The entry deadline to the 2017 Bristol Short Story Prize  is just two weeks away. We’d like to take the opportunity to remind writers that we welcome stories of all kinds from all writers throughout the world.

We’ve published a huge range of stories in our first 9 anthologies – stories set throughout history from ancient Greece to the present day, and beyond to imagined futures. Stories set on all continents by writers from numerous countries. There have been stories narrated by octogenarians, by children not yet a decade old, and others with narrators and protagonists at all stages of life in between. Stories written in the first, second and third persons, with the broadest sweep of styles and genres from the familiar to the obscure: historical, romance, literary, science fiction, harsh realism, surreal flights of fancy, tense thrillers, comic capers, ‘experimental’ tales, sparsely written hammer blows of what some might call flash fiction and lots more. There have been high, mid and low brow stories; stories written as blog posts, album reviews, in verse, as diaries, as a series of emails, as well as a sumptuous crop of the more traditional; stories of 4,000 words and those with just a few hundred, one of which won first prize in 2010.

We invite you to show us what’s possible in a short story, what a short story can be, what a story can do and what ‘short story’ means to you. Drop our jaws, make us weep, make us rethink, tickle us, entertain us, confound us, provoke us, comfort us, stimulate us, storify us to another time or place but above all we want to encourage and inspire you to feel free to write what you want in whatever form you want.

Here are some details of this year’s competition:

The 2017 Bristol Short Story Prize is open to all published and unpublished writers over 16 years of age. Stories can be on any theme or subject and entry can be made online via the website or by post. Entries must be previously unpublished with a maximum length of 4,000 words (There is no minimum). The entry fee is £8 per story.
The closing date for entries is midnight (BST) May 3rd 2017.

20 stories will be shortlisted and published in Bristol Short Story Prize Anthology Volume 10.
The winner and 2 runners up will be selected from the shortlist and announced at an awards ceremony
which will be held in Bristol Central Library on October 14th 2017.

1st prize is £1,000, 2nd prize is £700, 3rd prize is £400. 17 further prizes of £100 will be presented
to the remaining shortlisted writers. All shortlisted writers will receive 2 free copies of the anthology.
Prizes will be sent to any writer on the shortlist who is unable to attend the awards ceremony.

And our amazing judging panel will be chaired by writer, Tania Hershman. Tania will be joined on the panel by the writer, Roshi Fernando; Simon Key, owner of the award-winning Big Green Bookshop, and Juliet Pickering, literary agent at Blake Friedmann.

For full details and rules on the 2017 Bristol Short Story Prize please click here.

And best of luck to all of you who enter!