The BBC National Short Story Award Books

The BBC National Short story Award is one of the world's largest awards for a single short story. All five shortlisted stories, including the winner, are published here side by side. The Award is designed to honour Britain's finest short story writers and to re-establish the importance of the short story as a central literary form. This year's shortlist brings together a high calibre group of new and established authors exploring human relationships at their most dysfunctional and yet sustaining. Splintered families, the persistence of love, the public versus the private, and the plight of the outsider all provide a recurring focus for the authors in the running for the prize, which marks its fifth year in 2010. The panel of judges this year includes the author and Guardian journalist Kamila Shamsie, author and poet Owen Sheers, author Shena MacKay, BBC Editor of Readings, Di Speirs and the Today Programme's James Naughtie, who also introduces the collection. ABOUT THE AUTHORS David Constantine, born 1944 in Salford, Lancs, was for thirty years a university teacher of German language and literature. He has published several volumes of poetry (most recently – 2009 – Nine Fathom Deep); also a novel, Davies (1985), and three collections of short stories: Back at the Spike (1994), Under the Dam ( 2005) and The Shieling (2009). He is an editor and translator of Hölderlin, Goethe, Kleist and Brecht. His translation of Goethe’s Faust, Part I was published by Penguin in 2005; Part II in April 2009. With his wife Helen he edits Modern Poetry in Translation. Aminatta Forna’s most recent published work is The Memory of Love (April 2010) a story about friendship, war and obsessive love. It has been selected as one of the Best Books of the Year by the Sunday Telegraph, Financial Times and Times. Her previous novel Ancestor Stones was a New York Times Editor's Choice book, selected by the Washington Post as one of the Best Novels of 2006, won the Hurston Wright Legacy Award for Debut Fiction, the Liberaturpreis in Germany and was nominated for the International Dublin IMPAC Award. The Devil that Danced on the Water, a memoir of her dissident father. The Devil that Danced on the Water was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize 2003, serialised on BBC Radio and in The Sunday Times newspaper. Aminatta is a trustee of the Royal Literary Fund and sits on the advisory committee of the Caine Prize for African Writing. Sarah Hall was born in Cumbria in 1974. She received a BA from Aberystwyth University, Wales, and a MLitt in Creative Writing from St Andrews , Scotland . She is the author of Haweswater, which 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. In 2004, her second novel, The Electric Michelangelo, was short-listed for the Man Booker prize, the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Eurasia region), and the Prix Femina Etranger, and was long-listed for the Orange Prize for Fiction. Her third novel, The Carhullan Army, was published in 2007, and won the 2006/07 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the James Tiptree Jr. Award, a Lakeland Book of the Year prize, and was short-listed for the Arthur C. Clarke Award for science fiction. Her fourth novel, How to Paint a Dead Man, was longlisted for the 2009 Man Booker Prize. Jon McGregor is the author of the critically acclaimed If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things and So Many Ways To Begin. He is the winner of the Betty Trask Prize and the Somerset Maugham Award, and has twice been longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. He was born in Bermuda in 1976. He grew up in Norfolk and now lives in Nottingham. Even the Dogs is his third novel. Helen Oyeyemi was born in 1984. She is the author of three novels, The Icarus Girl, The Opposite House and White is For Witching, and a short story collection, Mr Fox, to be published in summer 2011.

‘We are living through a golden moment in the history of the short story,’ wrote The Guardian recently, and the annual BBC National Short Story Award is both a testament to this, and one of the reasons why we are. Now in its sixth year, the Award supports and showcases Britain’s best new short fiction and continues to champion the short story as a central literary form. Themes of desire, envy and disconnection provide recurring motifs for the five shortlisted stories presented here – the extremes that love can endure and what happens when love is not enough. The panel of judges this year included novelist Tessa Hadley, novelist and critic Geoff Dyer, poet and author of Submarine, Joe Dunthorne and BBC Editor of Readings, Di Speirs. The panel was chaired by broadcaster Sue MacGregor who also introduces the selection.

Absence and disappearance provide recurring themes in these 10 stories assembled from the BBC International Short Story Award competition: the abandonment of family members, estranged wives and errant husbands, the loss of a childhood friend and computer games mentor, and the convenient vanishing of whatever we deem disposable. Written by English-speaking writers from around the world-including Australia, the Balkans, Ireland, North America, and South Africa-this compilation shows the extraordinary diversity and richness of the short story as a truly global form while also honoring the 2012 London Olympics. Contributors include the winner of the BBC International Short Story Award, Miroslav Penkov; runner-up Henrietta Rose-Innes; and Adam Ross, Carrie Tiffany, Chris Womersley, Deborah Levy, Julian Gough, Krys Lee, Lucy Caldwell, and M. J. Hyland.

Edgar Allan Poe once claimed the greatest literary works were those that could be read ’in one sitting’. ‘Brevity must be in direct ratio of the intensity of the intended effect,’ he argued, once the effect has been established, of course. The stories shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award 2013 all use brevity with striking results, whether presenting a complex family history through the snapshots of a time-honoured, annual holiday, or using the form of a letter to demonstrate that a life mourned by a solitary woman is worth no less than one mourned by a nation. Each story sparks into life instantly and, like a struck match, leaves a vivid impression of its characters burning on the retina, long after the story has concluded. The landscapes they play out in also make their mark – from the panic-stricken streets of New York on 9/11, to the eerie quiet of a wood on the outskirts of a city, the haunted corners of an old Cornish house, to the rubble of a bombed-out office block in a country at war with itself. This year’s shortlist was drawn up by a panel of judges that included novelists Deborah Moggach, Mohsin Hamid and Peter Hobbs, as well as BBC Editor of Readings, Di Speirs, and the broadcaster Mariella Frostrup, who chaired the panel and who also introduces the collection.

Short story writers often say that, for maximum dramatic effect, you should arrive fashionably late to a scene. After years of living in the literary wilderness, it seems the short story’s own moment has finally arrived. The last twelve months have marked an extraordinary year for the form. The Nobel Prize for Literature, the Man Booker International Prize, the Folio Prize and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize were all awarded to short story writers. The shortlist for the BBC National Short Story Award 2014 captures the spirit of this mood and the short story’s knack for cutting straight to the action, the all-important moment of change. The five stories on this year’s shortlist were chosen by a panel of judges that included: poet and novelist Adam Foulds; author, illustrator and performer Laura Dockrill; editor Philip Gwyn Jones; BBC Editor of Books Di Speirs; and the broadcaster Alan Yentob,who chaired the panel and introduces this collection.

‘I often ask myself what makes a story work,’ wrote the great American author, Flannery O’Connor. ‘I have decided that it is probably some action, some gesture of a character... which is both totally right and totally unexpected... one that is both in character and beyond character.’ The five stories shortlisted for this year’s BBC National Short Story Award with Book Trust all feature people making just such gestures, acting in ways that reach beyond themselves: a woman takes refuge from a disastrous relationship by caring for a morbidly obese man; parents of a missing girl desperately resort to the services of a woman whose talents they barely credit; a middle-class resident of a leafy corner of Windsor finds herself caught at a crossroads in history; a young man attempts to impress his girlfriend’s unconventional parents – to excruciating, comic effect; and a young woman attempts to stitch together her own approach to life in the face of love. In each case we see an individual endeavouring to stand up, to make a difference, to be part of something bigger. Now in its tenth year, the BBC National Short Story Award has witnessed a decade of revival for the form, and the stories on this list show just what fine fettle it’s in. The shortlist was selected by crime-writer Ian Rankin, novelist Tash Aw, previous winner Sarah Hall, BBC Books Editor Di Speirs, and former BBC correspondent and journalist Allan Little, who chaired the panel and introduces this collection.

Young garment workers in a Bangladeshi factory seek a better life, at a price... A girl on a deep, dark moor is drawn into a different kind of darkness after a stranger gives her a bunch of flowers... A retired plastic surgeon, who once served the great and the not-so-good of Buenos Aires, finds a new peace when he disguises his identity... An academic seeks sanctuary in a different rhythm of life... While those who wile away the nights in A&E, unlikely memories and a good sense of the absurd keep the worst at bay... The characters assembled in this year’s shortlist are all looking for a new start, a chance to escape or change the way they are perceived. Now in its eleventh year, the BBC National Short Story Award with BookTrust continues to showcase a literary form in the very best of health. The stories this year were shortlisted by poet Kei Miller, Man Booker Award-winning novelist Pat Barker, Southbank Centre’s Literature Programmer Ted Hodgkinson, and BBC’s Books Editor Di Speirs. The judging panel was chaired by Woman’s Hour presenter Jenni Murray, who also introduces the collection.

Hung-over and grief-stricken, a man contemplated suicide at the edge of a cliff, until he is unexpectedly distracted by the sight of a woman emerging from the water below... A group of art students protesting the demolition of a housing block decide to turn its destruction into a creative act... Waiting in her car for the rain to pass after her mother's funeral, a woman nurses her child and reflects on a world outside that remains headless of her sorrow... The stories shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award with Cambridge University 2018 pivot around the theme of loss, and the different ways that individuals, and communities, respond to it. From the son caring for his estranged father, to the widow going out for her first meal alone, the characters in these stories are trying to find ways to repair themselves, looking ahead to a time when grief will eventually soften and sooth. Above all, these stories explore the importance of human connection, and salutary effect of companionship and friendship when all else seems lost.

A young boy takes delight in his mother’s ability to shapeshift from one animal to another, only realising how odd she is when it comes to parents’ evening . . . The values of a small farming village are challenged by talk of a well-heeled community living on the other side of the lake that only one person can see . . . A writer researching the life of a 19th century child custody reformer discovers all too many parallels between that century and ours . . . The stories shortlisted for the 2019 BBC National Short Story Award with Cambridge University variously explore the sanctity of the home and family, and the instinct to defend what’s closest to us. Against a backdrop of danger or division, characters sometimes struggle – like the 15-year-old charged with looking after her siblings whilst her mother works through the night – and sometimes succumb – like the young woman who allows herself to be manipulated by an older, richer man. But in each case, these stories demonstrate what Nikki Bedi argues in her introduction: short stories are not a warm-up act, they’re the main event.

A young woman’s birthday party is disturbed by the vision of a homeless man sleeping under an arrangement of mocking fruit... A late-night text conversation goes awry when a forwarded link to a live feed of gathering walruses doesn’t have its intended effect... A woman hopes a pending announcement to her in-laws will finally give her husband the attention he craves... The stories shortlisted for the 2020 BBC National Short Story Award with Cambridge University demonstrate how a single moment might become momentous; how a small encounter or exchange can irreversibly change the way others see you, or the way you see yourself. From the struggles of two women trapped by joblessness and addiction to the hopes of two teenage brothers embarking on a new life without the protection of their parents, these stories show us what happens when we fail to relate to each other as well as the refuge that belonging affords.

A group of teenage boys take turns assessing each other’ s changing bodies before a Friday night disco… A grieving woman strikes up an unlikely friendship with a fellow traveller on a night train to Kiev… An unusually well-informed naturalist is eyed with suspicion by his comrades on a forest exhibition with a higher purpose… The stories shortlisted for the 2021 BBC National Short Story Award with Cambridge University take place in liminal spaces – their characters find themselves in transit, travelling along flight paths, train lines and roads, or in moments where new opportunities or directions suddenly seem possible. From the reflections of a new mother flying home after a funeral, to an ailing son’ s reluctance to return to the village of his childhood, these stories celebrate small kindnesses in times of turbulence, and demonstrate a connection between one another that we might sometimes take for granted. The BBC NSSA is one of the most prestigious prizes for a single short story, with the winning author receiving £ 15,000, and four further shortlisted authors £ 600 each.

Established in 2005, the BBC National Short Story Award with Cambridge University was originally conceived to highlight a literary genre regarded as undervalued and under threat. Its aim was to recognise and celebrate the very best writers of short fiction who had no prize equivalent to major literary awards like the Man Booker Prize. Fifteen years on, the short story is in robust health and the BBC National Short Story Award is recognised as the most prestigious for a single short story with the winning writer receiving £15,000 and the four shortlisted writers £600 each. Every year, the shortlisted stories are broadcast on Radio 4 and published in this anthology by Comma Press. This year's edition will be introduced by TV presenter and head judge, Reeta Chakrabati.

Established in 2005, the BBC National Short Story Award with Cambridge University was originally established to highlight a literary genre regarded as undervalued and under threat. It aimed to recognise and celebrate the very best writers of short fiction who had no prize equivalent to major literary awards like the Man Booker Prize. 19 years on, the short story is in robust health and the BBC National Short Story Award is recognised as the most prestigious for a single short story with the winning writer receiving £15,000 and the four shortlisted writers £600 each. Previous Winners: Lucy Caldwell Sarah Hall Jan Carson Ingrid Persaud Cynan Jones KJ Orr Jonathan Buckley Lionel Shriver