Short Story Competition Results
2026

Here are the judge's choices for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place…

1st Placed:

“Small Beginnings”
“Emotional but uplifting. I felt the grief and exhaustion of the mother, but also her need to keep believing and hoping…”

By Anne Wilkins

2nd Placed:

“Et Là”
“I enjoyed the tension, the detail, but especially the humour and the way the under-dog found his own way of winning…”

By T E Lowe

3rd Placed:

“The Darkness Deepens”
“The bleakness gradually and skillfully exposed… left me pondering, which I like at the end of a story.”

By Kenneth Havey

Also Short-Listed:

Adam Patik
Chris Scriven
David Roddick

Long Listed Authors:

• Catherine Schieffelin
• Daniel Fanning
• Eve Spence
• Jaime Gill
• Judith Hummel
• John Keogh
• Karla Dearsly
• Kate Berry
• Lee Molloy
• Lucy Grace
• Lior Blum
• Nargis Lal
• Simonë Possenti Escamilla
• Steven van de Heyden

Congratulations to all our winners!

Our judge for this competition is award-winning author Ruth Druart

Ruth Druart grew up on the Isle of Wight, leaving at eighteen to study psychology at the University of Leicester. In 1993 she moved to Paris, the city that inspired her to write, where she pursued a career in international education before turning to writing full-time. Her first book, While Paris Slept, was published in 2021, and her second novel, The Last Hours in Paris, was published in 2022. They have been translated into more than twenty languages, and Ruth is currently working on a third.