The shortlist for the British National Short Story prize has been announced. The prize, only in its second year, is the world’s richest short story prize, with £15,000 going to the winner, a prize of £3,000 for the runner-up and £500 going to each of the other finalists.
The five finalists are:
- ‘Slog’s Dad’ by David Almond
- ‘The Morena’ by Jonathan Falla
- ‘The Orphan and the Mob’ by Julian Gough
- ‘How to Get Away with Suicide’ by Jackie Kay
- ‘Weddings and Beheadings’ by Hanif Kureishi
The prize exists to raise the profile of the often-neglected short story in Britain. The chair of the judges, Mark Lawson, said:
“This prize exists partly because many – perhaps even most – publishers and literary editors still regard the novel as the most important form of story-telling and are suspicious of short stories,” he said. “But this year’s selection makes very clear that there is no connection at all between word-count and the scale of subject matter or characterisation that can be achieved.”
Link to the Yahoo News article
