Bridport Prize 2007 - Short Story Prizewinner's. Judge :- Tracey Chevalier

Judges short story report

Short story longlist

Photographs of the Short Story prize giving

1st Prize £5000 Graham Mort, Carnforth, Lancs. "The Prince"

Graham Mort lives in North Yorkshire and lectures in Creative Writing at Lancaster University where he directs the Centre for Transcultural Writing and Research. He has worked extensively in Africa, designing and implementing literature development projects for the British Council; this work has taken him to Uganda, Malawi, Kenya, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Ghana and South Africa in recent years. He has published 8 books of poetry and won a number of literary prizes for his work. His short stories have appeared in many anthologies and literary magazines and he is currently planning a collection of short fiction.
www.graham-mort.com

2nd Prize £1000 Vanessa Gebbie, Ringmer, East Sussex. "I can Squash the King, Tommo...."

Vanessa Gebbie lives near Brighton with her family, but spent most of her formative years in Wales. She studied French at Exeter University, and wrote a dissertation on a theory that the short story might have been used as political propaganda in late eighteenth century France.
She has been a journalist, a researcher for the MoD, HR Manager in engineering companies and run her own marketing consultancy. She started writing seriously in 2003. Her awards in 2007 include First Prizes in The Daily Telegraph Novel Competition and Exeter University?s Paddon Award and Second Prize in the Fish International Short Story Competition.
She teaches Creative Writing and is Assistant Editor of the UK small press literary magazine, Cadenza. She runs an online collective for writers, The Fiction Workhouse.
Her story is taken from her novel in progress.
www.vanessagebbie.com

3rd Prize £500 Liza Wieland, North Carolina, USA. "Slip, Out, Back, Here"

Liza Wieland grew up in Atlanta, Ga, and was educated at Harvard University (BA 1981) and Columbia University (PhD 1988). She has taught at several colleges and universities in the US, most recently East Carolina University, in Greenville, NC. She lives near Oriental, NC with her husband and daughter.
www.lizawieland.com

Supplementary Prizes (alphabetical order) - £50 Each :-

Judith Allnatt, Upper Weedon, Northants. "The Sand Monster"

Judith Allnatt was born in Stafford and studied English at the University of Manchester. She writes poetry and fiction and teaches creative writing at the University of Leicester and the Open University. Her first novel, A Mile of River will be published by Transworld (Doubleday/Black Swan) in March 2008. She lives in rural Northamptonshire with her husband and two children and is currently working on her second novel for Transworld.

Jackie Beacham, Forest Row, East Sussex. "And that's all there is to it"

I was born in Sydney, Australia in 1956, came to the UK two years later, and grew up on the Sussex coast and in the wilds of Cornwall. In 1998 I went to the University of Sussex, surfacing five years later with a degree in English and an MA in Creative & Critical Writing, passed with distinction. My final dissertation was based on a close reading of Freud’s essay, ‘On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of Love’. ‘And that’s all there is to it’ is my first short story win and my first published work. I live in rural East Sussex with my partner, our teenage son and a senile dog.

Photograph by Wolfie Wright

David Grubb, Henley-on-Thames, Oxon. "The Fire Child"

David Grubb has published fiction and poetry for many years.His latest poetry collection is It Comes With A Bit of Song (SALT 2007) and his story The Fire Child is the opening chapter of a novel in progress.He has also written short radio plays and is tutor in Creative Writing at Reading University, Henley River and Rowing Museum and Norden Farm Arts Centre.

John Haggerty, California, USA. "Ghost Lights"

John Haggerty is a pale, emaciated man who has spent the majority of his adult life confined to a cubicle, typing instructions into a computer. This seems to have rendered him nearly hairless and invisible to most members of the opposite sex, conditions for which he long overcompensated by engaging in a series of pointlessly risky hobbies.
Before all of this happened, he attended Stanford University. This was nice enough at the time, filling him as it did with an oddly lofty sort of narcissism. Subsequent events, however, especially the frenetic victories of, it appears, every single member of his graduating class aside from him, have almost entirely destroyed this unwarranted sense of well being. Mr. Haggerty now views success as a sign of a grasping and dangerous neurosis. Except for the Bridport Prize, which is different.
On the positive side, he has a lovely and graceful wife, a peculiarly non-violent dog, and skin almost entirely free of disfiguring rashes.

Huw Lawrence, Aberystwyth. "Keeping On"

Huw Lawrence was born in South wales and studied at Manchester and Cornell. He has spent most of his life teaching English. He won a prize in the Rhys Davies short story competition in 1999 and has published poems, stories and articles in magazines such as The Critical Quarterly, Acumen, Planet, Poetry Wales, The New Welsh Review and others. He is currently working on a novel.

Toby Litt, London. "The Fish"

Toby Litt was born in 1968. He is the author of Adventures in Capitalism, Beatniks, Corpsing, deadkidsongs, Exhibitionism, Finding Myself, Ghost Story and Hospital. His new novel, I play the drums in a band called okay, will be published by Hamish Hamilton in March 2008. He is a Granta Best of Young British Novelist.
www.tobylitt.com

David A Mcilroy, Brussels, Belgium. "Peas and Pictures"

Educated in London, Paris and Beijing. He has lived since 1994 in Brussels as a cultural project manager, researcher and journalist. He has written a great deal for English language theatre in Brussels, but only started writing full time in 2007 and has had some small successes this year, including;
- Short listed for the Francis E McManus Short story prize by RTE for 'Osama in China'
-Story 'Osama in China' was broadcast by RTE in June, read by actor T.P. McKenna
- Winner of the 2007 Channel 4/One World Radio Radio Play competition with 'The Interpreter'
- Short story ?Tigers? was published in the Bulletin August 2007
- Commissioned to write a play for the Irish Theatre Group ?Some Blue Horizon? to premier in June 2008
- Commissioned to write a play for the 100th anniversary of the English Language Theatre in Belgium. ?The Girl who loved Hitler? will premier in March 25009
Andrew's key theme is contemporary China (he graduated in Chinese studies from Louvain-La-Neuve in 1997) and the above stories are all taken from his collection 'Horse'. He is currently writing a novel about China, sex and the ex-patriate community. Hs dream is to find a good agent and an engaged editor!

Kevin Parry, Seaford, East Sussex. "Next to Godliness"

Kevin Parry was born in Umtata (now Mthatha), South Africa, but has lived in England since 1979. He was educated in both countries and holds a BA in History and History of Art from the University of South Africa, and an MA in Education?(Language, the Arts and Education) from the University of Sussex.

He is, by instinct and artistic conviction, primarily a short story writer and has two completed collections of short fiction (neither of which has yet been published). However, he has also written a novella, radio plays and prose poems. He now writes full time and is currently working on a novel which, like one of the story collections, is set in his native South Africa.

He has won prizes/publication in Stand Magazine, twice in the Bridport Prize, and twice in Ireland's Fish Publishing short story competitons. His stories have also been published in the political and cultural journal,Soundings, and in the post-colonial journal, Kunapipi.

Stuart Tallack, Felpham, West Sussex. "How doth the little Crocodile?"

Stuart Tallack is a supply teacher working all round Sussex, Surrey and Hampshire. "I am really an English specialist, but have become a Jack-of-all-Trades and worry a little about being master of none. Having cajoled reluctant teenagers into believing they could write, I am now telling myself the same. I was a runner-up in this year's Fish Short Stories and also in Fish Short Histories. I am now hooked and will go on writing. It is nearly fifty years since I wrote in a notebook, "Forever reading, never to be read." I have finally taken the implied advice."

Michael Wherly, Wallasey, Merseyside. "Golden Retriever"

Born in New Brighton in 1946. Spent twenty years teaching English in various parts of the world. First published in 1986, and have had nine novels and a collection of short stories published since by Gollancz, Black Swan, Doubleday and Poolbeg. I also had around fifty stories broadcast on Radio Four's 'Short Story' slot.
I now write, and teach creative writing. I've lectured at John Moore University, and tutored the Crossing Borders programme for African writers, and the Distance Learning M.A. for Lancaster University. I work as a summer lifeguard on the Mersey estuary. I've also been trying to get the name of New Brighton's great novelist, Malcolm Lowry, better known in the area.
Getting a mention in the Bridport prize means a great deal to me. I've been out in the cold for a number of years, and it bucks me up greatly to know that all those hours spent filling drawers with orphan manuscripts were not as crazy and hopeless as they often appeared to be.
Today's news was a lifebelt thrown to someone who, though waving chirpily, felt sometimes as if he were drowning. Thanks for that.

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Bridport Prize 2007 - Short Story Prizewinner's. Judge :- Tracey Chevalier

The Bridport Prize is a fundraiser for Bridport Arts Centre, charity no 1069780