The shortlist for the BBC National Short Story Award 2014 in partnership with Booktrust was announced live this evening on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row. In the third all-female shortlist in nine years, five writers tackle pivotal moments in a woman’s life from girlhood to middle age, including sex and love, death and disintegration.
Transporting readers across the world from New York to Kenya, London to Paris, and to a Welsh seaside town, the stories feature a gap-year student who cheats death; a performer coming to terms with middle age, a disappointed lover; and two young girls whose eyes are opened to a more complicated adult world.
The shortlist, selected from over 550 entries, features an all-star line-up of acclaimed writers: the majority of whom are established masters of the short story form. Tessa Hadley is the author of two collections of short stories in addition to five novels, while Rose Tremain will publish her fifth volume of short stories in November and Lionel Shriver has been shortlisted for the EFG Sunday Times Award. Tremain and Shriver have also both been recognised by the BBC National Short Story Award before, this being Lionel Shriver’s third shortlisting and Rose Tremain making the list for the second time. Award-winning novelist and essayist, Zadie Smith, who says she has “only recently become comfortable with the form”, having published a short story, The Embassy of Cambodia, last year, is also on the 2014 shortlist.
These four established authors are joined by a talented newcomer, Welsh novelist and playwright Francesca Rhydderch, whose debut, The Rice Paper Diaries, was longlisted for the Author’s Club Best First Novel Award and won the Wales Book of the Year Award for Fiction 2014.
Alan Yentob, chairman of the judges commented: “The enthusiasm of writers, both established and emerging, is very much in evidence in this, the ninth BBC National Short Story Award. The short story form has a unique ability to capture a single defining moment. It invites us to dive headfirst into another world and to savour an experience which can remain with us for a very long time to come. In their very different ways these five stories do just that.”
This year’s shortlist is:
Bad Dreams by Tessa Hadley
The Taxidermist’s Daughter by Francesca Rhydderch
Kilifi Creek by Lionel Shriver
Miss Adele Amidst the Corsets by Zadie Smith
The American Lover by Rose Tremain
The BBC National Short Story Award celebrates the best of contemporary British short fiction and is one of the most prestigious prizes for a single short story with the winning author receiving £15,000; the runner-up £3,000 and the three further shortlisted authors £500 each.
The winner and runner-up of this year’s award will be announced at a ceremony held in BBC Broadcasting House on Tuesday, September 30th, which will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row.
