Congratulations to all the BSSA 2022 shortlisted writers, listed here in alphabetical order. In his general remarks, our shortlist judge Paul McVeigh said:
“The 2022 shortlist was strong. It speaks to the reputation of the Bath Short Story Prize that the stories had such variety in genre, plot and style with impressive quality and I very much enjoyed reading them.”

The 2022 anthology will be out in paperback and available from our publisher adhocfiction.com  and from Amazon in January 2023.

Lucy Bignall, who wrote the shortlisted story ‘Ham’s Place’, was born in Zambia and grew up in Liberia, England and Saudi Arabia, before emigrating to Australia as an adult, where she lived for fifteen years. Now living in a hairy house in Darkest Buckinghamshire, she works as a violinist. teacher and choir leader and writes as much as possible. She has won 1st place in the Henshaw Press, Yeovil Literary Festival and Writer’s Forum competitions and been placed in many others, as well as being shortlisted for the Fish Memoir prize. She is currently seeking representation for a supernatural novel.

David Butler wrote the shortlisted story ‘Hidden’. His second short story collection, Fugitive (Arlen House), and third poetry collection, Liffey Sequence (Doire Press), were both published in 2021. His third novel, City of Dis (New Island), was shortlisted for the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year, 2015.

Clare Chandler, who wrote the shortlisted story ‘Your Bed’ worked in publishing and government comms among other things, before moving to Cornwall. She now writes full-time and her published work includes plays (notably performed at the Edinburgh Festival); journalism (mags, websites and newspapers including pieces for the Guardian); short stories (various finalists for prizes including the Costa Short Story Award); and eighteen educational books. She is presently working on a book which blends nature writing and memoir with the story of a very short journey.

Michelle Christophorou who wrote the shortlisted story ‘The Making of Koupepia’ was born in Lancashire to a Liverpudlian mother and Greek Cypriot father. She now lives in Surrey. She is the author of novella-in-flash, Kipris (Ad Hoc Fiction, 2021), which features characters from ‘The Making of Koupepia’ (names were initially changed in order to enter the short story competition). Her short fiction has appeared in various places in print and online, and her story ‘Wearing You’ (published in National Flash Fiction Day’s FlashFlood journal) was included in the BIFFY 50 list of best UK and Irish flash 2019/20. Find out more at www.michellechristophorou.co.uk, or on Twitter @MAChristophorou.

Kate Coffey who wrote the shortlisted story ‘Bird of Paradise’ was shortlisted for the Bath Short Story Award in 2020 and has been published in New Writing Scotland and Mslexia. This story is taken from a collection of shorts she wrote whilst on the creative writing programme at New Writing South in Brighton. She has just completed her first novel.

Jane Dugdale who wrote the shortlisted story ‘All that Remains is Hope’ is a researcher and writer. A graduate of the Birkbeck MA in Creative Writing, she is currently working on a collection of fantastical short stories and can be found on Twitter @janeannedugdale.

Gilli Fryzer, who wrote the shortlisted story ‘After the Good Shepherd’s Laundry, Buffalo’, has been published in short story anthologies, print magazines, and online, and performed live. Her story ‘A Kindness’ won the Mslexia Short Story Prize 2020, and was included in Sagenhafte Geschichten, a German anthology of contemporary European tales. Her dystopian folk tale ‘Corn Running’ was chosen by Zoe Gilbert as the winner of the 2019 MIR Summer Festival. One of the London Library’s selected cohort of emerging writers, Gilli works from a salvaged shepherd’s hut in the corner of a Kentish field.
www.gillistories.com
Twitter @GilliFryzer

Edward Hogan who wrote the shortlisted story ‘The Greenland Shark’ is from Derby. He has worked in libraries and colleges, and he is now a lecturer at the Open University. His novels include The Electric, and Blackmoor. Ed’s recent short stories have been longlisted for the Sunday Times Short Story Award, and shortlisted for the V.S. Pritchett Prize. His story ‘Single Sit’ won the Galley Beggar Press Short Story Prize in 2021. He lives in Brighton.

Natalie O’Keeffe, who wrote the shortlisted story ‘Becoming a Ninja, 1997’, was born and (mostly) raised in Birmingham before she moved to the Scottish Highlands. Her stories typically explore issues of identity, memory, and liminality. She is currently working on her first novel. Find her on twitter: @im_nat_ok

Kerry Jewell, who wrote the shortlisted story ‘The Ant House’ is a writer and nuclear medicine registrar, currently living in Melbourne, Australia. In 2020 she was shortlisted for The Richell Prize for emerging writers. Her short fiction has since been published in literary magazines and anthologies in Australia and New Zealand. She is currently working on her debut novel, Meddies.

Karen Jones, who wrote the shortlisted story ‘Don’t Step on the Cracks’, is from Glasgow, Scotland. Her flashes have been nominated for Best of the Net and The Pushcart Prize, and her story ‘Small Mercies’ was included in Best Small Fictions 2019. In 2021, she won first prize in the Cambridge Flash Prize, Flash 500 and Reflex Fiction and was shortlisted for To Hull and Back, Bath Flash Fiction and Bath Short Story Award. Her novella-in-flash When It’s Not Called Making Love is published by Ad Hoc Fiction. She is Special Features Editor at New Flash Fiction Review and an editor for National Flash Fiction Day anthology.

Debra Waters, who wrote the shortlisted story ‘We are Nothing More than Birds’, is a lifestyle journalist and a writer of short stories, memoir and flash fiction. She studied Creative and Life Writing at Goldsmiths. In 2020, she won The Bridport Short Story Prize for ‘Oh Hululu’. She’s been shortlisted for the Pat Kavanagh Award, the Wells Festival of Literature Short Story Prize, the Exeter Short Story Prize and the Bridport Flash Fiction Prize, and longlisted for the Manchester Fiction Prize, London Library’s Emerging Writers Programme, the Bath Flash Fiction Award, Fish Publishing’s Flash Fiction Prize and the Reflex Flash Fiction Competition. She lives in Brighton with her husband and son.

Kate Wilson who wrote the shortlisted story, ‘Yellow Rose Fever’, graduated with an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Exeter in 2021. She was selected to take part in a workshop series with Anna Maria Murphy at The Writers’ Block in Cornwall and commissioned to write a short story for their podcast series ‘Bedtime Stories for Grown-ups’ which was broadcast in February. She is a mentee on the inaugural Word Space programme for emerging south west writers run by Literature Works. ‘Yellow Rose Fever’ is her first published story.