Thank you to all the writers in 45 countries who submitted this year’s stories : UK, USA, Australia, Ireland, Canada, India, New Zealand, France, Germany, South Africa, Russian Federation, Switzerland, Spain, Hong Kong, Netherlands, Aruba, Belgium, Brazil, Finland, Italy, Japan, Malta, Singapore, Sweden, Angola, Armenia, Austria, China, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, Egypt, Indonesia, Israel, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Norway, Philippines, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey and United Arab Emirates. We can truly call ourselves international as over a third of the entries came from outside the UK, once again ticking off all continents apart from Antarctica – next year, perhaps a research scientist based there will pick up a pen and enter?

What a year it’s been!  The political turmoil and unrest fanning out across the globe has provided a rich lode for writing and, although there were few stories explicitly on  Brexit  or Trump, for example, the underlying themes  have emerged in a number of the 1100 stories we received. Racism, discrimination, loss of identity and the displacement of people through war and poverty continue to resonate with writers, the best stories engaging the reader through powerful prose and possibly an unusual perspective. The same is true of stories about death, illness, dementia and growing old where finding a fresh angle can lift the subject.

Ultimately, the truth of the story is in the telling of it and writers explored a range of genres to do just that. Dystopia, magical realism, historical/science fiction and even the Western emerged from under a general umbrella of literary fiction. Although the majority of stories were either in the 1st or 3rd person, a number of writers moved to the 2^nd person, which is notoriously difficult to handle but when done well can create a real connection with the reader. It was exciting to see experimentation with style, layout and contemporary forms of communication incorporated into the narrative. One story was entirely in text speak.

With such a range of styles, genres and subjects, it was not easy to whittle the entries down to a longlist of 52 (four stories have now been withdrawn so it’s now 48)  but these are the stories that we and our reading team loved the best.  These were the stories that moved us, made us smile, perhaps shocked or helped inform us about the way of the world. Congratulations to all who entered and especially to those who wrote the stories listed below.

We’re thrilled to share great news from four authors who’ve been published in our anthologies in recent years:

Today, 30th May, ‘A Ton of Malice‘ — The Half-Life of an Irish Punk in London, by Barry McKinley, is published by Old Street Publishing. Barry won second prize in BSSA 2016 with his wonderful story, ‘Almost Home’ . A review in The Times says of A Ton of Malice “This dazzling book is categorised as autofiction, which means autobiography with added fibs…”.

Tomorrow, 31st May,  Anne Corlett’s debut novel  The Space Between the Stars is launched in Toppings Bath.  Anne Corlett won the local BSSA prize in 2014 with The Language of Birds’ and  is also published in the  BSSA 2015 anthology  with The Witching Hour. “The Space Between the Stars deals with a woman travelling back to Earth to search for her lost love after a virus wipes out most of mankind.”

On July 11th, Rowena Macdonald’s novel ‘The Threat Level Remains Severe ‘ will be published by Aardvark Bureau. Rowena’s short story ‘Stars’ was published in  BSSA  2013 online anthology. Of The Threat Remains Severe’ writer Maureen Freely  says “Deliciously erotic and hugely readable, with some wonderful moments of illumination” Robert Edric writes,”Surely one of the most insightful, honest and resassuringly humane tales of the true workings of the Mother of Parliaments in all its shabby, slapdash and vainglorious reality”.

Eileen Merriman’s debut YA novel, Pieces of You,was published yesterday, 29th May in New Zealand by Penguin. Eileen’s publisher says “This is a brilliant, funny, heart-breaking love story about falling in love for the first time and dealing with the fall-out when things start to fall apart”…”Eileen is a really exciting new voice on the  YA landscape, we’ve already snapped up her second novel.” Eileen was commended in BSSA 2015 with her story ‘Hummingbird Heart’ and shortlisted in BSSA 2016 with her story ‘I Dare You.’ Read both stories in our anthologies for those years.

Congratulations to everyone. Four new wonderful books to add to our BSSA author shelves. We hope you will buy them too.

Jude, Jane Anna.

May 2017

Thank you to everyone who entered the International Bath Short Story Award this year. We closed 1st May, at the beginning of this week. You kept our administrator very busy on the last day!  Our stats showed that we had 2069 views on the website last Monday.  This year we had entries from 45 different countries.

We’ll reveal  the exact number of entries after the results are out in mid-late July. At the moment, the ten members of our initial reading team are busy enjoying your stories and selecting choices for the long list. It’s a very interesting process and everyone learns a lot from the stories submitted. The BSSA team selects the final long list and Senior Literary Agent from A M Heath, Euan Thorneycroft   will judge the short list and choose the winning and commended stories.

If you want to be first to get notifications of the long list, short list and winners, please subscribe to the  mailing list to receive emails on the side bar.

Good luck to all.

Jude, Jane,  Anna

We’re ready for the big party at the BSSA 2017  Last Minute Club with entries pinging into the entry email inbox every few minutes.  We’re expecting this to continue until the stroke of midnight, Monday May 1st. Then the party will really be in full swing.

If you’re a procrastinator, read this interesting article  Being a  procrastinator myself,  I am rather taken with the idea that delaying until the last minute increases creativity.

So what happens after we receive your last minute entries?  Our band of experienced readers, who are all writers of different genders and ages,  read batches of stories as they come in. All  stories are read blind. Two readers read each one and decide  together whether to submit stories to the long list.

The final long list and the short list is agreed by the  BSSA team.  Literary Agent Euan Thorneycroft is our short list judge. He’ll select the winners. We expect the final results to be out by the end of July. Subscribe on this site  to receive email alerts and be the first to know who’s won.

Good luck!

Jude. April 29th.