The BBC International Short Story Award

With just a month to go until entries close for this year’s BBC International Short Story Award, it’s really exciting to see that the Costa Awards too are going to celebrate and reward short story writers next year. It’s great news for short story writers and their audiences, and yet more tangible evidence of how radically the landscape has changed over the last decade.



When we began the campaign to launch the BBC National Short Story Award, the genre was not only overlooked, but in severe danger of terminal decline. While stories remained on air, the chances of publishing them were diminishing everywhere. I recall one of our past judges, the award winning writer Naomi Alderman, telling me she was advised by her tutor at UEA never to write a short story if she could possibly manage a novel. What publisher was really going to be interested? And how could you garner attention without prizes or earn a living without outlets?



It’s beginning to feel as though the art of short story writing – a precise, honed and difficult craft that is as challenging as any novel – really is getting the recognition it deserves. And it is gratifying to have been part of what turned the tide! The BBC National Short Story Award has played a real part in changing attitudes – and there are some palpable illustrations of how the lives of some of our winning and short listed writers have been changed too.



D W Wilson, who at 26 was our youngest ever winner last year, has now had his first collection (previously only available in Canada) bought by Bloomsbury in 2012; ‘Once You Break a Knuckle’ published in April this year. It will sit alongside at least four other short story collections at Bloomsbury, including Jon McGregor’s brilliantly titled collection ‘This Isn’t The Sort Of Thing That Happens To Someone Like You.’ – a volume which contains not one but two stories which have been fantastic Runners Up.

At the same time the annual anthology of the Award’s shortlist regularly sell over 2000 copies.



Meanwhile I’ve been having fun working with another previous winner, Julian Gough, for the second time. Two years ago we dramatised a short story of Julian’s about boom and bust; this time he’s written from scratch a story about the sovereign debt crisis. It may not sound a subject for humour but he’s turned it into a comedy that throws a new light on the current economic situation. Listen out for it – starring Dermot Crowley, Rory Keenan and Stephanie Flanders – on the 28th February.



Tonight Tessa Hadley – one of our judges last year – celebrates the publication of her new collection Married Love. You can hear five stories from that on the new Short Story Zone on Radio 4 Extra in March; this week Lucy Wood’s lovely and magical stories Diving Belles are on in the same slot, and listen out for Roshi Fernando very soon.



2012 will be an exciting year for the BBC Award – with an opportunity for writers in English from all over the world to enter in this Olympic year. This September we’ll have ten rather than five short stories on air, and a chance to hear all the writers on Front Row. As the entries roll in from around the world, it’s clear it’s going to be a good year for the short story on all fronts, with the lovely added bonus of Costa being there too very soon.

Di Speirs is Editor, Readings at BBC Radio 4