Results

Maya Elphick is a poet and writer from Norfolk. Her work has been widely anthologised and can be found in Acumen, Underground and The Dawntreader. She was the Young Poet in Residence at BBC Radio Norfolk between 2019 and 2021 and she holds a BA in English Literature with Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia. This is the first time she has entered her work into a competition.

Laura Jane Lee is a poet, teacher, voiceover artist and children's author based in Singapore, via Hong Kong and Scotland. She is a Bread Loaf alum and a Brooklyn Poets Fellow, an awardee of the Sir Roger Newdigate Prize, and was shortlisted for the Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize. Her work has been featured in festivals in Rotterdam, Berlin, Brisbane and Singapore, as well as in Ambit, Gutter and Bellingham Review, among others. Recent works include "flinch & air" (Out-Spoken Press, 2021), and the children's book, What Makes You Brave?: Orangu and the Tutu Kueh (Armour Publishing, 2026).

Kate Fenwick’s poems have appeared in various magazines and anthologies including Southword, The Rialto, Ragaire, Skylight 47, Propel, The Ekphrastic Review and Tar River Poetry. Her work has been shortlisted for several prizes, notably The Bridport, The Moth, Plaza, Live Canon, Southword and the Café Writer’s prize and was nominated for the 2026 Forward Prize best single poem. She writes about myth, memory, the female body as spectacle and the unstable border between beauty and violence. She is working towards her first collection.

Ahana Banerji is a former Foyle Young Poet and Poetry Society Young Critic. Her poetry appears in Oxford Poetry, The White Review, and The Little Review. Her short fiction has been recognised by The Cambridge Short Story Prize and Bloomsbury’s Writers and Artists Short Story Competition. Her debut pamphlet, Piecemeal, (Nine Pens Press, 2024) is the product of years spent thinking about fish.

Elena Croitoru-Reed is a British-Romanian writer and she has an MSt in Creative Writing from the University of Cambridge. She won the Charles Causley Poetry Prize, the South Bank Poetry Prize and was commended in the National Poetry Competition. She was also a finalist for prizes such as the Moth Poetry Prize, the Montreal Poetry Prize, the Manchester Poetry Prize & other awards. Her poems have appeared in POETRY, The Poetry Society and elsewhere. Her first poetry pamphlet, The Country With No Playgrounds, won the Live Canon Pamphlet Prize.

Nigeen Dara is an NHS doctor and writer based in the North of England currently working on her debut collection of poetry and prose. Nigeen’s creative work draws on her Kurdish heritage to explore the themes of identity, war, immigration and womanhood. In 2023, she was named a BBC Words First finalist, and she’s contributed to BBC Radio’s Between the Ears programme. In 2025, she was selected as a New Northern Poet, joining a cohort of emerging writers to lead workshops, record a podcast, and perform at Ilkley Literature Festival. Nigeen was the winner of the 2026 Guernsey International poetry competition.

Adam Keith Johnston is a Canadian writer based in Vancouver. Two of his poems were shortlisted for The Bridport Prize in 2025 and three more in 2026, including ‘Postmarked’ which was Highly Commended. He has spent more than twenty years working in humanitarian and disaster response in Canada and internationally. His writing explores memory, grief, caregiving, and the distance between lived experience and the language used to record it. He is completing his debut novel, Passable, and a collection of poetry, and also writes picture books for children. He is interested in the small details through which larger emotional truths emerge.

Collin M. Kim is an avid writer, surfer, and violist, currently serving as the Los Angeles Youth Poet Laureate. His work appears in the Diode Poetry Journal, Sho Poetry Journal, The Louisville Review, and more. He is an alumnus of the Iowa Young Writers Studio and The Adroit Journal Summer Mentorship where he serves as a poetry reader.

Clara-Læïla Laudette is a writer, facilitator and journalist. Appetite, her debut pamphlet, is published by fourteen poems. She won Magma Judge’s Prize and placed third in the Poetry London and London Magazine Prizes. An Adrienne Rich Poetry Award semifinalist, she’s been shortlisted for the Oxford Poetry, Bridport and Pat Kavanagh prizes, as well as the Aesthetica Creative Writing Award. Her work was longlisted in the National Poetry Competition and Mslexia Women's Poetry Prize. Clara-Læïla's poems, translations and reviews are widely published, including in Poetry Review, Propel, And Other Poems and Wet Grain.

Esther Lay is an American-born Anglican priest and classical singer living in Oxfordshire. Nominated for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem in 2025, she is the winner of the 2025 East Riding Festival of Words Poetry Prize and the 2024 Write By The Sea Poetry Prize. She has been placed or highly commended in numerous international competitions and has recent poems in the Waxed Lemon, Grain, Thimble Lit Mag, Rust & Moth, 14 Magazine, Passionfruit Review, Four Faced Liar, and Magma, with forthcoming work in Poetry London. Her debut collection will be published by Corsair in March 2028.

Paul Moclair is from Northern Ireland and lives in the French Pyrenees. He works for international NGOs using theatre-based approaches in the fields of education and child rights. He completed an MA in Writing Poetry at the Seamus Heaney Centre, QUB in 2025. His poetry has been published in Howl, The Ogham Stone, Ink, Sweat & Tears, Dodging The Rain, and in two Poetry In Motion Community anthologies. He won the 2006 Maria Edgeworth Poetry Competition.

Saemah Mushtaq is a writer whose poems are inspired by the Palestinian struggle for freedom, justice and dignity. Her work is a homage to the steadfast resilience and resistance of the Palestinian people. She was awarded Honourable Mention for Arc Poetry’s 2025 Poem of the Year and was a prize-winner in the Bournemouth Writing Prize for Poetry 2026.

Jeremy Pak Nelson is a writer and artist from Hong Kong. He’s a Multilingual City Poet for Manchester City of Literature and won the Mairtín Crawford Award for Poetry in 2026. His work has appeared in Magma, Interpret, Small Wonders, and others, and his pamphlet, of the city, is forthcoming from Verve Poetry Press. He was writer-in-residence at UK Space Conference 2025, and was part of the Poets of Colour Incubator. He holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. His preoccupations include outdated methods of putting words on paper, folk fiddle, and the game of go. He can be found at jpaknelson.com Photo: The Belfast Book Festival

Amanda Hildebrandt is a writer and academic with a special interest in the relationship between people and the objects they create. Her short stories have won the Peter Carey Short Story Award and the Grace Marion Wilson Emerging Writer’s Prize, among others, and have appeared in publications such as Meanjin, Kill Your Darlings, and Mslexia. She lives in Australia and is currently working on her first novel.

Raeesa Zeb is an Indian-origin writer based in Dubai. For fifteen years, she has worked in M&A and business transformation, while trying to ignore the voice telling her that what she enjoys most is writing stories. An avid reader and observer of human contradictions, she is drawn to the private worlds people carry beneath ordinary lives. She has written since her school days but, until now, kept her work largely to herself, finding in it both comfort and escape. This is the first story she has shared with the wider world, making its recognition by the Bridport Prize especially meaningful.

Issariya Morgan is a freelance writer and ceramic artist from West Wales. She is frequently inspired by ideas from visual art, music and cinema, as well as landscape and mythology. Currently working on her first collection, she enjoys writing disquieting stories that explore questions of autonomy and hidden boundaries, in which interior and exterior worlds collide. She won the 2026 Astley Prize, judged by Sarah Hall, and will be reading her work at the Nairn Book & Arts Festival. She is also currently a finalist in the 2026 Rhys Davies Short Story Award. She’s on Instagram @issariya.maker

A. G. Bestwick is a writer from Derbyshire. His short stories have been published by Extra Teeth Magazine, the NoSleep Podcast, and in the Flame Tree Press anthology Christmas Horror. He holds a Creative Writing MFA from York St John University and currently lives in York. Follow him on Instagram @agbestwick

Efrat Danon is a writer from London. Apart from ‘Mud,’ another story of hers has been shortlisted for the Bridport Short Story Prize this year. Her flash fiction and short stories have been published in Hypertext Magazine (forthcoming), Interstice Journal (forthcoming), The Phare and the Mechanics’ Institute Review, and another flash fiction has been longlisted for the Smokelong Quarterly Grand Micro Competition 2023.

Tony Durrant has been a journalist, school teacher, yoga teacher, paratrooper and RAF officer. An MA in Creative Writing and a tour of duty in Afghanistan inspired him to write about PTSD and the healing power of nature. The resulting story, Curlew Song, earned him the accolade of a ‘New Voice’ winner of the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Award. Running with bulls at the Festival of San Fermin at Pamplona gave him the idea for the short story ‘A Dying Breed’ which was shortlisted and included in The Bedford Anthology. He lives in a remote Cumbrian valley with Sally and two labradors.

Arthur Mandal is a writer based in Eugene, Oregon, who grew up in the UK. He is a 2025 Best Small Fictions winner, Shortlisted for the Bridport Prize, a Pushcart nominee, and has been longlisted for the W.S. Porter Prize, The Masters Review Winter Short Story Award, and Wigleaf Top 50. His stories have appeared in Witness, Los Angeles Review, The Forge Literary Magazine, Southeast Review, LITRO, 3:AM Magazine, and elsewhere. He has a chapbook with Nightjar Press. Alongside writing he works as an independent craftsman and photographer.

Emma McDonald is a British writer who holds an MA in Creative Writing: Prose Fiction and BA English Literature with Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia. Emma’s writing circles themes of queerness, food and disability and uses them to consider complex relationships with home. Looking on from her Masters, Emma is currently working on completing the project that formed their dissertation: a literary fiction novel set in Greece called Out of Season, which explores the complexities of being young and queer on an island compared to a city and builds around food, family, tradition and natural settings.

Catherine McElroy’s short fiction has been published in Island and Meanjin, and commended in various awards including the Peter Carey Short Story Award, the Olga Masters Short Story Award and the Marjorie Barnard Short Story Award. In 2023 she received the Henry Handel Richardson Fellowship for short story writing. She grew up on a sheep farm, and her writing explores rural experience and contemporary working life. She lives in Young (NSW, Australia), on Wiradjuri Country.

Matteo Mora Castañeda is a 16-year-old writer from Puebla, Mexico. He has written compulsively since age eight. For him, writing is a place he always misses until he returns. His work is socially engaged with Latin American history and marginalised voices, never exoticising them. This is his first story in English, and he feels his economical Spanish style became diluted and stripped-down in a foreign tongue. Despite this, ‘Black Earth in Pompei’ marks his first international recognition. He hopes to keep bridging languages and histories.

Marcelle Olivier is a South African-born writer, academic and archaeologist living in Cambridge, UK. She holds a doctorate in prehistoric African rock art from Oxford University, where she was an International Commonwealth Scholar, and her interdisciplinary research interests span theories of evolution, gender, landscape, and culture. Her new collection of poetry, an allowance of night, will be published winter 2026/27 by African feminist press Modjaji, and she is currently working on a second novel while her first does the rounds.

Elizabeth M. Terzakis is a writer, editor, runner, and rock climber, recently redeployed to freelance work after teaching composition, literature, and creative writing at a California community college for twenty-two years. She is co-author, with Wyomia Tyus, of Tigerbelle: The Wyomia Tyus Story, published by Akashic Books. Her fiction has appeared in New England Review, Transfer, Minerva Rising, the Rozlyn anthology, Solstice Literary Magazine, Birdland Journal, and Calyx Journal. Her nonfiction publications include articles on the global AIDS pandemic, free speech, human nature, the environment, and capital punishment.

Jennifer Wawrzinek is a writer and critic based in Munich and Berlin. She has been a finalist for the Ninth Letter Literary Award, longlisted for the Elizabeth Jolley Story Prize, and the Bath Story Prize. Her fiction has been adapted for radio by the ABC and can be found in Southerly, Westerly, Overland Express, and Janus Head. She has been supported by a Varuna New Writer’s Fellowship, has two doctorates, one in creative writing and another in literary studies, and has for many years taught literature at a university in Berlin. She is currently at work on a novel.

Kerry Hood won third prize in the Costa Short Story Award. She received the Society of Authors Arthur Welton Award, Words & Women Prize, Frome Festival Competition and has the winning piece in Cinnamon Press’s Patria & Other Stories. Longlists include BBC National Short Story Award and Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. She was one of five shortlisted for the Tom-Gallon Trust Award and runner-up in The Bridport Prize. Her work appears in anthologies and she’s been published twice in The London Magazine. Two stories were broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Play commissions include Soho Theatre, Bristol Old Vic and Ustinov Bath.

Andrew Boulton is author of the book Copywriting Is: 30 or so thoughts on thinking like a copywriter. He lives in Nottingham with his wife and daughter and works as a copywriter – having previously taught creative advertising at the University of Lincoln. His flash fiction stories have previously been highly commended by the Bridport Prize, as well as being published by the Bath Flash Fiction Award, London Independent Story Prize, Cranked Anvil, Storgy and more. He is perhaps the oldest person in the UK to eat Laughing Cow cheese triangles on a daily basis.

Chris Hall lives in Northumberland and spends a lot of time in the Lake District. A lifelong reader, she has an MA in Writing Poetry. She’s working on a pamphlet about Anne Boleyn and recently started writing flash fiction, drawn to the small things that can make an unexpected difference to someone’s life. Writing can be frustrating, but she gets considerable satisfaction from the moment a piece finally comes together. She writes late at night, when the house is quiet using a ReMarkable, which is decidedly high-tech but suits her because it still feels like writing with a pencil.

Debra A. Daniel has published four novellas-in-flash, The Most Miraculous Marriage of Harry and Baby (HopeAve), In the Dark Eyes of the Rabbit, (winner 2025 Bath Novella-in-Flash Award), A Family of Great Falls, and The Roster (AdHoc Fiction), Woman Commits Suicide in Dishwasher (novel), and poetry chapbooks, The Downward Turn of August and As Is. She’s a Pushcart and Best Short Fictions nominee. She won The Los Angeles Review short fiction prize, SC Arts Commission Poetry Fellowship, the Guy Owen Poetry Prize. She’s been shortlisted in numerous contests and published in LA Review, Smokelong, Inkwell, Southern Poetry Review among others.

Rachael Dunlop is a widely published and award-winning writer of flash fiction and short stories. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and was highly commended in the final Costa Short Story Awards in 2021. She has several novels eternally in progress and has been longlisted for both the Bath Novel Award (twice), and the Cheshire Novel Award. In 2021 she received the Bath Novel Award Cornerstones Longlist Prize for the most promising longlisted manuscript. She is a resident competition judge at nycmidnight.com and runs flash fiction workshops for writers in the North East of England, where she currently lives.

Mike Kilgannon is a teacher and Dad living in Sheffield. He grew up in St Helens, Merseyside and has been scribbling in secret ever since. This is his third appearance in the Bridport Prize anthology - his flash fiction pieces ‘The Hercules Reopened’ and ‘Enough’ placing in previous years: he can hardly believe his luck.

Adam Z. Robinson is a writer, theatre-maker and prize-winning author of flash fiction. He is the author and director of Deadvault, the six-part audio horror anthology series. Theatre work includes: Upon the Stair (“Everyone needs to see this show” - ✭✭✭✭½ The Reviews Hub) and Smile Club (✭✭✭✭ The Guardian) co-written with Andrea Heaton. His plays The Book of Darkness & Light, Shivers and Unhomely toured nationally, 2016-2024. His plays are published with Playdead Press. Adam's other writing includes: Conscientious (national tour 2014) and Belle & Mary (a true crime play commissioned by The Dukes Lancaster). He is the host of The Ghost Story Book Club podcast.

Harriet Sandilands is a writer and art therapist living in the mountains near Barcelona. Her writing has appeared in Litro, Porridge, Kitchen Table Quarterly, Another New Calligraphy, The Poet’s Corner, Palabrosa and NFFD anthology. She published her book “Pepita” in 2025 and is currently working on a novel about a 19th century French man who becomes obsessed with dreams. She loves walking her dogs, open water swimming and raising chicks. Harriet hosts the Golden Egg Writing Residency and co-runs the online writing space Write Where You Are. Visual arts, long walks, writing in community and dreams nourish her writing practice.

Mohini Singh's short stories have appeared in the Bridport Prize Anthology, Galley Beggar Press, Good Journal, and the Fish Anthology. She leads writing sessions for Madlani Cancer Support and is currently learning Japanese.

Hannah-Fleur Fitz-Rankin is a novelist and short story writer. She’s won prizes in the 2025 and 2011 Fish Short Story competitions; was longlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award 2022 and is published by Blackfriars Books after winning the Emerald Street short story competition in 2015. Born in London, Hannah-Fleur now lives in Kent with her family. She has an MA from Goldsmiths in Creative Writing and works at the Natural History Museum.

Lisa Lenzo is the author of three award-winning books: Unblinking, the 2020 Midwest Book Award Winner for Short Story Collections and Anthologies; Strange Love, a linked collection and the recipient of a 2015 Michigan Notable Book Award; and Within the Lighted City, winner of an Iowa Fiction Award and the recipient of a brief but wholly sweet review in The New York Times. Her stories have been published in many literary magazines and anthologies, chosen for a PEN Syndicated Fiction Award, and broadcast on National Public Radio. Lenzo’s novel, Before the Revolution, draws on historical events and her lived experience.

Simeon Ralph is a writer, noisemaker with raucous DIY foamcore outfit Rudimentary Paste, and a founder member of the Sealand Wet Sox International Baseball team. He has an MA with distinction in Creative Writing from MMU and his short fiction has appeared in several publications in the UK and internationally, both online and in print. He lives in Norwich and can be found on Instagram @sim.ralph Photo: Erin Patel

Simran Singh is a writer from London working across narrative, poetry, and essays. Commissions include The Independent, Barbican Gallery, General Consulate of Italy, South Asian Heritage Month and Sony Music. Other publications include Hajar Press, English Heritage, Storycellar Mumbai, and Mind UK. Headline performances include Somerset House, Daytimers, and Raze Collective; he's a three-time Barbican Young Poet and was shortlisted for the Propel Cambridge Poetry Prize. He has an MA in Classics from the University of Oxford, works in marketing and content, and is online on Instagram at @simran_singhxo, at simransingh.co.uk, and on his Substack, 'How to be hopeful'.

Lydia Clark graduated from the University of Warwick with an undergraduate degree in English Literature and Creative Writing, as well as a Master’s in Writing. She was inaugural recipient of the Bridport Prize Young Writer award in 2020 and is thrilled to receive the Dorset award for the second time. When she is not writing or watching West End plays and musicals, she is a house parent at a boarding school.

Maya Elphick is a poet and writer from Norfolk. Her work has been widely anthologised and can be found in Acumen, Underground and The Dawntreader. She was the Young Poet in Residence at BBC Radio Norfolk between 2019 and 2021 and she holds a BA in English Literature with Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia. This is the first time she has entered her work into a competition.

Kerry Hood won third prize in the Costa Short Story Award. She received the Society of Authors Arthur Welton Award, Words & Women Prize, Frome Festival Competition and has the winning piece in Cinnamon Press’s Patria & Other Stories. Longlists include BBC National Short Story Award and Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. She was one of five shortlisted for the Tom-Gallon Trust Award and runner-up in The Bridport Prize. Her work appears in anthologies and she’s been published twice in The London Magazine. Two stories were broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Play commissions include Soho Theatre, Bristol Old Vic and Ustinov Bath.