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. James Runcie is joined on the judging panel by a group of acclaimed writers and critics including: Booker Prize shortlisted novelist Fiona Mozley; award winning writer, poet and winner of the Desmond Elliott Prize, Derek Owusu; multi-award winning Irish novelist and short story writer, Donal Ryan; and returning judge, Di Speirs, Books Editor at BBC Radio.

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.Now celebrating its fifteenth year, the BBC National Short Story Award is one of the most prestigious for a single short story, with the winning writer receiving £15,000, and the four further shortlisted authors £600 each. The BBC National Short Story Award with Cambridge University was established to raise the profile of the short form and the writers shortlisted for this year’s award join distinguished alumni such as Zadie Smith, Lionel Shriver, Rose Tremain, William Trevor, Sarah Hall and Mark Haddon. As well as rewarding the most renowned short story writers, the Award has raised the profile of new writers including Ingrid Persaud, Jo Lloyd, K J Orr, Julian Gough, Cynan Jones and Clare Wigfall. The shortlist will be announced on the 11th September 2020, with the winner to be announced live on BBC Radio 4 Front Row in October.

Unique publication of all the short-listed stories in the world’s biggest prize for the form. To coincide with the Olympics Year, the prize is open to international submissions for the first time, and features ten stories (as opposed to the usual five), with a foreword by Clive Anderson. Extensive coverage on BBC Radio Four’s Front Row everyday for two weeks, with readings on BBC Radio 4 in the afternoon, and interviews with the authors the evening before on Front Row. Special Prize winning ceremony, Free Word Centre, London, 2 Nov 2012. Broadcast live on BBC Radio 4.

Back for the fourteenth year, the BBC National Short Story Award with Cambridge University aims to celebrate and promote the best in contemporary short fiction. This year the judging panel will be chaired by television and radio broadcaster Nikki Bedi, who will select the shortlist alongside novelist and writer of narrative non-fiction, Richard Beard; short story writer and novelist Daisy Johnson; screenwriter, novelist and 2017 BBC National Short Story Award winner, Cynan Jones; and returning judge, Di Speirs, Books Editor at BBC Radio.

The New York Times bestselling collection, from the Man Booker prize-winner for Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, that has been called "scintillating" (New York Times Books Review), "breathtaking" (NPR), "exquisite" (The Chicago Tribune) and "otherworldly" (Washington Post). "A new Hilary Mantel book is an Event with a ‘capital ‘E.'"—NPR "A book of her short stories is like a little sweet treat."—USA Today (4 stars) "[Mantel is at] the top of her game."—Salon "Genius."—The Seattle Times One of the most accomplished, acclaimed, and garlanded writers, Hilary Mantel delivers a brilliant collection of contemporary stories In The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher, Hilary Mantel's trademark gifts of penetrating characterization, unsparing eye, and rascally intelligence are once again fully on display. Stories of dislocation and family fracture, of whimsical infidelities and sudden deaths with sinister causes, brilliantly unsettle the reader in that unmistakably Mantel way. Cutting to the core of human experience, Mantel brutally and acutely writes about marriage, class, family, and sex. Unpredictable, diverse, and sometimes shocking, The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher displays a magnificent writer at the peak of her powers.

Featuring: Lisa Blower, Lavinia Greenlaw, Sarah Hall, Lionel Shriver and Lucy Wood. 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.

**WINNER of the 2013 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award** **WINNER of the BBC National Short Story Prize** 'The excellence of the collection is fractal: the whole book is excellent, and every story is excellent, and every paragraph is excellent, and every sentence is excellent. And, unlike some literary fiction, it's effortless to read.' - The Independent on Sunday ‘Perhaps the finest of contemporary writers in this form.’ – The Reader To the woman watching they looked like grace itself, the heart and soul of which is freedom. It pleased her particularly that they were attached by invisible strings to colourful curves of rapidly moving air. How clean and clever that was! You throw up something like a handkerchief, you tether it and by its headlong wish to fly away, you are towed along... Like the kite-surfers in this opening scene, the characters in David Constantine’s fourth collection are often delicately caught in moments of defiance. Disregarding their age, their family, or the prevailing political winds, they show us a way of marking out a space for resistance and taking an honest delight in it. Witness Alphonse – having broken out of an old people’s home, changed his name, and fled the country – now pedalling down the length of the Rhône, despite knowing he has barely six months to live. Or the clergyman who chooses to spend Christmas Eve – and the last few hours in his job – in a frozen, derelict school, dancing a wild jig with a vagrant called Goat. Key to these characters’ defiance is the power of fiction, the act of holding real life at arm’s length and simply telling a story – be it of the future they might claim for themselves, or the imagined lives of others. Like them, Constantine’s bewitching, finely-wrought stories give us permission to escape, they allow us to side-step the inexorable traffic of our lives, and beseech us to take possession of the moment.