‘Two Minutes to Midnight’ by Laura Beatty is the final story in contention for the 2026 BBC National Short Story Award with the University of Cambridge. Sian Thomas reads.

A doctor grieves for her husband and tries to understand the damage being done to the natural world as human intervention continues to threaten catastrophe.

Laura Beatty is the author of two biographies, two novels, two genre-defying books (a mix of travel, history, memoir and fiction) and, recently, two plays. Her first novel, ‘Pollard’ – which the Observer called a “fierce and wonderful” book – won the Authors’ Club First Novel Award as well as being shortlisted for the Ondaatje prize for books which evoke the spirit of place. Her most recent book, ‘Looking for A’, was shortlisted for the Runciman prize. She has also written various short stories, introductions, and reviews. Oxford educated, she began writing in her twenties, while working in the art world in London and New York. She worked for a long time in the voluntary sector, while bringing up children, and then trained to work as a Place2Be counsellor with children up to age 14. Now, she teaches writing both privately and, as a fellow of the Royal Literary Fund, in the NHS and recovery colleges nationwide.

The annual BBC National Short Story Award with the University of Cambridge celebrates its 21st anniversary in 2026 with a shortlist of five short stories by multi-award-winning writers and astonishing new talent from across the United Kingdom. Set in locations across the globe, from the Australian bush to Galway Bay, this year’s tender and vivid stories explore the value of human connection across generations and through friendship in a fractured world.

The BBC National Short Story Award with the University of Cambridge was established to raise the profile of the short form and this year’s all-female shortlist join an impressive list of alumni.

From 14 to 18 September, all five of the shortlisted stories can be heard at 3.30pm each afternoon on Radio 4. The winner of the 21st BBC National Short Story Award with the University of Cambridge will be announced live on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row at 7.15pm on Tuesday 29th September 2026.

Reader: Sian Thomas

A spectacular encounter in a wintry Galway Bay forces a woman to start imagining a new future for herself. Packed with humanity and humour, Caoilinn Hughes’ story is the fourth contender for this year’s BBC National Short Story Award with the University of Cambridge, and explores grief, female friendship, and things we do in the name of love. Cathy Belton reads ‘A Second Opinion’.

Caoilinn Hughes is an award-winning Irish novelist and short story writer. Her novels include 'The Wild Laughter' (2020), which won the RSL’s Encore Award and 'The Alternatives' (2024). Her short stories have won the Irish Book Awards’ Story of the Year, the Moth Short Story Prize, and an O. Henry Prize. Her story, ‘Two Hands’, was shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award, 2025. Caoilinn Hughes grew up in Galway and now lives in London.

The annual BBC National Short Story Award with the University of Cambridge celebrates its 21st anniversary in 2026 with a shortlist of five short stories by multi-award-winning writers and astonishing new talent from across the United Kingdom. Set in locations across the globe, from the Australian bush to Galway Bay, this year’s tender and vivid stories explore the value of human connection across generations and through friendship in a fractured world.

The BBC National Short Story Award with the University of Cambridge was established to raise the profile of the short form and this year’s all-female shortlist join an impressive list of alumni.

From 14 to 18 September, all five of the shortlisted stories can be heard at 3.30pm each afternoon on Radio 4. The winner of the 21st BBC National Short Story Award with the University of Cambridge will be announced live on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row at 7.15pm on Tuesday 29 September 2026.

Reader: Cathy Belton

Cherise Saywell’s story ‘Ditto’ transports us to a small town in 1990s rural Australia in the third of our shortlisted stories in contention of the 2026 BBC National Short Story Award with the University of Cambridge.

In this delicately crafted story, we follow our young narrator as he faces indecision and uncertainty, building up the courage to make a very important phone call. Richard Goulding reads this dark tale which, ultimately, has hope and salvation at its heart.

Cherise Saywell is a novelist and short-story writer. She was born and brought up in Australia and, after travelling to the UK in 1996, has lived in Scotland ever since. The author of two novels, 'Desert Fish' (2011) and 'Twitcher' (2013), her short stories have been anthologised and won the Pindrop Short Story Award (2016), the Mslexia Short Story Prize (2015), and the V.S. Pritchett prize (2003), as well as being shortlisted for several prizes, including the Bristol Prize and the Asham Award. Cherise has been a Royal Literary Fund (RLF) Fellow at Stirling University and Strathclyde University. She now works on the RLF’s Bridge project in secondary schools, and as an RLF Consultant in universities. Born and raised in Australia, Cherise now lives in Edinburgh, Scotland.

The annual BBC National Short Story Award with the University of Cambridge celebrates its 21st anniversary in 2026 with a shortlist of five short stories by multi-award-winning writers and astonishing new talent from across the United Kingdom. Set in locations across the globe, from the Australian bush to Galway Bay, this year’s tender and vivid stories explore the value of human connection across generations and through friendship in a fractured world.

The BBC National Short Story Award with the University of Cambridge was established to raise the profile of the short form and this year’s all-female shortlist join an impressive list of alumni.

From 14 to 18 September, all five of the shortlisted stories can be heard at 3.30pm each afternoon on Radio 4. The winner of the 21st BBC National Short Story Award with the University of Cambridge will be announced live on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row at 7.15pm on Tuesday 29 September 2026.

Reader: Richard Goulding

Read by Anne-Marie Duff, ‘Little Lands’ by Lucy Caldwell is the second story up for this year's BBC National Short Story Award with the University of Cambridge in its 21st year.

Image credit: 'THE SOUND OF MUSIC' ©1965 20th Century Studios, Inc. All rights reserved.

Merryn Glover’s heart-rending story about sorrow, love and belonging set in the Australian bush is the first contender for this year’s BBC National Short Story Award with the University of Cambridge, which celebrates its 21st anniversary this year. When an unexpected letter arrives, an elderly man is forced to question his isolated life, surrounded only by animals, birds, and painful memories. Mike Sengelow reads ‘Burning Bush’.

Merryn Glover was born in Nepal, educated in Australia. Her plays and short stories have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and Radio Scotland and widely anthologised. Her first novel, 'A House Called Askival' (2014) is set in an Indian hill-station, where she went to school, and her second, 'Of Stone and Sky' (2021), in the Badenoch region of the Cairngorms National Park, is where she now lives. It won Book of the Year at the Bookmark Book Festival, Blairgowrie, and was long-listed for the Highland Book Prize. In 2019, Merryn was the first Writer in Residence for the Cairngorms National Park and has been a regular contributor to the Guardian Country Diary. Her latest book is 'The Hidden Fires: A Cairngorms Journey with Nan Shepherd' (2023).

The annual BBC National Short Story Award with the University of Cambridge celebrates its 21st anniversary in 2026 with a shortlist of five short stories by multi-award-winning writers and astonishing new talent from across the United Kingdom. Set in locations across the globe, from the Australian bush to Galway Bay, this year’s tender and vivid stories explore the value of human connection across generations and through friendship in a fractured world.

The BBC National Short Story Award with the University of Cambridge was established to raise the profile of the short form and this year’s all-female shortlist join an impressive list of alumni.

From 14 to 18 September, all five of the shortlisted stories can be heard at 3.30pm each afternoon on Radio 4. The winner of the 21st BBC National Short Story Award with the University of Cambridge will be announced live on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row at 7.15pm on Tuesday 29 September 2026.

Reader: Mike Sengelow

Lauren Layfield presents this year’s exceptional showcase of the five shortlisted stories for the 2026 BBC Young Writers’ Award, with the University of Cambridge.

Colwill Brown's powerful and heart-breaking story is about Shaz, a teenager who is more vulnerable than she realises. A brutal incident with two boys has a lasting impact, leaving her with a powerful sense of shame, and curtailing her life chances. The reader is Sophie McShera.

Colwill Brown is the author of the novel We Pretty Pieces of Flesh published in 2025. Her work has appeared in Granta, Prairie Schooner, and other publications, and she has received scholarships and awards from the Tin House Summer Workshop, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Hedgebrook, Ragdale, the Anderson Center, GrubStreet Center for Creative Writing, and elsewhere.

The annual BBC National Short Story Award with Cambridge University marks its twentieth anniversary in 2025 with a shortlist of five short stories by established and newer writers to the form. The five outstanding stories explore relationships, community and place against a backdrop of a world in crisis.

If you have been a victim of child or adult sexual abuse or violence, details of help and support are available at bbc.co.uk/actionline.

Produced by Elizabeth Allard.

Edward Hogan's tender and humorous story Little Green Man is in contention for the 2025 BBC National Short Story Award. Dorothy Atkinson reads this warm portrait of a heartbroken gardener forced into partnership with a summer temp as they tend to the green spaces of Derby.

Edward Hogan has an MA in creative writing from the University of East Anglia. From Derby, he is the author of five novels include Blackmoor (2008), which won the Desmond Elliot Prize and the highly-acclaimed The Electric (2020). His recent short stories have won the Dinesh Allirajah Prize, the Galley Beggar Press Prize, and have been published in the Best British Short Stories series. He works for the Open University as a Lecturer in Creative Writing.

The 2025 BBC National Short Story Award with Cambridge University (BBC NSSA) shortlist was announced on Thursday 11 September 2025 live on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row, as the prestigious award celebrates its 20th anniversary. The shortlist, featuring multi-award winning writers and ‘astonishing’ new talent, was praised for its ‘intimate,’ ‘elegant’ and ’nuanced’ explorations of relationships, community and the specificities of place set against a world in crisis.

Selected by a panel of previous winners and returning judges from across the Award’s 20-year history, the five-strong shortlist are: Costa Book of the Year 2011 and Booker Prize 2025 longlisted author Andrew Miller; multi-award winning Irish writer Caoilinn Hughes, Desmond Elliott Prize winning novelist and short story specialist Edward Hogan; and new names, British-Lebanese author Emily Abdeni-Holman, and Colwill Brown whose debut novel was published this year.

Set in locations from Derbyshire and Doncaster to Jerusalem and County Kildare, the stories explore ‘self-contained’ worlds often inspired by personal memories and experiences, from the complexities of marriage, to the mysteries of survival in crisis; from newly formed inter-generational bonds, to the quiet tension between people and place, each reveals the short story’s ‘unparalleled’ power to reflect ‘the times we are living through.’

For two decades this award has celebrated writers who are the UK’s finest exponents of the form.  James Lasdun secured the inaugural Award in 2006 for ‘An Anxious Man’. In 2012 when the Award expanded internationally for one year, Miroslav Penkov was victorious for his story, ‘East of the West’. Last year, the Award was won by Ross Raisin for ‘Ghost Kitchen’, a tense, cinematic story narrated by a bicycle courier and inspired by the gig economy and the ‘dark kitchens’ of the restaurant industry.

In its 20-year history, Sarah Hall, K J Orr, Naomi Wood, Jonathan Buckley, Julian Gough, Clare Wigfall, Cynan Jones, Lucy Caldwell, Ingrid Persaud, Saba Sams and David Constantine have also carried off the Award with shortlisted authors including Zadie Smith, Jackie Kay, William Trevor, Rose Tremain, Caleb Azumah Nelson, Naomi Alderman, Kamila Shamsie, K Patrick and Jacqueline Crooks.

This year’s judging panel was chaired by Di Speirs who has sat on every judging panel since the Award’s inception and is joined by the very first chair of judges, William Boyd as well as former winners and shortlisted writers Lucy Caldwell, Ross Raisin and Kamila Shamsie.

In a time when literary awards come and go, and can struggle for funding and airtime, the BBC National Short Story Award with Cambridge University continues to be a cause for joy.

From 15th to 18th September four of the shortlisted stories can be heard at 3.30 each afternoon with the fifth story in contention for the award broadcasting on Friday, 19th September, at 11.30pm. The winner of the 20th BBC National Short Story Award will be announced live on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row on Tuesday 30th September 2025.

Produced by Eilidh McCreadie

Novelist and short story writer Caoilinn Hughes has been shortlisted for the 2025 BBC National Short Story Award for Two Hands, a ‘funny’ and ‘accomplished’ story, inspired by the author’s experience of a camper van crash on a Spanish motorway with her partner. The story, written to create a new set of associations around this difficult experience, follows a couple as they take a driving lesson with an elderly instructor in a quest to regain confidence after a car accident in Italy. Their move back to Ireland has skewed the dynamics of their relationship, and the story artfully explores the complexities and tensions within a marriage, with humour and poignancy.

Caoilinn Hughes is an award-winning author and short story writer from Ireland. Her novels include The Wild Laughter (2020) which won the RSL’s Encore Award and most recently, The Alternatives (2024.) Her short stories have won the Irish Book Awards' Story of the Year, The Moth Short Story Prize, and an O. Henry Prize. She was recently Oscar Wilde Writer Fellow at Trinity College Dublin and a Cullman Center Fellow at New York Public Library. Caoilinn Hughes grew up in Galway and now lives in London.

The 2025 BBC National Short Story Award with Cambridge University (BBC NSSA) shortlist was announced on Thursday 11 September 2025 live on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row, as the prestigious award celebrates its 20th anniversary. The shortlist, featuring multi-award winning writers and ‘astonishing’ new talent, was praised for its ‘intimate,’ ‘elegant’ and ’nuanced’ explorations of relationships, community and the specificities of place set against a world in crisis.

Selected by a panel of previous winners and returning judges from across the Award’s 20-year history, the five-strong shortlist are: Costa Book of the Year 2011 and Booker Prize 2025 longlisted author Andrew Miller; multi-award winning Irish writer Caoilinn Hughes, Desmond Elliott Prize winning novelist and short story specialist Edward Hogan; and new names, British-Lebanese author Emily Abdeni-Holman, and Colwill Brown whose debut novel was published this year.

Set in locations from Derbyshire and Doncaster to Jerusalem and County Kildare, the stories explore ‘self-contained’ worlds often inspired by personal memories and experiences, from the complexities of marriage, to the mysteries of survival in crisis; from newly formed inter-generational bonds, to the quiet tension between people and place, each reveals the short story’s ‘unparalleled’ power to reflect ‘the times we are living through.’

For two decades this award has celebrated writers who are the UK’s finest exponents of the form.  James Lasdun secured the inaugural Award in 2006 for ‘An Anxious Man’. In 2012 when the Award expanded internationally for one year, Miroslav Penkov was victorious for his story, ‘East of the West’. Last year, the Award was won by Ross Raisin for ‘Ghost Kitchen’, a tense, cinematic story narrated by a bicycle courier and inspired by the gig economy and the ‘dark kitchens’ of the restaurant industry.

In its 20-year history, Sarah Hall, K J Orr, Naomi Wood, Jonathan Buckley, Julian Gough, Clare Wigfall, Cynan Jones, Lucy Caldwell, Ingrid Persaud, Saba Sams and David Constantine have also carried off the Award with shortlisted authors including Zadie Smith, Jackie Kay, William Trevor, Rose Tremain, Caleb Azumah Nelson, Naomi Alderman, Kamila Shamsie, K Patrick and Jacqueline Crooks.

This year’s judging panel was chaired by Di Speirs who has sat on every judging panel since the Award’s inception and is joined by the very first chair of judges, William Boyd as well as former winners and shortlisted writers Lucy Caldwell, Ross Raisin and Kamila Shamsie.

In a time when literary awards come and go, and can struggle for funding and airtime, the BBC National Short Story Award with Cambridge University continues to be a cause for joy

From 15th to 18th September four of the shortlisted stories can be heard at 3.30 each afternoon with the fifth story in contention for the award broadcasting on Friday, 19th September, at 11.30pm. The winner of the 20th BBC National Short Story Award will be announced live on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row on Tuesday 30th September 2025.

Produced by Michael Shannon

Emily Abdeni-Holman's lyrical story is up for the 2025 BBC National Short Story Award. Centred around a young woman recently arrived in Jerusalem this understated story explores the relationship between people and place, power and vulnerability in a locale where history and belonging are so tangibly fraught. The reader is Isabelle Farah.

Emily Abdeni-Holman is a writer and critic. Her first book, Body Tectonic (Broken Sleep Books, 2024), on Lebanon’s socioeconomic crisis, is an experiment in exploring structural disaster through poetry.

The 2025 BBC National Short Story Award with Cambridge University (BBC NSSA) shortlist was announced on Thursday 11 September 2025 live on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row, as the prestigious award celebrates its 20th anniversary. The shortlist, featuring multi-award winning writers and ‘astonishing’ new talent, was praised for its ‘intimate,’ ‘elegant’ and ’nuanced’ explorations of relationships, community and the specificities of place set against a world in crisis.

Selected by a panel of previous winners and returning judges from across the Award’s 20-year history, the five-strong shortlist are: Costa Book of the Year 2011 and Booker Prize 2025 longlisted author Andrew Miller; multi-award winning Irish writer Caoilinn Hughes, Desmond Elliott Prize winning novelist and short story specialist Edward Hogan; and new names, British-Lebanese author Emily Abdeni-Holman, and Colwill Brown whose debut novel was published this year.

Set in locations from Derbyshire and Doncaster to Jerusalem and County Kildare, the stories explore ‘self-contained’ worlds often inspired by personal memories and experiences, from the complexities of marriage, to the mysteries of survival in crisis; from newly formed inter-generational bonds, to the quiet tension between people and place, each reveals the short story’s ‘unparalleled’ power to reflect ‘the times we are living through.’

For two decades this award has celebrated writers who are the UK’s finest exponents of the form.  James Lasdun secured the inaugural Award in 2006 for ‘An Anxious Man’. In 2012 when the Award expanded internationally for one year, Miroslav Penkov was victorious for his story, ‘East of the West’. Last year, the Award was won by Ross Raisin for ‘Ghost Kitchen’, a tense, cinematic story narrated by a bicycle courier and inspired by the gig economy and the ‘dark kitchens’ of the restaurant industry.

In its 20-year history, Sarah Hall, K J Orr, Naomi Wood, Jonathan Buckley, Julian Gough, Clare Wigfall, Cynan Jones, Lucy Caldwell, Ingrid Persaud, Saba Sams and David Constantine have also carried off the Award with shortlisted authors including Zadie Smith, Jackie Kay, William Trevor, Rose Tremain, Caleb Azumah Nelson, Naomi Alderman, Kamila Shamsie, K Patrick and Jacqueline Crooks.

This year’s judging panel was chaired by Di Speirs who has sat on every judging panel since the Award’s inception and is joined by the very first chair of judges, William Boyd as well as former winners and shortlisted writers Lucy Caldwell, Ross Raisin and Kamila Shamsie.

In a time when literary awards come and go, and can struggle for funding and airtime, the BBC National Short Story Award with Cambridge University continues to be a cause for joy

From 15th to 18th September four of the shortlisted stories can be heard at 3.30 each afternoon with the fifth story in contention for the award broadcasting on Saturday, 20th September, at 11.30pm. The winner of the 20th BBC National Short Story Award will be announced live on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row on Tuesday 30th September 2025.

Reader by Isabelle Farah