Doncaster Author Colwill Brown Shortlisted For BBC National Shortstory Award 2025

The 2025 BBC National Short Story Award with Cambridge University (BBC NSSA) shortlist was announced on the evening of Thursday 11 September 2025 on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row. The prestigious award os celebrating its 20th anniversary. The shortlist, featuring multi-award winning writers and ‘astonishing’ new talent, was praised for its intimate, elegant, and nuanced explorations of relationships, community, and the specificities of place set against a world in crisis.

Selected by a panel of previous winners and returning judges, the five-strong shortlist are: Costa Book of the Year 2011 and Booker Prize 2025 longlisted author Andrew Miller; multi-award winning Irish writer Caoilinn Hughes, Desmond Elliott Prize winning novelist and short story specialist Edward Hogan; and new names, British-Lebanese author Emily Abdeni-Holman, and Colwill Brown whose debut novel was published this year.

Set in locations from Derbyshire and Doncaster to Jerusalem and County Kildare, the stories explore ‘self-contained’ worlds often inspired by personal memories and experiences, from the complexities of marriage, to the mysteries of survival in crisis.

The BBC National Short Story Award with Cambridge University 2025 shortlist is:
Yair by Emily Abdeni-Holman
You Cannot Thead a Moving Needle by Colwill Brown
Little Green Man by Edward Hogan
Two Hands by Caoilinn Hughes
Rain, a History by Andrew Miller

The BBC National Short Story Award is one of the most prestigious for a single short story, with the winning author receiving £15,000, and four further shortlisted authors £600 each. The 2024 winner of the BBC National Short Story Award was Ross Raisin for Ghost Kitchen - a tense, cinematic story narrated by a bicycle courier and inspired by the gig economy and the ‘dark kitchens’ of the restaurant industry. The 2025 winner will be announced live on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row on Tuesday 30th September 2025.

The five stories will be broadcast in turn from Monday 15th to Friday 19th of September on Radio 4. They will also be available to listen to on BBC Sounds. The readers of this year’s stories include BAFTA award-winning actor Toby Jones (Mr Bates vs The Post Office, Detectorists, Harry Potter) reading Rain; Irish actor Ruth Bradley (Slow Horses, The Gold, Humans) reading Two Hands; British-Lebanese actor and comedian Isabelle Farah (To Catch a Copper, Ukraine's Stolen Children) reading Yair; Sophie McShera (Downton Abbey, Waterloo Road) reading You Cannot Thread a Moving Needle, and, completing the line-up, Dorothy Atkinson (Joan, Ludwig, Saltburn) reading Little Green Man. The shortlisted stories will also be published in an anthology by Comma Press.

“I’m thrilled to be celebrating two decades of the BBC National Short Story Award,” says Di Speirs MBE, Chair of the 2025 judging panel. “Designed to find the very best, this twentieth year is no exception. Thought-provoking, nuanced and packing a punch, this year’s five stories deserve to be read and reread. […] Between them they show the immense flexibility and range of the form, and the short story’s unparalleled ability to reflect back to us, with delicacy and power, the times we are living through.”

Marking the award’s 20th anniversary, Speirs, who has judged the BBC National Short Story Award since its launch, is joined by a distinguished panel of returning judges, bestselling novelist William Boyd, who judged the inaugural award in 2006, and previous NSSA winners Lucy Caldwell and Ross Raisin, and previous shortlistee Kamila Shamsie.

"I have always claimed that the taste for short stories has never gone away,” says William Boyd, BBC NSSA 2025 Judge, “as far as writers and readers are concerned. It’s only publishers and editors who shy away from the form, for some perverse reason. [...] This year’s stories clearly established that the standard of writing and invention was admirably high and made it evident that the short story form is in vigorous, challenging, multifaceted life.”

The BBC National Short Story Award with Cambridge University was established to raise the profile of the short form and this year’s shortlist join an impressive list of alumni such as Zadie Smith, Jon McGregor, Hilary Mantel, Rose Tremain, Jon McGregor, Tessa Hadley, Helen Oyeyemi and William Trevor.

“Cambridge University is delighted to be part of such an outstanding tradition of story writing,” says Dr Bonnie Lander Johnson, Fellow, Lecturer, and Director of Studies at Cambridge University. “More than ever, the short story form offers a technically demanding but very human insight into the secret selves of contemporary Britain.”

The BBC also supports young, emerging talent and this year celebrates the 11th Anniversary of the BBC Young Writers’ Award with Cambridge University. Open to 14-18-year-olds, it aims to inspire and encourage the next generation of short story writers and is a cross-network collaboration between Radio 4 and Radio 1. The shortlist for the BBC Young Writers’ Award was announced on Sunday 14 September, and the winner will be announced on Tuesday 30 September on Front Row.