Short Story Competition
We are delighted to announce the 2026
Short Story shortlist
Always a bus along – Margaret Holbrook
Bald – Edward Sergeant
Chrysalis – Derville Murphey
Daisy Chains – Terri McIlroy
Fireside Confessional – Glyn Matthews
Hikikomori – David E. Missen
Lambie – Emmie Phillips
Lost and Found – Margaret Histed
May – Paul Toolan
Paperback Writer – Trevor Plumbly
Recollecting You – Maria Belderbos
Smudge – Sara Levine
Sonechko – Andrei Romanov
Stripes – Nicky Denovan
Taking it to the graveyard shift – Shrinithi Suresh
The Bow-Wow Palooza Interfaith Blessing at Temple Israel –
Jacqueline Peta Haskell
The Brass Valley – Simon Toby Brown
The Fox Keeper – Sharon Hier
The Interpreter’s Silence – Timothy Guy
The Lover under the Sea – Hannah Binney
The mute and the lake – Alan Falkingham
The Painted Lady – John Kirkaldy
The River of Life – Hilary Fern
We are still alive – Jiuan Pan
What I said to the Journalist who promised everything was off the record then asked when I knew it was The End – Marie Day
Prize Giving and Poetry Reading will take place on Monday 19 October at 2pm as part of the Festival.
Tickets to this event are free but seats can be reserved here.
Short Story Judge 2026
Carole Burns
Carole Burns is an American writer living in Cardiff. Her story collection The Missing Woman won the John C. Zacharis Award from U.S. literary journal Ploughshares. Her recent novel The Same Country, exploring family, friendship and racism in America, was named a best Welsh fiction book of 2023 by Wales Arts Review.
A freelancer for Washington Post and LitHub, she also published Off the Page: Writers Talk About Beginnings, Endings, and Everything in Between, based on interviews with 43 writers including Jhumpa Lahiri and Colm Tóibín.
She is Associate Professor in English teaching Creative Writing at the University of Southampton.