BBC National Short Story Award Results

Congrats to Comma Press author, David Constantine!

 

BBC National Short Story Award 2010 The Winner and Finalists

DAVID CONSTANTINE WINS THE BBC NATIONAL SHORT STORY AWARD 2010

The 2010 winner is David Constantine for his poetic and beautifully crafted story about the end of a relationship, Tea at the Midland.
James Naughtie, chair of this year's judging panel commented, "The winning story, Tea at the Midland, is remarkable for the rich poetry at its heart and the economy with which David Constantine creates a story with fully formed characters and a memorable setting. It has imagination, depth and brevity. What more could you say about a short story?"

2010 SHORTLIST

The five shortlisted stories are:

1. Tea at the Midland by David Constantine
2. Haywards Heath by Aminatta Forna
3. Butcher's Perfume by Sarah Hall
4. If it Keeps on Raining by Jon McGregor
5. My Daughter the Racist by Helen Oyeyemi

Front Row interviews each of the writers each weekday from Friday, 12th November, and each shortlisted story will be broadcast daily from Monday, 15th November at 3.30 in the afternoon. (Please note that Haywards Heath by Aminatta Forna will start at the later time of 3.40 on Friday, 19th November). The winning entry will be announced on Front Row on Monday, 29th November, live from the award ceremony at the Free Word Centre in London. There will also be a a special podcast, so you can automatically receive each shortlisted story as soon as it's available, and take it with you on the move to listen wherever and whenever you like. To join the debate about this year's shortlist go to Radio 4's Facebook page.
Jim Naughtie, Chair of Judges, said of this year's award:
"The short story can expose a writer, cruelly. It takes skill to be able to complete the job, and like a miniaturist on canvas who has to work to distil a world into a few square inches the writer who can suggest a great span in a story that has to be kept in check is a true servant of the craft. A short story needs to waste no time. It can't meander, unless the wandering is perfectly controlled and has a hidden purpose. As judges we found in our discussion that although our tastes and stylistic passions are probably quite different, we knew a good one when we saw one ..."
Now in its fifth year, the BBC National Short Story Award has played a role in reviving a genre which had fallen out of favour with the British public and publishers. There is now a palpable air of excitement around the short story, from the award of the International Man Booker prize for 2009 to superlative short story writer, Alice Munro; to the UK publication of some widely acclaimed collections and an increase in print outlets each year. The BBC National Short Story Award is proud to play a part in this resurgence in the form as it continues to celebrate the best of the contemporary British short story, and to raise the profile and prestige of the genre across the literary world.
With £15,000 for the winning story, and £3000 for the runner-up, not to mention the broadcast of all five short-listed stories on Radio 4, the award is one of the most prestigious for short fiction and an established part of the literary calendar. In addition the stories will appear in a published anthology and, in their audio form, will be available from AudioGo later in 2010. Previous winners and runners up have included James Lasdun, Julian Gough, Claire Wigfall, Kate Clanchy, William Trevor, Rose Tremain, Jane Gardam and Rana Dasgupta.
Set up in partnership with Booktrust to foster and support the genre, over the five years since its inception, the Award and the accompanying campaign 'story', have been part of the rennaissance in a literary form that was sometimes over-looked, though always central to Radio 4.
This year's panel of judges comprises: BBC Radio 4 broadcaster James Naughtie (chair), author and Guardian journalist Kamila Shamsie, author and poet Owen Sheers, author Shena Mackay and Editor Readings, BBC Radio, Di Speirs.

SHORTLISTED STORIES

• Tea at the Midland by David Constantine

  
  What begins as a romantic outing for a couple turns into an afternoon fraught with tension as a piece of artwork exposes fundamental differences in their outlooks on life.
  
  David Constantine was born in 1944 in Salford, Lancashire, and was for thirty years a university teacher of German language and literature. He has published several volumes of poetry, most recently, Nine Fathom Deep (2009); also a novel, Davies (1985) and three collections of short stories: Back at the Spike (1994); Under the Dam (2005) and The Shieling (2009). He is an editor and translator of Hölderlin, Goethe, Kleist and Brecht. His translation of Goethe's Faust, Part I was published by Penguin in 2005; Part II in April 2009. With his wife Helen, he edits Modern Poetry in Translation.
  

• Butcher's Perfurme by Sarah Hall

  
  A gritty coming-of-age story set in Carlisle. A disturbing event one summer closely binds a teenage girl to the awe-inspiring Slessor family in which the wild blood of the region runs strong.
  
  Sarah Hall was born in Cumbria in 1974. She received a BA from Aberystwyth University, Wales, and a MLitt in Creative Writing from St Andrews, Scotland. She is the author of Haweswater, which won the 2003 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Novel, a Society of Authors Betty Trask Award, and a Lakeland Book of the Year prize. In 2004, her second novel, The Electric Michelangelo, was shortlisted for the Man Booker prize, the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Eurasia region), and the Prix Femina Etranger, and was longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction. Her third novel, The Carhullan Army, was published in 2007, and won the 2006/07 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the James Tiptree Jr. Award, a Lakeland Book of the Year prize, and was shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award for science fiction. Her fourth novel, How to Paint a Dead Man, was longlisted for the 2009 Man Booker Prize.
  

• If it Keeps on Raining by Jon McGregor

  
  Early morning is the time when a man stands in his door way looking out at the river, reflecting on the traumatic experiences of his past, and his expectations for the future.
  
  Jon McGregor is the author of the critically acclaimed If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things and So Many Ways To Begin. He is the winner of the Betty Trask Prize and the Somerset Maugham Award, and has twice been longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. He was born in Bermuda in 1976. He grew up in Norfolk and now lives in Nottingham. Even the Dogs is his third novel
  

• My Daughter the Racist by Helen Oyeyemi

  
  Set against the backdrop of a country occupied by foreign soldiers, a mother is determined to see her outspoken child grow up and will do whatever it takes to protect her daughter's independent spirit from coming to harm.
  
  Helen Oyeyemi was born in 1984. She is the author of three novels, The Icarus Girl, The Opposite House and White is For Witching, and a short story collection, Mr Fox, to be published in summer 2011.
  

• Haywards Heath by Aminatta Forna

  
  Memories of a lost love lead to a reunion, but things take an unexpected turn.
  
  Aminatta Forna's most recent published work is The Memory of Love (April 2010) a story about friendship, war and obsessive love. It has been selected as one of the Best Books of the Year by the Sunday Telegraph, Financial Times and The Times. Her previous novel Ancestor Stones was a New York Times Editor's Choice book, selected by the Washington Post as one of the Best Novels of 2006, won the Hurston Wright Legacy Award for Debut Fiction, the Liberaturpreis in Germany and was nominated for the International Dublin IMPAC Award. The Devil that Danced on the Water, a memoir of her dissident father. The Devil that Danced on the Water was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize 2003, serialised on BBC Radio and in The Sunday Times newspaper. Aminatta is a trustee of the Royal Literary Fund and sits on the advisory committee of the Caine Prize for African Writing