Our 2025 Writers' and Artists' Short Story Competition longlist is officially out!
Every year Writers & Artists hold a short story competition which is free to enter and offers writers the chance to win great prizes and see their story published on our site. This year all entrants were in with a chance of winning a place on an Arvon Foundation Writing Retreat (worth £850). Arvon host residential writing courses in rural writing houses across the UK. Their courses offer the writers the chance to live alongside fellow writers for a week, and transform their writing through one-to-one tutorials, workshops and the time and space to dedicate to their writing.
To be in with a chance of winning, our 2025 competition called for stories under 2,000 words on the theme of ‘wonder’.
And today we are really excited to be announcing our longlist. We had 699 entries and to narrow it down to this list of 14 was an incredibly difficult task. We were so impressed by the standard of writing, the varied interpretations of the theme and the creativity apparent in so many of the stories we received. But we had to make our decisions, and here they are!
Congratulations to the following writers:
Elvira Says by Simon Rowe
Ziva by Paul Tucker
The River He Wise, The River He Know by Susan Wigmore
A Spot of Rust by Elizabeth Verwey
Natural Wonder by Elaine Waterhouse
Bullet Time by Katy Edwards
The Seven Wonders of Alex's World by Joe Pearson
Solivagant by Abby Walker
Fruit of a Dream by Stephanie Percival
A Clamorous Palette by Conor Montague
Such a Small Thing to Hang Your Hopes On by Gareth Lewis
A Game of Musical Souls by Liam Hogan
The Hammock by Toril Cooper
Billy The Wonder Boy by Terry Lowell
This year’s judge Vanessa Onwuemezi, author of Dark Neighbourhood, will announce our shortlist and choose a winner. As we are working to quite a tight timeframe, we will announce the shortlist and also reveal with the winning entry in a single blog post on the site at the beginning of April.
Once again, many congratulations to those writers who have been longlisted and a thank you to everyone who entered. It has been a pleasure to review your work.
For those of us who entered and weren’t chosen, will there be an opportunity to read the finalist entries in order to see what it is you’re looking for?
In reply to For those of us who entered… by spears.huckabee