Past Winners

It’s here! This anthology collects the first 16 prize winners of the Bristol Short Story Prize in a single volume and is available to order from Tangent Books. All profits from the sale of the anthology will go to Doctors Without Borders and Borderlands, a refugee charity based in Bristol.

2023 Abhishek Sengupta

Abhishek Sengupta is imaginary. Mostly, people would want to believe he uses magical realism to write novels about world issues, even though he is stuck inside a window in Kolkata, India, but he knows none of it is true. He doesn’t exist. Only his imaginary writing does and has appeared in some periodicals and anthologies around the globe, won a few prizes, and been published alongside the likes of Neil Gaiman (who is a little less imaginary). If you’re gifted, however, you may imagine him on Twitter @AbhishekSWrites.

2022 Diana Powell

Diana Powell’s stories have been featured in a number of competitions, such as the 2019 Chipping Norton Literature Festival Prize (winner), the 2020 Society of Authors ALCS Tom-Gallon Trust Award (runner-up) and the 2020 TSS Cambridge Prize (3rd place). Her work has appeared in several anthologies and journals, including Best (British) Short Stories 2020 (Salt), and in her collection Trouble Crossing the Bridge (available on Kindle). She has also published a novella, Esther Bligh (Holland House. 2018) and a novel, things found on the mountain, which was published by Seren Books in 2023. She won the 2022 Cinnamon Press Literature Award with her novella, The Sisters of Cynvael, which is due out in 2024. She was the winner of the 2022 Bristol Short Story Prize. She has a website https://dianapowellwriter.com and can be found on FaceBook and Twitter @diana_p_writer.

2021 Isidora Cortez-Monroy

Born in Chile and raised in Switzerland, Isidora Cortez-Monroy has always navigated her intercultural world through literature. Her story, His Back, was selected as a runner up for the Jane Austen Literacy Foundation short story competition and was published as an Audible. In addition, her story, The Scientific Method was also selected for a short story anthology published by Leno and Bandini. Currently, she is completing her PhD at the University of Toronto, Canada.

2020 Stephen Narain

Stephen Narain was raised in Freeport, Bahamas by Guyanese parents, both educators who fled the Burnham dictatorship in 1982. A recipient of a John Thouron Prize for Study at Cambridge University, he earned an A.B. in English from Harvard College and an M.F.A. in Fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop as a Paul and Daisy Soros New American Fellow. His work has appeared in Small Axe: A Platform for Caribbean Criticism, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Moko, and Wasafiri’s special issue on the afterlives of indentured labor. In 2012, the NGC Bocas Lit Fest selected Stephen for its New Talent Showcase spotlighting promising Caribbean authors. Stephen lives in Orlando, where he is completing his first book, a coming-of-artist novel set between the West Indies and the United States in the 1950s and 1960s.

2019 Cameron Stewart

Cameron Stewart is a writer based in Sydney, Australia. He grew up on a farm near Mullumbimby, by way of Alice Springs, Canberra and Cairns. Diversity of place informs much of his writing as does an interest in flawed characters trying to do their best. Cameron holds an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Technology, Sydney and a BA in Performing Arts from the University of Western Sydney (Theatre Nepean). Cameron is an award winning, short fiction writer and has been published in Australia, the UK and the USA. His debut novel, Why Do Horses Run? was released in April 2024. He is currently working on his second novel, Cosmonaut.

2018 Dizz Tate

Dizz Tate won the Bristol Short Story Prize in 2018. Her debut novel, Brutes, was published in 2023 by Faber in the UK and Catapult in the US.  

2017 Dima Alzayat

Dima Alzayat is the author of Alligator and Other Stories (Picador) and a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and the Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize. Her short stories have appeared on BBC Radio 4, Esquire, Foyle’s, Adroit, and Prairie Schooner. She holds a PhD in creative writing from Lancaster University, and was the 2022-23 Lillian Gollay Knafel Fellow at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Dima won the 2017 Bristol Short Story Prize.

2016 Stefanie Seddon

Stefanie Seddon grew up on a farm in New Zealand. After moving to the UK, she worked in the City of London before completing an MA in Creative Writing at Birkbeck, University of London. Stefanie’s short stories have won the Bristol Short Story Prize and the Commonwealth Short Story Prize for Europe and Canada, and been shortlisted for the Pindrop Royal Academy Short Story Prize. Her short fiction has been published online by Granta, Adda and TSS Publishing, and has appeared in The Bristol Short Story Prize Anthology Volume 9, The Mechanics Institute Review and Schweitzer Monat. Her non-fiction work has been published online at The Independent.

2015 Brent van Staalduinen

Brent van Staalduinen the award-winning author of the novels Unthinkable, Nothing But Life, Boy, and Saints, Unexpected, as well as the short story collection Cut Road. He is the winner of the Kerry Schooley Book Award, the 2015 Bristol Short Story Prize, the Fiddlehead Best Story Award, the Lush Triumphant Literary Award, and numerous other prizes, and his stories can be found in journals on both sides of the Atlantic. A former high school English teacher, library staff member, radio announcer, army medic, and tree planter, Brent now finds himself helping university writing students discover their voices, explaining that the beautiful game really should be called football, and scouring the streets for stories in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, where he lives with his wife and two daughters. He is also the creator and co-host of Rejected Central, a podcast which explores the history, pain, and humour of rejection.

2014 Mahsuda Snaith

After the release of her debut novel, The Things We Thought We Knew, Mahsuda Snaith was named an ‘Observer New Face of Fiction’ and was chosen as a World Book Night writer in 2019. Her second novel, How to Find Home, was chosen as a BBC Radio 4 ‘Book at Bedtime’. She is the winner of the 2014 SI Leeds Literary Prize and 2014 Bristol Short Story Prize. Mahsuda has led creative writing workshops in universities, hospitals, schools and a homeless hostel, been a mentor for a variety of writing organisations and was a judge for the 2021 Bristol Short Story Prize. She is a commissioned writer for the Colonial Countryside project and her short story, The Panther’s Tale, is included in Hag: Forgotten Folktales Retold. Mahsuda works as a writing coach at The Novelry. Find out more at www.mahsudasnaith.com.

2013 Paul McMichael

Paul McMichael was born along the rugged coast of Ireland’s north-eastern corner, and now lives in London where he is married to Marc, his partner of 36 years. He has a career in electronics under his belt and so was late to catch the writing bug. He is a proud winner of the 2013 Bristol Short Story Award. Another story, After the Rhododendrons was short-listed for the Frank MacManus Prize 2013 and broadcast on Irish radio. Other stories have been long- or short-listed for the Fish Publications Prize, the Bath Award and the Brighton Prize. He has attended creative writing courses over the last few years and is working on his first novel, a coming-of-age quest and gay romance set in 1580 (fake news and hate speech have very long pedigrees).

 2012 Johnny Arnold

Johnny Arnold was raised in Far North Queensland, Australia. He began writing as an escape after being interred in a Brisbane boys’ Catholic school. After university, he lived and wrote variously in Melbourne, Europe and Bristol – however he only found his voice as an author after writing about his hometown. The resulting story, Naked as Eve, won the Bristol Short Story Prize in 2012. His short fiction Skeleton Creek has since been included in the 2021 Faber Anthology. He is the author of five plays that have been produced by Melbourne theatre company, Move Create Dance. His 2022 play, Blood Makes Noise was the subject of the documentary The Kids Play by director Libby Chow. His most recent plays, Perfect Day and The Singularity are being produced in April this year. He’s currently finishing a full-length mystery novel set in the Far North. He’s a husband, a father of two and the owner of a dingo named Boudicca. Instagram @johnnylarnold.

2011 Emily Bullock

Emily Bullock won the Bristol Short Story Prize in 2011 with her story My Girl, which was also broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Her short stories have been featured in different anthologies including A Short Affair (Scribner, 2018). She has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia and completed her PhD at the Open University, where she is a senior lecturer in Creative Writing. Her debut novel, The Longest Fight, was shortlisted for the Cross Sports Book Awards, and listed in The Independent’s Paperbacks of the Year 2015. Her second novel, Inside the Beautiful Inside was published in 2020, and her collection of short stories, Human Terrain, was published in 2021 and longlisted for the Edge Hill Prize 2022. Her novella, For Always Only, will be published by Reflex Press in 2024.

2010 Valerie O’Riordan

Valerie O’Riordan is Senior Lecturer in English Studies at the University of Bolton, where she is Programme Leader for English and Creative Writing. Her short fiction has been published widely and she won the Bristol Short Story Prize in 2010 and the O. Henry Prize in 2019.

2009 Elizabeth Jane

As well as a writer, Elizabeth Jane Corbett was a librarian, taught Welsh at the Melbourne Welsh Church, and was the Social Media Coordinator for the Historical Novel Society Australasia. She won the 2009 Bristol Short Story Prize (writing as Elizabeth Jane) and was shortlisted for the Allan Marshall Short Story Award. Her debut novel, The Tides Between, was named a Children’s Book Council of Australia Notable Book for older readers. She liked red shoes, dark chocolate, commuter cycling, and reading quirky, character driven novels set once-upon-a-time in lands far away. Very sadly Liz passed away in early 2020.

2008 Rebecca Lloyd

Apart from short stories in anthologies, Rebecca Lloyd’s work includes four short story collections, four novels, and two novellas. Some of her short stories have been reprinted by Salt Publishing, PS Publishing and Night Shade Books. Her recent work includes The Child Cephalina, a Gothic novel published by Tartarus Press in 2019, The Bellboy, published by Zagava in 2018, and Woolfy and Scrapo, a novella, published by Zagava in 2023. Literary awards in which she has been acknowledged include The World Fantasy Award, the 2008 Bristol Short Story Prize, the Aestas Short Story Prize, the Paul Bowles Short Fiction Award and the Screencraft Cinematic Short Story Contest. Details of much of her work can be found at www.beccalloyd.org