Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award - shortlist announced - NZ author makes final six

1 March 2015

The six-person shortlist features international writers and one British newcomer who is yet to publish her first book.

The six shortlisted writers and the titles of their short stories are:  

Rebecca F John - 'The Glove Maker's Numbers'


Yiyun Li  - 'A Sheltered Woman'


Elizabeth McCracken - 'Hungry'


Paula Morris - 'False River'


Scott O'Connor - 'Interstellar Space'


Madeleine Thien - 'The Wedding Cake'

The winner will receive £30,000 - the world's richest prize for a single short story. The five other shortlisted writers will each receive £1,000. The winner will be announced at Stationers' Hall in London on Friday 24 April.

All the stories in this year's shortlist reflect different ways of dealing with pain and grief. Madeleine Thien's story, 'The Wedding Cake' draws on themes of identity and loss, telling of four friends who grew up in war-torn Lebanon, reconvening decades later in Montreal. In Rebecca F. John's 'The Glove Maker's Numbers' a woman creates an elaborate system of numbers to cope with the loss of her brother. Beijing-born Yiyun Li's story 'A Sheltered Woman' is the story of a Chinese-American nanny hired to spend a month and no more supporting a new mother and her baby; trying to keep detached from the emotional turmoil around her, she is also entrapped by her own past.

The Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award has a history of shortlisting fresh and unrecognised talent. Last year Anna Metcalfe was shortlisted for the prize whilst she was finishing her first short story collection. Metcalfe lost out to Adam Johnson, whose story focuses on a man who must confront his own grief and try to help his wife's suffering as she deteriorates from a wasting illness. Johnson's story was based on his personal experience of his wife's battle with cancer.