Meet the 2026 Judges

Di Speirs has been a judge of the BBC National Short Story Award since its launch and returns as Chair of Judges this year. Di produced the first ever Book of the Week and has directed scores of Book at Bedtimes and short stories as well as dramas. As Executive Editor for BBC Audio she lead the London Readings team and was the Editor for Open Book and Book Club on BBC Radio 4 and World Book Club on the BBC World Service. She has been closely involved in the BBC National Short Story Award since its inception and been the returning judge on the panel. A regular literary judge including for the Wellcome Book Prize in 2017 and as chair of the International Dylan Thomas Prize in 2021, she has been a nominator twice for the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative (Literature) and is a board member of the Edinburgh City of Literature Trust. An Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, in 2024 she was awarded an MBE for Services to Broadcasting and to Literature.

“I am absolutely delighted to be chairing the 2026 BBC National Short Story Award with such a terrific panel of judges. The joy of a brilliantly written story never palls. Great fiction has the ability to peel back the layers; short stories, more than any other form, can capture and distil our times and how we navigate them. So once again I’m excited at the prospect of discovery, delight, invention and imagination, and of seeing the world anew through the eyes of writers more perspicacious than me."

TAHMIMA ANAM

Tahmima Anam’s debut novel, A Golden Age, was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and was winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book. Her follow up, The Good Muslim, was shortlisted for the 2013 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. Her most recent novel The Startup Wife was published in 2021. She has been published in the Guardian, the Financial Times, and Freeman’s, and is a Contributing Opinion Writer for the New York Times. In 2013, she was named one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists. Born in Dhaka, Bangladesh, she now lives in London. Her new novel, Uprising, will be published in 2026.

WILL EAVES

Will Eaves is a novelist, poet and musician. His novel Murmur won the 2019 Wellcome Prize and the Republic of Consciousness Prize for fiction. The Absent Therapist was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize; The Inevitable Gift Shop was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award. He was shortlisted for the BBC NSSA in 2017. He has worked as Arts Editor at the TLS and Associate Professor at the University of Warwick. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and co-host with Professor Sophie Scott of The Neuromantics, a podcast on science and literature.

“A story may be a suggestive Chekhovian sketch, indicating worlds and possibilities beyond its margins, or it may be a compact entirety, a feat of compression such as one finds in the work of Alice Munro. It may be realist or bizarre, descriptive or conversational, funny or sad or both. Whatever the outward approach, it will be inwardly urgent, and every word will count, because its life is short.”

ANDREW MICHAEL HURLEY

Andrew Michael Hurley’s first novel, The Loney, was originally published in 2014 by Tartarus Press and then John Murray a year later, after which it won the 2015 Costa First Novel Award and the 2016 British Book Industry awards for Debut Novel and Book of the Year. Devil’s Day was published in 2017 and went on to jointly win the 2018 Royal Society of Literature Encore Award for best second novel. His third novel, Starve Acre, published in 2019, has been recently adapted into a feature film, starring Matt Smith and Morfydd Clark. His BBC Radio 4 series, Voices in the Valley, which aired on BBC Radio 4 in autumn 2022 won bronze at the 2023 Aria Awards for audio and radio broadcasts. Some of those stories were developed to form the critically acclaimed novel, Barrowbeck, which was published in 2024. His latest novel, Saltwash, came out in October 2025. The author lives in Lancashire and teaches Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University’s Writing School.

“Short stories have always haunted me. Because there is always so much that remains unsaid or undefined, they are, by their nature, enigmatic and uncanny, and linger long in the mind afterwards. The short story is a form of endless possibilities where innovation thrives. I’m really looking forward to seeing what writers are doing with it in 2026."

SABA SAMS

Saba Sams is a writer from Brighton. Her stories have been published in Granta, The Stinging Fly, and The White Review. Her collection Send Nudes won the Edge Hill Prize and was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize. She was selected for Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists in 2023 and The Sunday Times’ Young Power List in 2025. Her debut novel Gunk was released in 2025. Her short story ‘Blue 4eva’ was awarded the BBC National Short Story Award in 2022. She now lives in South Wales.
"Winning this prize was incredible for me. I bought a sofa with some of the money. I sit on it every day, while I struggle over my writing. I love short stories mostly because I don’t understand them. Despite their size they can feel totally unbound. That’s the feeling I’m looking for, both when I write and when I read."