The National Short Story Award: Listen to and download the finalists

Editor's note: The BBC National Short Story Award in partnership with Booktrust is in full swing. The shortlist was announced last week and this year as well as hearing the finalists on the radio you can download them as podcasts to listen to whenever and wherever you want: in the gym, on the way to work, last thing at night. Links and full details are at the end of this post. Here BBC producer Di Speirs, a regular on the judging panel, casts her eye over the shortlist - PM.

It's that time again - after all the secrecy and non-disclosure agreements, the private mulling and the public musing of the first judging meeting, the casting and recording, our five short-listed short stories have been revealed on Front Row last Friday and the first of our authors interviewed on the show.

So how was the 2011 selection of stories?

Did they dwell on austerity, bemoan the economic troubles of the globe, or celebrate the flowering of democracy through social networking? Were the interesting times we live in reflected in the tales we judges were told? By and large, not really!

Impecunious living and politics did get some mention (and one of our stories does delve deeply into being a "have-not") but the universal theme that united this year's most exciting entries, and was true for many of those stories we couldn't put through, was a timeless one.

The workings of the heart sit at the centre of all the short listed stories - fulfilled, rejected, heart-felt, heart-sore, it's all there. Beyond that unifying factor though the angles are very different and there will be, I am confident, considerable debate next week when we choose the winner.

Last week I was at a BBC talk on how we handle science on television and radio. I couldn't, given the news was still secret, reveal that two of this year's short-listed stories are steeped in two of the most exciting developments of the twentieth century, heart surgery and space travel, and arguably are doing just that job of throwing a new light on scientific advancement that fiction can do so well.

Meantime the stories are going out on air - we judge them on the page, but of course translating a story to another medium is always a fascinating and challenging process. What you may lose in the word count replaced by what an actor can bring.

This year is no exception - with some wonderful performances from stellar names like Tim Piggott Smith and Indira Varma and newer voices like Lydia Wilson, who has been garnering praise for her theatre and television work, and Trevor White, one of the most versatile Canadian actors working here and Mike Sengelaow, a New Zealander by birth but an able if hapless young Australian in Rag Love.

This moment in the award is in some ways my favourite. All five writers are receiving due praise and lots of exposure on air. They are all reaching new audiences and I feel personally, they are genuinely all winners. I'm already hoping they will feel encouraged to pen more short fiction, and indeed hoping that they will enter next year!

Di Speirs is Editor, Readings at BBC Radio 4

• You can download the five shortlisted stories as podcasts once they've been broadcast to keep.
• You can also listen to the finalists online on the Radio 4 website.
• The shorlist was announced on Front Row and the shortlisted writers are being interviewed this week. You can listen online.
• More about the Award, the finalists and past winners on the Radio 4 website.
• Read BBC National Short Story award pits award-winning writers against students in The Guardian