Writers' & Artists' Short Story Competition 2016 Shortlist

Once again, our annual Short Story Competition has proven as popular as ever. We've had thousands of entries (2,208, to be precise!) and it's been an absolute joy to get a glimpse of your writing. A shortlist, however, had to be settled on, with this year's judge - Natasha Pulley - whittling things down until just ten entries remained. And here they are.

The stories on this year's shortlist, and being considered for a prize of £500 and place on an Arvon writing course, are as follows:

• Home Ageing by Robert Montgomery
• What they Did with the Hairspray by Chris Edwards-Pritchard
• Hugs for the Railway Man by Sarah Baxter
• Transport by Mark Brandi
• Your Pension Guarantee by Simon Van der Velde
• Where Are We Now by Frances Gapper
• Farewell, Heidelberg by Armeen Kapadia Basavaraju
• Ageing by Sian Bailey
• Eventide by Katherine Mezzacappa
• Norma Love by Julia Brilleman

The winner and two runners-up will be announced here before the end of March, with Natasha due to provide feedback on each of the chosen entries.

For those of you who haven't made the shortlist this year, a few things that might offer a bit of consolation:

• You're part of a phenomenal community of writers who work hard, remain supportive, keep creative and always have another story on the way
• We have a very different competition in the pipeline that's all but confirmed (check back to our Competitions page soon!)
• You're probably reading this blog because you regularly use our website. Enter the code #KEEPGOING before 31st March and receive 10% off any editorial service across the site.

Best of luck with your writing endeavours for 2016,

The W&A Team