We are thrilled to announce the winners of the 2025 Bristol Short Story Prize competition! This year’s judging panel – Kate Johnson, Jan Carson, and Peace Adzo Medie – praised the breadth and emotional honesty of this year’s shortlisted entries and chose the following three from among 1,800 submissions.
Zoë Meager of Aotearoa New Zealand has been awarded first place for her haunting story Things with bodies, a tale that judges described as “clear, careful, nothing-wasted prose,” infused with “deep love” and “unthinkable yet inevitable grief.” Judge Kate Johnson likened its impact to Shirley Jackson, applauding its bold, precise storytelling and exploration of motherhood, sacrifice, and sorrow. Meager’s writing has appeared in Granta, The Offing, Overland, and more. In 2024, she was runner-up in the Seán Ó Faoláin International Short Story Competition, received an honourable mention in the Zoetrope All-Story Short Fiction Competition, and was a Sargeson Fellow.
Second place goes to London-based S-L Santana for her vibrant, layered story 1992. Jan Carson praised its “compelling, funny and acerbic” voice and described the experience of reading the story as “being transported into someone else’s life and home.” Santana, a graduate of Brunel University and Aberystwyth University, draws inspiration from relationships, community, and the rhythm of oral storytelling. 1992 began as a writing prompt but grew into a story that blends memory, research, and childhood perception with adult understanding.
Taking third place is Laura Morris of Cardiff, for The Weight of a Man, which Peace Adzo Medie called “emotive and vivid” and “illuminating in its exploration of family, love, and care.” Morris’s work has been published in The Dublin Review, The Lonely Crowd, Banshee, and Southword. Her story Cree won the Rhys Davies Short Story Competition in 2022. Originally from Caerphilly, she now teaches English at a Welsh-medium secondary school.
Congratulations to all this year’s shortlisted authors. Catch their stories in our Volume 17 anthology, available from Tangent Books.
Redfern Jon Barrett is author to Proud Pink Sky, an ‘ambitopia’ set in the world’s first gay state, and The Giddy Death of the Gays & the Strange Demise of Straights, a comedy of polyamory and nonbinary life that was a finalist for the Bi Book Awards. Redfern’s short stories have appeared in The Sun, Passages North, and Booth. Their nonfiction has featured in Guernica, Strange Horizons, and PinkNews. Redfern is nonbinary, holds a PhD in Literature and lives in Berlin.
@redfernjon.bsky.social
Emma Challis is a writer from Essex and holds a BA in Creative Writing from Brunel University. Her short stories have featured for National Flash Fiction Day 2024 and 2025 and in the anthology It’s Complicated (2017). Her poetry has featured in the chapbook Skin. She was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize in 2024 and is currently working on her first novel.
JR Fenn is a writer from the Central Appalachians. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in many places, including Boston Review, Gulf Coast, DIAGRAM, SmokeLong Quarterly, Split Lip, Centaur, 100 Word Story, and the Bath Flash Fiction Award Anthology. She holds an MFA from Syracuse University, where she won the Joyce Carol Oates Prize in Fiction, and her writing has been supported by fellowships from Orion, Writing by Writers, and the Key West Literary Seminar, along with funded residencies at Hewnoaks and the Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow, among others. JR is represented by Catherine Cho at Paper Literary. She teaches at State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry and lives in Western New York with her family.
Robyn Jefferson is a short story writer and aspiring novelist from Bristol. She has a BA in English Literature and an MA in Creative Writing, for which she earned a Distinction. Her work has been published online in The Mechanics’ Institute Review, Makarelle, The Phare, and Fiery Scribe Review. In 2022, her short story ‘In Language Strange’ was shortlisted for the Aesthetica Magazine Creative Writing Award; later that same year, she was the first-place winner of The Masters Review Novel Excerpt Competition with a chapter from her debut novel, Calling Out. In 2024, her short story ‘Molly’ was awarded third place in the Leicester Writes Short Story Prize. Most recently, her piece ‘and don’t blaspheme!’ won third place in the GWG Literary Prize 2025, and her short story ‘Slasher Dream #2’ was shortlisted for the Flash 500 Short Story Competition.
@apocryphai
Phoebe Hamilton Jones is a writer from London. She has previously been a finalist for the 2024 Mslexia Short Story Award and longlisted for the 2024 Bath Short Story Award. Her fiction and nonfiction has been published by LitHub, Virago Press, Anthropolitan and Mslexia. She works as a social scientist in the environmental sector.
Kerry Mead lives in Bristol with her two children and writes creative nonfiction and fiction. She writes about neurodivergence, place, and everything that makes us human. She gained an MA with distinction in Creative and Critical Writing from Birkbeck, University of London in 2023. Her creative nonfiction has been published in The Mechanics Institute Review, Oranges Journal, and The Curae Anthology, after being shortlisted for the 2023 Curae Prize for nonfiction.
@kerrymeadwriter
Laura Morris’s writing has appeared in The Dublin Review, The Lonely Crowd, Banshee and Southword. Her short story ‘Cree’ won the Rhys Davies Short Story Competition (2022). Originally from Caerphilly, Laura now lives in Cardiff, where she teaches English at a Welsh-medium secondary school.
Issie Roll is a twenty-two year-old writer from Solihull, and she is currently studying an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Southampton. She has written stories for as long as she can remember and is thrilled to be included in this anthology. Besides writing fiction, Issie is a massive lover of theatre and has written, performed and directed musicals throughout her four years of university.
Louis Rossi is a British-born writer who lives and works in Vancouver, Canada, with his young family. Louis creates dark and speculative fiction, drawing inspiration from the raw beauty of the Canadian wilderness. His work examines the uneasy relationship between human beings and the natural world, the thin membrane that separates the everyday from the supernatural, and the places within our own minds best left unexplored. Louis works as a freelance copywriter, content writer, and creative. He is a former winner of the Blue Animal Literature Flash Fiction Prize with his story ‘Horror Vacui (Nature Abhors a Vacuum)’, while his short story ‘The Mycologist’ was published in the 2022 Oxford Flash Fiction Prize Anthology Sticks and Stones.
Jillian Grant Shoichet endured an idyllic childhood in pastoral southwestern British Columbia (where nothing happens unless someone sets things in motion), which meant that at an early age she became a fiction instigator. Over time, friends and family members have come to accept that they will find reflections of themselves in her work. Jillian is most comfortable writing about uncomfortable human experiences: love and loss and our quest to find a meaningful balance between the two.
/jilliangshoichet/
Becky Tipper is from the UK and now lives in the Northeastern US. Her short fiction has been published in The Interpreter’s House, Prole, FlashBack Fiction and The Honest Ulsterman, and her stories have previously won the Bridport Prize and an ALCS Tom-Gallon Trust Award from the Society of Authors.
Debra Waters is originally from Yorkshire, lives in Brighton, and works as a features writer. In 2020, she graduated from Goldsmiths with an MA in Creative & Life Writing. Debra writes short stories and flash. In 2020, she won The Bridport Short Story Prize and, in 2024, The Letter Review Short Fiction Prize. She’s been shortlisted for the Bath Short Story Award, Bridport Flash Prize, Oxford Flash Prize, Pat Kavanagh Award, Wells Festival of Literature Short Story Prize, and the Exeter Short Story Prize, and was a LISP flash finalist and highly commended for the Writers & Artists Working Class Writers Prize. Her longlists include the Manchester Fiction Prize, Anthology Magazine, and London Library’s Emerging Writers Programme. Debra has been published in Litro, LISP, and The Letter Review. Anthologies her work is published in include Bridport Prize 2020, Bath Flash V.5, Bath Short Story Award 2022, thi wurd’s Earthly Rewards, Transformations (Oxford Flash Fiction), and Motherhood Uncensored.
Anne Wilkins is a sleep-deprived New Zealand teacher who writes in her spare time. Her short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Apex Magazine, Cosmic Horror Monthly, The Dark, Small Wonders, Elegant Literature, and more. She has won the June 2024 Elegant Literature Prize, the 2023 Autumn Writers Battle, and the 2023 Cambridge Autumn Festival Short Story Competition, among others. Her love of writing is fuelled by copious amounts of coffee, reading and hope. Anne is supported in her writing journey by her ever-patient husband, two wonderful daughters, and two feline writing assistants.
When asked about the inspiration for the design, Emily said:
Congratulations to Kasia Jaronczyk, whose new novel, 
We’d like to give a big shout-out and hearty congratulations to Maureen Cullen on not one but two exciting literary achievements!