Six writers from four continents compete for £25,000 short story prize
New Zealand author in select group

The short list for The Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award is announced today, Sunday, March 7. Six writers are competing for the £25,000 prize for a single short story.

The shortlisted writers are from five countries in four continents: England, Wales, Zimbabwe, USA and New Zealand

The award uncovers new talent, with half of the writers on the shortlist debut novelists alongside established voices such as the award-winning CK Stead

The six writers and the titles of their short story are:

Will Cohu Nothing but Grass
Joe Dunthorne Critical Responses to My Last Relationship
Petina Gappah An Elegy for Easterly
Adam Marek Fewer Things
CK Stead Last Season’s Man
David Vann It’s Not Yours

The Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award is a new annual literary prize which builds on the success of the innovative weekly short-fiction slot in The Sunday Times Magazine launched by the deputy editor, Cathy Galvin.

The judges of the inaugural prize are: Booker prize-winning novelist and poet A S Byatt; novelist, director, playwright and award-winning author Hanif Kureishi; renowned interviewer and writer Lynn Barber; bestselling author Nick Hornby, Oscar-nominated for his screenplay adaptation of An Education; and the literary editor of The Sunday Times, Andrew Holgate. The non-voting chairman of the judges is Lord Matthew Evans, chairman of EFG Private Bank and the former chairman of Faber & Faber.

Judge AS Byatt comments:
“It was quite a task for us to make the final selection from such a huge entry but that choice is a testament to the liveliness and new inventiveness of the form. We had wonderful examples of polished conventional stories and others written with new kinds of ideas."

The judges chose from a longlist of 20 writers, which was chosen from 1,152 entries.
The winner is announced at The Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival on Friday, March 26. The shortlisted stories will be published in the Sunday Times Magazine, starting with the winning story on March 28. The Award is administered by Booktrust.

Photograph of C.K.Stead above - Brendon O'Hagan - Sydney Morning Herald

Background on writers shortlisted for the inaugural Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award 2010:
Will Cohu - Nothing but Grass

From an RAF family, he was educated at Barnard Castle School , Exeter College, Oxford, and subsequently worked for Chichester Festival Theatre and Haymarket Leicester as administrator, producer and director. From 1992 he freelanced as writer, editor and journalist, mostly for Daily Telegraph. His previous books include Urban Dog (Simon & Schuster 2000) based on his Daily Telegraph column and Out of The Woods (Short Books 2007). He is currently writing The Wolf Pit, a memoir of Yorkshire life for Chatto. In 2000 moved to Lincolnshire where his family have lived on and off for thirty years. He writes about environment and trees. He is married with three children.


Joe Dunthorne - Critical Responses to My Last Relationship

Joe Dunthorne was born and brought up in Swansea and is now 26 and lives in London. His debut novel, Submarine (2008, Hamish Hamilton/Penguin), won the Curtis Brown prize. It has been translated into ten languages and is currently being adapted by Warp Films into a film starring Paddy Considine. His debut poetry pamphlet will be published by Faber in May 2010. He is a striker for the England Writers’ Football Team. www.joedunthorne.com

Petina Gappah - An Elegy for Easterly

Petina Gappah, aged 38, is a Zimbabwean writer with law degrees from Cambridge, Graz University, and the University of Zimbabwe. Her short fiction and essays have been published in eight countries. She lives with her son Kush in Geneva, where she works as counsel in an international organisation that provides legal aid on international trade law to developing countries. Her story collection, An Elegy for Easterly, was published by Faber in April 2009. She is currently completing The Book of Memory, her first novel. Both books will also be published in Finland, France, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway and Sweden.

Adam Marek - Fewer Things

Adam Marek’s short story collection, Instruction manual for swallowing, (Comma Press, 2007) was nominated for the Frank O’Connor Prize. His stories have appeared in Prospect magazine and in many anthologies including When it changed and The new uncanny from Comma Press and the British Council’s New Writing 15. Adam, aged 36, has been a Bridport Prizewinner twice. He has recently contributed an essay to Short Circuit: A guide to the art of the short story from Salt publishing and his first novel is nearing completion. www.adammarek.co.uk


C.K. Stead - Last Season's Man

Born in Auckland, New Zealand writer Christian Karlson Stead, aged 77, has published 11 novels, 2 collections of short stories, 15 collections of poems, 6 books of literary criticism and/or literary essays, and edited a number of books. He was Professor of English at the University of Auckland for 20 years and took early retirement in 1986 since when he became a full-time writer. His novels are published in New Zealand and the UK (Harvill Secker), have been translated into a dozen European languages, and have won a number of awards, including the New Zealand Book Award for both poetry and fiction. He was awarded a CBE in 1985 for services to New Zealand literature, elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1995, Senior Visiting Fellow at St John’s College Oxford in 1997, and awarded an honorary doctorate in letters by the University of Bristol in 2001. In 2007 he received New Zealand’s highest award, the ONZ.


David Vann - It's Not Yours

David Vann, aged 43, was born on Adak Island, Alaska and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. A former Wallace Stegner Fellow and National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, he is currently a Professor at the University of San Francisco. Vann’s work has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, Men's Journal, Outside, Outside's GO, National Geographic Adventure, Writer's Digest, and other magazines and won various prizes and awards. He recently found out he's part Cherokee, related to the Cherokee Chief David Vann.

David Vann’s Legend of a Suicide (Penguin 2009), winner of the Grace Paley Prize and a California Book Award, has been on 25 “Best Books of the Year” lists in the US, UK, Ireland, and Australia, including The Times Literary Supplement and The New York Times. The novella from the book is currently a national bestseller in France and shortlisted for the Prix des lecteurs de L’Express. Author of two other prize-winning and bestselling books, and contributor to numerous magazines and newspapers, he is at work on a novel, Caribou Island, set in his native Alaska.