Sunday Times EFG Private Bank short story award longlist

The longlist for the £30,000 Sunday Times EFG Private Bank short story award has been announced - 10 women, 10 men, ranging in age from 31 to 94, apparently! Congratulations to all - especially my friend Alison MacLeod!

Diana Athill - 'A Hopeless Case'
Kevin Barry - 'Beer Trip to Llandudno'
Evgenia Citkowitz - 'Business Class'
Will Cohu - 'Two Bad Thumbs'
Emma Donoghue - 'The Hunt'
Jackie Kay - 'These Are Not My Clothes'
A L Kennedy - 'Late in Life'
Jean Kwok - 'Where the Gods Fly'
Barrie de Lara - 'Dinner at Benutti's'
Tom Lee - 'The Current'
Toby Litt - 'The Sandy'
Alison MacLeod - 'The Heart of Denis Noble'
Martin Malone - 'Valley of the Peacock Angel'
Robert Minhinnick - 'El Aziz: Some Pages From His Notebooks'
Linda Oatman High - 'Nickel Mines Hardware'
Alison Pimlott - 'Five Year Diary'
Tamara Pollock - 'Elsa'
Alex Preston - 'The Bridge Over Shuto Expressway No. 1'
Lionel Shriver - 'Prepositions'
Johanna Skibsrud - 'Fat Man and Little Boy'

It's wonderful to see Big Names rubbing shoulders with names I don't recognise, I'm eager to find out more about the stories... how about an anthology of all 20 longlisted stories, Sunday Times & EFG?

2011 Sunday Times EFG longlist is out!

The longlist for the £20,000 Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award - the richest prize for a single story (although only open to published writers) - has just been announced. An interesting list, it seems on first glance to be that there are more Big Names on it this year, maybe the Big Names realised that this is a serious amount of money and it would be foolish not to go in for it! Delighted to see Short Review authors Rob Shearman and Clare Wigfall there, along with Kevin Barry and Yiyun Li. Here's the full longlist:

• Fabian Acker 'Nirvana'
• Kevin Barry 'Fjord of Killary'
• Meira Chand 'The Pilgrimage'
• Will Cohu 'East West-West Coast'
• Anthony Doerr 'The Deep'
• Michel Faber 'In the Woods with a Dead Dog'
• Roshi Fernando 'The Fluorescent Jacket'
• Tibor Fischer 'Possibly Forty Ships'
• Xiaolu Guo 'Life by Accident'
• Sarah Hall 'Vuotjarvi'
• Tobias Hill 'Not that it Matters'
• Susan Hill 'Crystal'
• Yiyun Li 'The Science of Flight'
• Hilary Mantel 'Comma'
• David Miller 'Fuck Being Happy'
• Robert Shearman 'History Becomes You'
• Erin Soros 'BC Almanac'
• Louise Stern 'Black and White Dog'
• Gerard Woodward 'The Family Whistle'
• Claire Wigfall 'Professor Arvind'

You can read more about the longlisted authors here. I am particularly intrigued by Fabien Acker, who won "the BT award as science writer of the year", and Yiyun Li's story, because it has science in the title! Good luck to them all, the shortlist will be announced in a few weeks.