ALCS is delighted to announce that the judges have selected the following:

Sophie Baker ‘Clay’

Owen Booth ‘Middle-Aged Sex Object’

Maureen Cullen ‘The Cailleach of Redgauntlet Close’

Rashad Hosein ‘Aji’

B Johnson ‘Idolatry’

Toby Lloyd ‘Bagatelles’

Amanda Mason ‘Three Times, Lefthandwise’

Maeve Mulrennan ‘Known To The Gardaí’

Emer O’Hanlon ‘Savior Complex’

Leeor Ohayon ‘Gahnun on Shabbat’

Penny Simpson ‘until your wild world ends’

Jacqueline Yallop ‘Dry Stone’

The 2021 shortlist will be announced on 24 November and the winner on 15 December.

The V.S. Pritchett Short Story Prize was founded by the Royal Society of Literature in 1999, and ALCS has been a proud sponsor for several years. The prize of £1,000 goes to the best unpublished short story of the year, and the winning entry will be published in Prospect magazine online and in the RSL Review.

Kate Lockwood Jefford won the 2020 V. S. Pritchett Short Story Prize with ‘Picasso’s Face’. Other previous winners have included Emily Ruth Ford, Jonathan Tel, Martina Devlin and Carys Davies.