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Bristol Short Story Prize 2014 winners
Leicester-based writer Mahsuda Snaith has won the 2014 Bristol Short Story Prize and £1,000 with her story The Art of Flood Survival.
The competition was founded by the editors of the quarterly cultural magazine Bristol Review of Books in 2007. Now in its seventh year, it received 2,473 entries with stories submitted from more than 60 countries from writers as far afield as New Zealand, Australia, Brazil, India, Trinidad, Nigeria, Canada, USA, Japan and Malaysia.
The judging panel was chaired by writer and former BBC Radio 4 producer Sara Davies. She was joined on the panel by literary agent Rowan Lawton, writer, broadcaster and academic Sanjida O’Connell and writer Nikesh Shukla.
Sara Davies says of the winning story: “Mahsuda’s story about a young Bangladeshi servant girl is tender and tough, and impressed us all with its sureness of touch. The voice of its young narrator, with its mix of hope and cynicism, longing and pragmatism, is both believable and compelling, and her determination to turn the world to her advantage against all odds is beautifully and boldly explored with some lovely touches of sharp humour.”
After winning the top prize, Mahsuda said: “I’m a bit stunned by it. I’m over the moon about winning especially because I’ve read the Bristol Short Story anthologies before, [they are] always such good quality. It’s amazing, I was just happy to be in the anthology. Winning is a massive bonus.”
Claire Griffiths, a graduate of University of East Anglia’s Creative Writing MA won second prize for Tata and Mama and Me, and Tom Vowler, associate lecturer in creative writing from the University of Plymouth, won third prize with Debt.
The top three prizewinning stories were announced and the prizes presented by writer Patricia Ferguson and mayor George Ferguson at an awards ceremony in Spike Island.
The Bristol Short Story Prize Anthology Volume 7, featuring the winning story plus the 19 other shortlisted stories, was launched on the night.
Photographs by Barbara Evripidou / www.firstavenuephotography.com
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