropolitan University, is awarded to poetry and short fiction in alternating years, and aims to ‘seek out and celebrate the best new writing from across the world.’ Judges for this year’s competition were the writers John Burnside, Nicholas Royle, and THRESHOLDS Director, Alison MacLeod. A shortlist of eight stories was drawn up out of a total of nearly 1,900 entries from 45 countries. Thirty additional stories received commendations.
The other shortlisted stories are: ‘Flathead Lake’ by Nicole Cullen, ‘The Ugly Duckling’ by Garret Freymann-Weyr, ‘The Doppelgangers’ by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, ‘The Swimmer in the Desert’ by Alex Preston, ‘The Cuckoo’ by Bethany Rogers, and ‘A Mercy’ by Judith Turner-Yamamoto. All of the shortlisted stories can be read on the MMU website, HERE. Details of the commended stories can be found HERE. Information about the Manchester Writing School at MMU can be found HERE.
29 September 2011
Linda McVeigh wins the Asham Award
We are very pleased to announce that THRESHOLDS member Linda McVeigh has won this year’s Asham Award with her short story ‘All Over the Place’. Linda was presented with a cheque for £1000 at the awards ceremony during the Small Wonder Festival. Linda also won the £100 prize at this year’s Small Wonder story slam. ‘All Over the Place’, is Linda’s first published story and is included in the anthology Something Was There alongside stories by Naomi Alderman, Kate Clanchy, Polly Samson, and Daphne du Maurier. The second place prize was won by Kate Morrison for her story ‘Sam Brown’, third place went to Fiona Law for ‘The Traveller’, and a special Honourable Mention was earned by Gabriella Blandy. All four stories appear in the award anthology and are available to read at the Asham Awardwebsite. THRESHOLDS would also like to congratulate runner-up Jacky Taylor on her story ‘On the Turn of the Tide’; Jacky is a graduate of the University of Chichester’s M.A. in Creative Writing programme, and we are delighted for her.
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26 September 2011
D.W. Wilson Wins the 2011 BBC National Short Story Award
Canadian writer D.W. Wilson has won this year’s BBC National Short Story Prize for his story ‘The Dead Roads’. Wilson, who is studying for a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing at the University of East Anglia, is the youngest author to win the £15,000 prize. The story, which explores the sexual jealousy which arises within a love triangle, is set on a road trip in the author’s native British Columbia. Wilson’s first collection of short stories, Once You Break a Knuckle, has just been published by Penguin books in Canada.
Jon McGregor’s story, ‘Wires’, which was described as being about ‘psychological fear on the hard shoulder’ was the runner up.
Congratulations to all five of the shortlisted writers.
19 September 2011
Edna O’Brien Wins the 2011 Frank O’Connor Prize
Congratulations to Edna O’Brien, winner of the 2011 Frank O’Connor Award. O’Brien wins the €35,000 prize for her short story collection, Saints and Sinners. The award was presented at a glittering awards ceremony at the Cork International Short Story Festival on Sunday night. Read more about the prize HERE.
10 September 2011
Shortlist for the National Short Story Prize Announced:
Two THRESHOLDS Writers in the Top Five
We are thrilled to announce that not one, but two of THRESHOLDS’ contributors are included in this year’s BBC National Short Story Award shortlist, announced last night on Radio 4’s arts programme Front Row. The Forum’s founding member and director ALISON MACLEOD made it onto the shortlist with her story ‘The Heart of Denis Noble’ and University of Chichester PhD student KATHERINE ORR was selected for ‘The Human Circadian Pacemaker’.
Alison, author of the collection Fifteen Modern Tales of Attraction (Penguin, 2007) and two novels, The Changeling (1996) and The Wave Theory of Angels (2005) says:
It’s an extraordinary honour to be shortlisted for this award. I attended the ceremony for the very first BBC NSS Award in 2005, and vividly remember the sense of excitement and anticipation in the room. How wonderful that the BBC has carried on supporting and celebrating the short story form with this award and with the broadcasts of the shortlisted stories on Radio 4. It means such a lot to writers in this country. The short story form is one of the most exhilarating forms out there, for both readers and writers — every good one, it seems to me, is its own powder keg of truth — and I’m really looking forward to reading (and hearing on Radio 4 next week) all the shortlisted stories. It’s a funny, lovely coincidence that Katherine and I should land together on the same shortlist of five. I’m thrilled for her. She’s a brilliant story writer.
Alison will be interviewed on Front Row, at 7:15 p.m. on Monday September 12, and her story, which is read by Tim Piggot-Smith from The Hour, will be broadcast at 3:30 p.m. on Tuesday. She will also be reading from ‘The Heart of Denis Noble’ at the Cork International Short Story Festival on Friday 16th September and at Small Wonder on Thursday the 22nd. On 23rd September, she will be a guest on Radio 3’s The Verbwhere she will discuss ‘short stories and modernity’ with Ian McMillan and Tom Rachman.
Katherine’s stories have previously been shortlisted for the London Writers’ Prize, the Asham Award and the Bridport Prize. Her work has also appeared in the collection Doris Lumsden’s Heart-Shaped Bed & Other Stories (2004) and in the anthologies Cheque Enclosed (2007) and the Bridport Prize 2010. ‘The Human Circadian Pacemaker’ was a runner-up for last year’s Bridport Prize. About being shortlisted here, she says:
It is such an honour to be shortlisted – I am absolutely delighted. ‘The Human Circadian Pacemaker’ is a story I loved writing. It was a case of following my interest in a snippet I heard on the radio a couple of years ago now. It was on accelerated aging in astronauts, which fascinated me, and led me down one of the most enjoyable paths in terms of research and reading – engaging with everything from the training that astronauts go through, to the wonder of being in space, to the oddness of the return to earth and life afterwards. Of course, stories take on a life of their own, and it ended up becoming about relationships as much as about space.
Katherine will be interviewed on Front Row, at 7:15 p.m. on Wednesday September 14, and her story will be broadcast at 3:30 p.m. on Thursday. The other shortlisted authors for this year’s National Short Story Prize are: prize-winning novelist and story writer M.J. HYLAND, for her story ‘Rag Love’; last year’s runner-up JON McGREGOR, for ‘Wires’; and Canadian novelist and short story writer D.W. WILSON, for ‘The Dead Roads’. Each of the five stories will be broadcast next week on Radio 4, starting at 3:30 p.m. on Monday 12th September. The stories will also be available as a free podcast from the Radio 4 website for two weeks. The winning story will be announced at the awards ceremony on 26th September, broadcast live on Front Row. The shorlisted stories are also available in the anthology BBC National Short Story Award 2011, published by Comma Press. Read more about the BBC National Short Story Award and the shortlisted authors on the Booktrust website and at BBC Radio 4. .
5 September 2011
The 9th Annual Seán Ó Faoláin Short Story Competition
The longlist for the 2011 Seán Ó Faoláin Short Story Competition has just been announced by this year’s judge, Ian Wilde. The 17 stories that made it onto the list were chosen from nearly 700 entries, submitted by writers from around the world. Named after the Irish short story writer and theorist, the annual competition offers a first-place prize of €1500 plus a week-long residency at Anam Cara Writers’ and Artists’ Retreat. Read more HERE.
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12 August 2011
From September, the Irish novelist and short story writer Colm Toibin will be replacing Martin Amis as Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Manchester’s Centre for New Writing. Toibin, who has most recently been teaching at Princeton University in the United States, will teach on the postgraduate programme for two days a week, one term each year, and will be involved with four public literary events. During the time that Martin Amis held the post, student applications for courses at the Centre for New Writing doubled.
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7 August 2011
Cork International Short Story Festival
14 – 18 September
The programme for The Cork International Short Story Festival (formerly the International Frank O’Connor Festival) has just been announced, and this year’s event promises to be a veritable smorgasbord of wonderful writers. THRESHOLDS‘ very own ALISON MACLEOD will be joining an international line-up of writers for the week-long festivities which include live interviews, a literary walking tour of Cork, and panel discussions. There will also be readings by numerous writers, including the six writers shortlisted for this year’s Short Story Award: YIYUN LI, VALERIE TRUEBLOOD, Alexander MacLeod, Suzanne Rivecca, EDNA O’BRIEN and COLM TÓIBÍN. Writers CLARE WIGFALL and JON BOILARD will also be leading workshops for beginner and advanced writers. Full details about this year’s programme can be found HERE. .
26 July 2011
Small Wonder Festival Programme
The organisers of the Small Wonder Short Story Festival at Charleston House in East Sussex have just announced the line-up for this year’s star-studded event. The four-day festival will commence at 6 p.m. on Thursday 22nd September with a discussion by Maggie Gee, Matthew Cobb, Denis Noble and THRESHOLDS director, Alison MacLeod, contributing authors to Litmus, a new anthology of science-based short fiction.
Additional speakers include: Sarah Waters * Geoff Dyer * Joe Dunthorne * Polly Samson * Tom Rachman*Rachel Cusk * Janice Galloway * Ali Smith *Yiyun Li * Robert Coover * Ben Watt * Emma Fielding * Juliet Stevenson
The Department of English & Creative Writing at the University of Chichester is delighted to sponsor a discussion about Something Was There, the new Asham anthology of award-winning ghost stories. Writers Naomi Alderman and Kate Clanchy, will be reading their specially commissioned stories and will discuss their responses to the gothic theme with publisher Lennie Goodings from Virago. This event takes place at 12 noon on Saturday 24th September.
Full details about the festival’s programme are available on the Small Wonder website.
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18 July 2011
2011 Bristol Short Story Prize Winner Announced
The winner of the 2011 Bristol Short Story Prize is Emily Bullock, for her superb story ‘My Girl’. Bertel Martin, who chaired the panel of judges – which also included Joe Berger, Maia Bristol, Helen Hart and Tania Hershman – announced the winner at Saturday’s awards ceremony hosted by Bristol’s Arnolfini Arts Centre. Second prize went to Laura Windley for ‘The Kitchen and the Lion’, and Laura Lewis’s ‘Reading Turkish Coffee’ won third prize. Twenty stories were shortlisted for this year’s competition including one by Chichester University’s very own Melanie Whipman, a graduate of Chichester’s MA Creative Writing programme and a PhD probationer at the university. First prize was £1,000 and a Waterstone’s Gift Card for £150. Second prize was £700 plus a Waterstone’s Gift Card for £100, and third prize was £400 and a £100 Waterstone’s Gift Card. The seventeen remaining shortlisted entries were presented with a cheque for £100 each, and all shortlisted stories, including the three prize-winners, will be published in both print and ebook versions of Volume 4 of the Bristol Short Story Prize Anthology. UWE graduate of Illustration, Claire Shorrock, also received a prize for her winning cover design for Volume 4 of the Bristol Short Story Prize Anthology.
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Say ‘No’ to BBC Short Story Cuts
Gwyneth Williams, the new Controller of BBC Radio 4, wants to cut the number of short stories broadcast by the station each week from three to just one. A number of new programmes will be introduced, while other existing programmes such as ‘The World at One’ will be extended. Previously, Radio 4 has been one of the UK’s leading proponents of the short story, with daily short story slots in its programming schedule and sponsorship of the National Short Story Award. Ian Skillicorn, Director of National Short Story Week and author Susie Maguire have drawn up an online petition, urging Williams to reconsider these drastic programming changes. Find out more HERE. See changes to Radio 4 programming, HERE. Sign the petition HERE. Read Susie Maguire’s response: Bad News for the Short Story.
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9 July 2011
Women Dominate Shortlist for Frank O’Connor Prize
The shortlist for the 2011 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award has just been announced. Now in its sixth year, the prize of €35,000 is the largest prize in the world for a collection of short stories. The six shortlisted books are: 1) Gold Boy, Emerald Girl by Yiyun Li (Chinese-born, American resident) 2) Light Lifting by Alexander MacLeod (Canadian) 3) Saints and Sinners by Edna O’Brien (Irish) 4) Death is Not an Option by Suzanne Rivecca (American) 5) The Empty Family by Colm Tóibín (Irish) 6) Marry or Burn by Valerie Trueblood (American) Four of the six shortlisted authors are women, including Yiyun Li who won the inaugural award in 2005 for her first book A Thousand Years of Good Prayers. Alexander MacLeod and Suzanne Rivecca, this year’s debutante authors, are joined by novelist Valerie Trueblood whose first short story collection has also been shortlisted. Two of Ireland’s finest, Edna O’Brien and Colm Tóibín, complete the list. The award will be presented at the culmination of the Cork International Short Story Festival on Sunday September 18th. Read more about the Frank O’Connor Award and the nominated authors HERE.
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8 July 2011
Edge Hill Short Story Prize
Congratulations go out to Graham Mort, winner of this year’s Edge Hill Short Story Prize for the collection Touch (Seren). Professor Mort, who is Director of Postgraduate Studies for the Department of English and Creative Writing at Lancaster University, was awarded the £5,000 prize in his absence at last night’s ceremony at the Blackwell Bookshop in Charing Cross Road. Among the collection’s twenty-one stories is the 2007 Bridport prize winning story ‘The Prince’. Congratulations also to Tom Vowler, whose book The Method
and Other Stories (Salt Publishing) was chosen by pupils and community groups as winner of the £1,000 Readers’ Prize. Michele Roberts’ Mud, Stories and Sex and Love (Virago), Polly Samson’s Perfect Lives (Virago), and Helen Simpson’s Inflight Entertainment (Random House) completed this exceptionally strong shortlist. Read more about the authors and their work HERE.
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Charles Wallace India Trust
Fellowship Applications Now Being Accepted
The University of Chichester has joined an elite group of institutions who cooperate with the Charles Wallace India Trust, to welcome an Indian writer to the UK and provide them with an opportunity to spend time at a British university, devoting themselves to their own writing and contributing to the life of the host institute. Applications will be invited from 1 July to a deadline of 31 October 2011. A shortlist of candidates will be agreed in November/December. The Fellow will begin work at the University from March or April 2012 (to be confirmed). Further details available at: http://www.chiuni.ac.uk/english/fellowships.cfm
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3 June 2011
Hay Literary Festival
Children’s Story Competition Winners
The Chris Evans Breakfast Show came live from the Hay Literary Festival this morning where Evans announced the winning entries of the first-ever Hay Children’s Writing Competition. The competition, for 500-word short stories by children 13-years-old and under, attracted 30,000 entries.
The fifty finalists gathered together for the prize-giving ceremony, which was broadcast live on Radio 2 from 7 a.m. this morning. Winning stories were selected by a panel of five judges: children’s authors Anthony Horowitz, Oliver Jeffries and Dame Jacqueline Wilson, comedian and children’s writer David Walliams, and the 2010 Booker Prize winning author Howard Jacobson. Stories by Children Under 9 Years Old: 1st place – ‘The Death Channel’ by Angus Barrett Finalist:
- ‘Dinosaur Remains’ by Madeleine Cook
- ‘Alfie ‘Fesses Up’ by Darcy Burnage
- ‘Winter Woodland Monster!’ by Alexander Boxall
- ‘The Doubtful Viking’ by Emily Latham
Stories by Children 10 – 13 Years Old: 1st place – ‘Stable’ by Olivia Norton Finalists:
- ‘Teeth’ by Rachel Horsfield
- ‘Diary of a Goldfish’ by Eliot Kelly-Reilly
- ‘History’ by Eamon MacDonald
- ‘Charlotte Johnson’ by Kerry Maxwell
Congratulations to the winners and all of the shortlisted authors – you are the literary stars of the future!
All 50 shortlisted stories can be found HERE.
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2 June 2011
Shortlist for the 2011 Bristol Short Story Prize
Congratulations to all of the authors who have been shortlisted for the 2011 Bristol Short Story Prize, with an extra special congratulations going out to Chichester University’s very own Melanie Whipman. Melanie is a recent graduate of Chichester’s MA Creative Writing programme and is currently a PhD probationer at the university.
All twenty shortlisted stories will be included in the next Bristol Short Story Prize Anthology, to be published later this year. The winning story will be announced at an awards ceremony on July 16th at the Arnolfini Arts Centre in Bristol, where the author will be presented with a cheque for £1000.
Details of the competition and the shortlisted stories can be found HERE.
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31 May 2011
Frank O’Connor Short Story Award
Jury and Longlist Announced
The Munster Literature Centre announced the longlist for the Frank O’Connor Award today. The list contains twelve UK writers, twenty-six Americans, four Irish, eight from Canada, three from India, two from Bulgaria and one each from Japan, Nigeria, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, China and Spain. The 2011 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Prize is worth €35,000 to the winning author of a collection of short stories published for the first time, in English anywhere in the world, between July 2010 and June 2011. See full details HERE.
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New Bursary for MA Creative Writing at
University of Chichester
The University of Chichester is inviting applications for a Professional Preparation Masters’ award for the study of Creative Writing, to commence in October 2011. Professional Preparation Masters’ studentships aim to support applicants in developing their professional career or plans. Studentships for MA Creative writing are for 1 year’s full-time study (2 years part-time). The bursary will pay your fees and provide a stipend of about £9,490 (pro-rata for part-time). Applicants should have resident status in the UK. Closing date for receipt of application for MA Creative Writing: Friday 17 June 2011. Interviews will take place on 4 July 2011. The MA in Creative Writing begins on Monday 5th September 2011. Full details are available HERE.
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23 May 2011
Unbound Press Short Fiction Award
‘The Case of Mary Ford’ by John Mole has been selected as this year’s winner of the Unbound Press Short Fiction Award. R.A. Martens’ ‘High Tea’ took 2nd place, and Graeme Scott’s ‘Jump Rope Practice’ came in 3rd. The three winning stories and those which were shortlisted will be included in the next Unboud Press anthology, due to be published in November. Seven additional entries, which were given Honorable Mention, will be published in Issue 5 of the Spilling Ink Review.
Full details are available HERE.
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10 May 2011
Edge Hill Short Story Prize Shortlist
The five-person shortlist for this year’s Edge Hill Prize has just been announced. The shortlist is:
- Graham Mort, Touch, Seren
- Michele Roberts, Mud, Stories and Sex and Love, Virago
- Polly Samson, Perfect Lives, Virago
- Helen Simpson, Inflight Entertainment, Random House
- Tom Vowler, The Method and Other Stories, Salt Publishing
The Edge Hill Prize is the only UK award for published story collections, and this year’s competition attracted submissions from both established and emerging writers. There are three categories for this year’s prize – the main literary award of £5,000, a £1,000 Readers’ Prize, and the Edge Hill University MA Creative Writing Prize of £500. The winners will be announced at an award ceremony at the Blackwell Bookshop, Charing Cross Road, on 7th July. Full details about the award can be found HERE.
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2011 Scott Prize Winners Announced
A.J. Ashworth
We are extremely pleased to announce that THRESHOLDS member A.J. Ashworth has been awarded a Scott Prize for her debut short story collection, Somewhere Else, or Even Here. The book will be published by Salt Publishing in November. Ashworth says: ‘I’m absolutely thrilled to be one of three winners of Salt Publishing’s Scott Prize this year. I’ve dreamed about being a writer since I was quite small so it feels both wonderful and surreal at the same time to be on the verge of seeing my collection in print! It’s wonderful to know that there are still publishers such as Salt who are willing to support new writers, especially in such challenging times for the arts.’ A.J. Ashworth is a former journalist and has an MA in Writing from Sheffield Hallam University. Read her short story ‘The Rings of Saturn’ HERE. Cassandra Parkin and Jonathan Pinnock will also see their story collections published by Salt. All three books will be launched during National Short Story Week in November. Further information about the prize, and the complete shortlist can be found HERE.
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7 April 2011
Literary Journals Thrive, on Paper and Otherwise
New York Times journalist Reyhan Harmanci explores the continued rise of American Literary Magazines HERE.
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19 March 2011
2010 Asham Award Shortlist
The twelve stories shortlisted for the 2010 Asham Award have been announced. Selected by a judging panel comprised of Lennie Goodings from Virago Press, and the novelists Sarah Walters and Polly Samson, the shortlisted stories are: ‘Cold Snap’ by Maggie Ling; ‘Red Branwen’ by Janet Tchamani; ‘Obeah Blue’ by Jacqueline Crooks; ‘The Traveller’ by Fiona Law; ‘Company’ by Diane Iddon; ‘Pandian Uncle and his Ghosts’ by Anita Sivakumaran; ‘On the Turn of the Tide’ by Jacky Taylor; ‘All Over the Place’ by Linda McVeigh; ‘The Second of November’ by Celine West; ‘Vin Rouge’ by Caroline Price; ‘The Courting’ by Gabriela Blandy; and ‘Sam Brown’ by Kate Morrison. The shortlisted stories will be included in an anthology which will be launched at the Small Wonder Festival at Charleston House in September, and the first, second and third-place winners will be announced this time. Read more about the Asham Award HERE.
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17 March 2011
Fish Short Story Prize Winners Announced
The top ten stories for this year’s FISH PRIZE have just been announced. Selected by judge Simon Mawer, the first-place prize of €3,000 goes to the Irish writer Mary O’Donnell for her story The Space Between Louis and Me. Hannah-Fleur Fizt-Gibbon, from the UK, wins the second-place prize of a week’s stay at the Anam Cara Writers’ & Artists’ Retreat for the story La Paix, and Robert Porteous, from Australia, wins the €300 third-place prize for Big Spirit Blow. The three prize-winning stories and the seven runners up will all be included in the 2011 Fish Anthology, to be launched at the West Cork Literary Festival in July. The 2012 competition opens in June. For the full list of prize winners and further information about the FISH PRIZE, click HERE.
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13 March 2011
Shortlist Announced
The shortlist for the Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award has been announced, today. After further review of the 20 stories which made last month’s long list, the judging panel have now chosen their favourite six stories. The shortlisted stories and their writers are:
- ‘East Coast – West Coast’ by Will Cohu
- ‘The Deep’ by Anthony Doerr
- ‘The Fluorescent Jacket’ by Roshi Fernando
- ‘The Science of Flight’ by Yiyun Li
- ‘Comma’ by Hilary Mantel
- ‘The Family Whistle’ by Gerard Woodward
The winner of the £30,000 award will be announced at the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival in April. Read more HERE.
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27 February 2011
Short Story Downloads
The news from Bookseller.com is that Fourth Estate and the Sunday Times have teamed up on a new project, releasing digital downloads of 32 short stories from writers including Hilary Mantel, A L Kennedy, Carol Shields and Alexei Sayle. Dubbed Fast Fiction, the downloads can be purchased for less than £2.
Find out more HERE.
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21 February 2011
Rob Shearman on Long List for Major Prize
The long list for the 2011 Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award has just been announced, and we are pleased to see that the story ‘History Becomes You’ by THRESHOLDS Q&A guest Rob Shearmanhas been selected as one of this year’s top 20. Rob is joined on the long list by such notable writers as Hilary Mantel, Tobias Hill, and Susan Hill. Sarah Hall, who was on last year’s short list is also among the authors in contention for this year’s prize. The £30,000 first-place prize is the largest award given to an individual short story.
The complete long list is available HERE.
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27 January 2011
Adam Marek Wins Arts Foundation Fellowship
We are delighted to announce that Adam Marek, has been named the winner of the 2011 Arts Foundation Fellowship for the Short Story. Each year the Foundation makes awards of £10,000 to emerging artists who have shown commitment to their particular field of creativity and reached a level of professional standing. This year’s awards were made to artists in five categories: sculpture, folk music, ceramics, live performance art, and the short story. Adam Marek, whose first collection Instruction Manual for Swallowing (Comma Press, 2007) gives us a bizarre and sometimes disturbing perspective of the modern world, is considered by many to be a rising talent in the literary world. Since winning the Bridport Prize in 2003, his stories have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies including When It Changed, The New Uncanny and the British Council’s New Writing 15. Last year, Adam’s story ‘Fewer Things’ was shortlisted for the prestigious Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award. ‘I’m so thrilled,’ Marek said after the announcement of the Arts Foundation award. ‘I can’t wait to start the fellowship. I’ve been desperate for more time to write for so long now, finally I’m going to be able to commit my whole working day to fiction, which is going to be such a pleasure.’ Adam’s stories have been described as a combination of the absurd and the mundane and as the guest of THRESHOLDS’ inaugural Q&A session in October 2010 he discussed the way his stories often arise out of a collision between wildly contrasting ideas. Read more about Adam’s thoughts on short stories and the writing life here.
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1 December 2010
To mark the first annual National Short Story Week, which took place 22-28th November, nine of the UK’s premier short story writers were invited to work together to produce a single short story. Each writer contributed 100 to 150 words before passing the story on to the next writer in the chain. Taking part in this literary challenge were the writers Tania Hershman, our very own Alison MacLeod, our recent Q&A guest Adam Marek, Julie Mayhew, Jonathan Pinnock, Valerie O’Riordan, Sarah Salway, Tom Vowler and Susie Wild. You can read the results of their creative collaboration, in the story Consequences, here.
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29 November 2010
David Constantine has been named as winner of the fifth annual BBC National Short Story Award, taking home a £15,000 cheque for his story ‘Tea at the Midland’. Launched in 2005, the award aims to raise the profile of the contemporary British short story, and to increase the number of opportunities available for writers, readers and publishers of the form. Jon McGregor was runner-up for ‘If it Keeps on Raining’ and receives a £3000 prize. Aminatta Forna, Sarah Hall and Helen Oyeyemi each receive £500 for their shortlisted stories.
David Constantine shares his thoughts on winning the BBC National Short Story Award and reveals how his stories come into being:
I like the form, it is so various, it lends itself to many very different needs. I suppose I write the kind of short story a person writes who primarily writes poems. Neither story nor poem is, for me, biddable. I have to wait, attend. My stories start in images, bits of speech, a particular tone of voice. I have talked to writers who plot the whole thing from start to finish, then they write it out. That isn’t my way. I have to listen closely for the directions being given by the images and voices that first came to me, and sentence by sentence feel my way. So in the case of ‘Tea at the Midland’ I was given the surfers and Eric Gill’s frieze ‘Odysseus Welcomed from the Sea’; then the man and woman, their voices, and bit by bit what was at stake for each. Their quarrel about Gill, perhaps interesting in itself, is more truly the ground on which they have to fight.
Winning the award is immensely encouraging, of course – both for me and for Comma Press who deserve the support of all who care about the genre. And since being short-listed I’ve seen again and at first hand just how much writers have cause to be grateful to the BBC.
David has published three collections of short stories: Back at the Spike (1994), Under the Dam(2005) and The Shieling (2009). The Shieling was also shortlisted for this year’s Frank O’Connor Prize.
Contribution by Katherine Orr.
Read more here.
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12 November 2010
The shortlist for the BBC National Short Story Award has just been announced. Congratulations to David Constantine, Aminatta Forna, Sarah Hall, Jon Mcgregor, and Helen Oyeyemi.
The winner of the £15,000 prize money will be announced on Radio 4’s Front Row on 29 November. The runner-up will win £3,000 while the other nominees will be rewarded with £500 each.
Five actors and actresses will each read one of the shortlisted stories on a daily basis from 15 November at 15.30 GMT on Radio 4.
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31 October 2010
First Place in this year’s Bridport Short Story Prize has gone to ‘The Woodcutter’s Wife’ by the Brighton-based writer, Alison Fisher. Fisher will receive a cheque for £5000 at today’s awards ceremony at the Bridport Arts Centre. Wayne Price, of Aberdeen, wins the Second Place prize of £1000 for his story ‘God’s Instruments’, and Kirsty Logan, of Glasgow, takes home Third Place and £500 for ‘Underskirts.’
A special congratulations goes out to supplementary prize winners Honoria Beirne and Katherine Orr, both of whom are studying for postgraduate degrees in Creative Writing at the University of Chichester. Honoria, who is in the final stages of an MA, receives the prize for her story ‘Shake Me, Shake Me’, and Katherine, currently studying for a PhD, receives her prize for ‘The Human Circadian Pacemaker’. We also extend our warm congratulations to University of Chichester English graduate Josephine Corcoran, who won a supplementary prize in the Bridport Poetry Competition, and to Dave Swann, Senior Lecturer in English & Creative Writing at Chichester, who was long-listed in the the same competition.
The 2011 competition will open 1st December.
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12 October 2010
Howard Jacobson is the surprise winner of this year’s Man Booker Prize, selected from a shortlist that also included Peter Carey, Andrea Levy and Damon Galgut, as well as Tom McCarthy and Emma Donoghue whose novels were thought to be the favourites. The Finkler Question, Jacobson’s 11th novel, is the first comic novel in the history of the Man Booker Prize to win top honours.
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4 October 2010
Congratulations go out to Ron Rash for his short story collection Burning Bright, this year’s winner of the prestigious Frank O’Connor Award. The €35,000 prize, presented to the writer of the best short story collection published in English during the preceding year, is the largest prize of its kind. Read more
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17 September 2010
We are delighted to report that Hanif Kureishi, a friend to THRESHOLDS and the subject of our inaugural interview, will be awarded the PEN Pinter Prize on October 20th. ‘The prize aims to honour a writer of “outstanding literary merit” who exemplifies Pinter’s own “fierce intellectual determination … to define the real truth of our lives and our societies”.’
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In the headlines:
Stop Press: ‘The short story is an essential art form again’
Enright on The Irish Short Story
Faber publishes Keegan’s story ‘Foster’ as stand-alone work
Alice Munro wins 2009 International Booker
Less is More? The Raymond Carver Editing Controversy (View One)
Less is More? The Raymond Carver Editing Controversy (View Two)
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